Viburnum. As beautiful and pleasing this spring as it has been every spring.

A whole new quarter of apartment blocks has been constructed along the railway tracks over the past few years, replacing the worn office block and warehouses that used to be there. Mostly student housing, from what I’ve understood. And more is appearing on the other side of the tracks.

It’s a great location – the near end is just five minutes’ walk from the train station, and there’s a bus line along the road so those living at the far end are only two or three bus stops away from the station. There’s a Lidl, and a gym, and a cheap pasta & pizza restaurant. Probably more services will pop up as more people move in.

Already the new housing has led to the opening of a large new Coop supermarket, one size up from the ones we have at Spånga torg. The grand opening was a week ago, with special offers and food tastings and whatnot, so we went for a look.

Large, spacious, and well stocked, and with a wider range of most things than “our” Coop. More exotic vegetables, and funky mushrooms. And this fridge, of like, 10 metres, is filled from edge to edge with just vegetarian products – tofu and falafel and meatless burgers and vegan cheese and so on. Nice.

I started on a jigsaw puzzle for the first time in a long while.

Realized, then, that the last time must have been before we got Nysse. Because cats and jigsaw puzzles clearly don’t mix. And that’s not a surprise, I was all prepared – laying the puzzle on a felt puzzle mat so that I can cover it up when I take a break.

Except Nysse didn’t even wait for me to take a break, he jumped right up on it and started attacking my hands when I tried to assert some ownership over the puzzle pieces.

Fine – I’ll just work on it when he’s not there. It’s spring and he’ll be spending more time outdoors. I’ll cover it up in the meantime. He’ll probably sleep on it.

Except Nysse for once did not just want to sleep on the new thing, but for some reason took it as a toy, which he never does. Is the felt surface so intriguing? Does he feel the puzzle pieces through it? Who knows. In any case, I now cover the cover whenever Nysse is around (with a sturdy rubber cutting mat).

Progress on the puzzle will be slow like this.

I thought we were done with winter but apparently not. The temