Staghorn sumac.

I planted it 2012 and three years on, it had barely grown at all. So this summer I dug it up, added lots of mulch and fertilizer and replanted it. Since then it has actually grown and even sent out root suckers – and while root suckers are generally annoying, these ones made me happy because I think the tree is finally thriving! I’m undecided between removing all the suckers, or keeping two of them so I get a nice three-stemmed tree/bush group.


Inspecting our jack-o-lanterns. My sad-faced pumpkin lantern is looking sadder and sadder every day. That pumpkin was really not meant to be carved! It’s cracking and breaking around the nostrils, and the teeth are sagging and curling inwards. Well, it should last one more day in any case.

Climbing at Klättercentret in Solna. They have drop-in climbing during school breaks. We’ve been there before but this time it felt like we spent 90 minutes queueing and got very little actual climbing for it.





Autumn break, and Ingrid said she’d rather be at home with me than at fritids, so that’s what we’re doing.

This is my breakfast. My favourite breakfast during the cold season is porridge. We make our own porridge mix. The details vary but it’s a mixture of 1/3 rolled oats and 2/3 other “stuff” (barley, spelt, wheat, rye, flaxseed etc – pick any two or three).

Sometimes I eat my porridge with jam, but there are still fresh Swedish apples to be found in the supermarket so currently I make it with finely diced apples instead. And a generous chunk of butter. Awesomely good.


First day of autumn break. We bought and carved pumpkins.

For the kids, we found right-sized pumpkins at our local Konsum supermarket. Ridiculous Disney-branded pumpkins, all of identical size and shape… but they were the right size so what the heck.

I wanted a bigger pumpkin and found one at Hemköp. But when I started carving it at home, I realized that I’d gotten an eating pumpkin instead of a carving pumpkin. I guess whoever does the veggie purchasing at Hemköp was not aware that there is a difference, but there definitely is. This one had a very thin skin, almost fragile, that kept cracking as I was carving, and very thick flesh. In fact it had so much flesh that just the parts that I had to cut out were enough for a nice dinner (pasta with black beans and pumpkin sautéed with garlic).

Adrian designed a pumpkin but let Ingrid do the rest of the work – the carving was too hard and the cleaning out of the innards of the pumpkin was too icky. I was quite impressed that Ingrid managed to carve both Adrian’s and her own pumpkin.


This year our cherry tree gave us a properly dramatic display of autumn colours (unlike last year’s disappointing performance).


It’s still warm September weather out there but now the leaves have turned yellow all the way.


Adrian asked for another plush fleecy monster from our monster sewing book (Sy monster). Rufus, Rufus Junior, Dinah and Quincy (of whom I have no photos) will soon be joined by Leo.

When I started working on Leo yesterday, Adrian joined me and also sewed a bit: little pieces of red polar fleece that he stitched together with green thread into a spiky jumble. Today he was more interested in cutting the fleece into shapes that he then cut into smaller shapes and then into even smaller shapes.