During winter, when there isn’t much to be done in the garden, I spend more time on crafts. Last winter season I made an advent calendar in felt and started knitting a cardigan. The cardigan is still not done, because during this winter season I focused more on interior decorating. Time to finally make some curtains for this house!

We have nine sets of windows that “need” curtains. (I don’t think the storage closet needs any, and the glass wall in the living room is not going to get curtains either.) The bathroom window already had one, which leaves eight. I managed to sew curtains for four of them, so I’m halfway there. Perhaps next winter I will get the rest done.

The “office” was first in line because I wanted to be able to get rid of the glare on our computer screens. Thick, lined, but otherwise un-fancy curtains in a fabric that matches the art nouveau and early-1900s inspiration I’ve generally been following in this house: Sandberg’s Lily of the Valley.

The curtains for our bedroom are similar in style and construction. If your memory is really sharp, you may recognize the fabric: this is the curtain I made for the balcony door back in 2008. Back then I expected it to hang there for the next 15 or 20 years. The door itself only survived for less than three more years, but the curtain got a second life. I removed the tabs at the top, made a twin for it, and now it hangs in our bedroom. I am hesitant to make another prediction about its expected life, but I hope it will be long. The fabric: Sandberg’s Louise.

Actually, the twin is not quite a twin. Or maybe it’s a fraternal twin. The new fabric I ordered did not quite match the old one: one is more beige and the other is more gray. Maybe the old one changed colour in the sun? Maybe in a couple of years they will be indistinguishable. But during the day the curtains are apart, and at night nobody looks at them, so the mismatch doesn’t bother me at all.

The curtains in Ingrid’s bedroom are of a very different style… We looked at photos of curtains online and Ingrid had a very clear idea about what hers should look like. Patterned, but with a small pattern, “like maybe hearts or rings”. Ideally violet or lilac or something like that, or maybe blue. And tied back with nice bows, and with a valance. It took a while to find the fabric because this is not exactly in line with current decorating trends, but Ingrid was very happy with the result. She likes to untie the bows for the night.

And finally, some cushions. We had a set of three old cushions in dark green linen that I sewed in 1997 when I moved in with Eric, and they were really at the end of their life. There were actual holes in the fabric. These new ones are in dark brown wool felt, decorated with fabric in traditional Estonian patterns. My working name for the set is “Rebel yellow”. One of them I made after Ingrid’s wishes – can you guess which one?

PS: If you can’t make the numbers add up – office + bedroom + Ingrid’s room equals three, not four, right? – it’s because the office has two large windows which I count as two, not one.

We’re well into April and it still doesn’t look like spring outside. Half the garden is covered in snow, and today we had three dense showers of snow (and one of hail).

This weekend we decided to make spring nevertheless. We hung up Ingrid’s swing. Eric put up a nesting box. I planted pansies, labeled as “frost tolerant” at the garden centre so I hope they survive. Eric swapped tyres on the car, from winter to summer tyres. Adrian and I took our first bike ride. (Ingrid has bravely been cycling for several weeks already.)

I found one crocus blossom, two snowdrops, and a dozen scillas in the sunniest corner of the garden.

The rodent has extended his highway, which used to go from the hedge to the bird feeder, all the way to the house. There he has dug another little tunnel to get in under the stairs and onwards into the foundation. And from the other side of the house another little path goes to one of the old vole holes.

The neighbours report that from the hedge (which follows the border between our garden and theirs) the rat wanders into their garden as well. The rat seems to have made himself at home here.

And this weekend we spotted the rat in company of another.

It is time to take countermeasures.

With winter almost over, I can declare this season’s best buy: a snow pusher. (For those of you living in less-snowy climes, have a look at the photo.)

In previous years we’ve made do with just a shovel. A pusher seemed like a waste of money and space. You only use it after a really heavy snow fall, maybe half a dozen times during the season. The rest of the time it just stands there, taking up lots of space.

For the two staircases from the street to the house, a shovel is the only option – there is no space for anything else. In fact on the lower stairs there’s barely enough space to swing a shovel, and occasionally I imagine sawing down the handrail on one side, to give me more room.

But then there’s also the driveway in front of the garage, and the roof. We clear snow off the roof because of the risk of leaks. When we redid the interior in the extension, we discovered signs of an old water leak from the roof. Apparently the roof (a sheet metal one) is not entirely waterproof. So any time the weather report promises above-zero temperatures, we climb up on the roof and shovel off the snow before it melts and starts leaking into our office/library.

And for both the driveway and the roof, the pusher makes life a LOT easier. Now there’s no more lifting, just pushing. Especially for the roof, where we now just push the snow over the edge. (From the driveway the snow needs to be pushed up into a bank.) It’s not even hard work any more – it just takes a bit of time. I quite enjoy it. Peace and quiet, fresh air, nice view, moderate exercise.

The gardening season is about to begin! Last week friend/neighbour P told me about an interesting lecture at a gardening club. This made me suddenly realize that spring is not far off. Now I have bought a bunch of new gardening books (which are lying here just waiting to be browsed) and attended the lecture, so I’m full of inspiration and energy, making plans for this season.

Last summer I planted a bunch of bushes and shrubs. Later, towards autumn, we cleared out much of our “slope of weeds” and had a carpenter build stairs along one edge of that slope.

This year’s main big project will be to finish clearing that slope and then to plant it. It’s not the most central part of the garden, but it is one that we see daily during the summer, and also the ugliest one right now. I’m imagining a low-maintenance combination of small bushes, some decorative grasses, maybe a few large rocks, and hardy perennials for most of the area.

I also hope to add some more climbers & creepers to the play house, to make it more fun for the kids. Hopefully I can do this early in the season so they have time to grow enough to make a difference already this summer.

If we still have time and energy left over then maybe we’ll plant raspberry bushes. This is something that we’ve been talking about for at least two years now, and I’m hoping that we can finally do something about it.

I also have visions of decorative plantings to both sides of the entrance, and along the stairs that lead from the street to the entrance, and also a complete remake of our one and only flowerbed (behind the house, by the wooden deck) but all of this will probably have to wait until another year.

It turns out that the rodent eating bird food in our garden is a rat. Suddenly I am much less fond of it.

But… rats don’t burrow in the ground. So: do we have both? Or are the voles gone and the rat has moved in? Or is the rat here just for the winter?

Most of the snow we got during December melted away over the year end. It turned out that the voles who live in our garden had created a tunnel under the snow from the lilac hedge towards the bird feeder. It must have been the feeder they were aiming for, because there is nothing at all of interest otherwise in that part of the garden.

Our bird feeder continues to feed (birds) and entertain (us). This year the sparrows and nuthatches have been few, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single siskin. The magpies dominated during the early part of the season but are now rare. The Great Tits and Blue Tits are there, as always. The Great Spotted Woodpecker has been here a bit more frequently than last year, and occasionally we get visits from squirrels, too. Their climbing ability, seen up close like this, is awesome.

It seems we’re mostly feeding blackbirds this year. They were just a couple last year, but this year there are at least five. I wonder if last year’s continuous food supply led more of them to decide to spend this winter here and not migrate to warmer climes. They are still struggling to hold on to the feeder. At least one of them is somewhat more confident about its acrobatic abilities, and flies up and hangs on while flapping wildly. The others tend to feed on what falls on the ground instead. Often the snow is completely covered in their footprints.

They seem to be quite dependent on our feeder. Often several blackbirds are hanging around the feeder already before dawn. When I go out to fill up their food, sometimes they don’t even bother to flee, and once I had to shoo one of them away from the feeder to be able to open it.

Today I pulled up our first carrots. They turned out to be totally ready for eating, and delicious to boot. (Even though some were mutant four-legged carrots.)

The carrots were a whim: Ingrid got a packet of seeds together with a Bamse issue. And yet, of all the vegetables we have tried to grow, I have to say that carrots have thus far given the best result. The deer chewed off the tops of both our tomato and pea plants when I planted those; the pumpkin plants barely grew and didn’t result in any actual pumpkins. But the deer left the carrot plants alone, and the carrots thrived.

Having planted enough bushes for now, we have turned our attention to the part of the garden that is in direst need of attention: the part between the house and the root cellar, formally known as “the slope of weeds”.

The name summarizes two of the three salient characteristics of this place. It is a steepish slope, hard to walk without holding on to something. And it is full of weeds, and has been since we first arrived here. It is dominated by bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis, åkervinda, kassitapp) and greater celandine (Chelidonium majus, skelört, vereurmarohi) with accents of nettles, wild strawberries, and other weeds. In the middle of it all, a little spiraea bush, buried under bindweed during most of the growing season, the previous owners’ single attempt to tame this slope. (You cannot even see it in the photo below but it’s grown a bit in the last four years, despite the inhospitable surroundings.)

The slope of weeds as of 2008

The third important fact about the slope of weeds is that the earth is full of junk. At the top there is a thin layer of reasonable garden soil. Beneath this soil is a layer of junk. Garbage. Trash. In some parts the junk is buried under 15 cm of earth; in other places it reaches all the way to the surface. It is the only part of the garden that is dangerous for bare feet. The chunks of concrete and roofing tiles are not so bad; the shards of glass are pretty dangerous.

Altogether this makes the slope quite unwelcoming, and improving it is a major project. You can’t just clear away the weeds and plant something nicer, because you can’t even work the soil without hitting all sorts of foreign objects all the time.

Now we intend to fix all three things at once. We will get rid of the weeds and the junk by removing and replacing enough of the earth to get a workable, plantable ground. We won’t get rid of the slope-ness of the slope but we will have stairs built along the wall to make the slope passable.

Our friend Anton the Builder will arrive on Monday to start working on the stairs. To prepare, we’ve been doing a lot of digging: removing the topmost layer of soil with all the weeds and their roots, evening out the slope nearest the house to make place for the stairs, and digging a hole for the concrete slab that the stair will rest on. We’ve already filled two 1m3 sacks with earth, stones, and other stuff, and have begun on a third one.

The amount of junk coming out of the earth there is astounding, as is the variety.
Chunks of concrete, roofing tiles, bathroom tiles and bricks.
An entire sack of cement.
Shards of pottery, china and glass.
Electrical wires. Rope. A one-metre iron T-bar. A bin bag.
Nails, both large old rusty ones and modern stainless steel.
The heel of a shoe. A spoon. A pitchfork.
A candy wrapper.
A small glass bottle with a bit of dried nail polish.
A metal tube for mayonnaise or something like it.
A door from a wood stove.
Bones of some large animal. Cow, perhaps.

It’s like a midden combined with a dump for construction waste.

One interesting fact is the wide time span that this material covers. The large nails and the stove door are old, and the bricks as well: they’re not the modern sort that are half hollow, but solid, heavy, old-style bricks. Other things are much more modern, such as the candy wrapper and the wires.

I have tried to imagine how this came to be, but I have a hard time making sense of this. Who would throw old plates and bones in their garden, or pitchforks and china? And why? In what scenario could it possibly seem like a good idea to have shards of glass in your garden? Or did some of this come from somewhere else as part of some cheap load of fill dirt?

In any case, while it makes the digging slow and laborious, it also makes the whole project feel like an archaeological dig. I never know what I will find next.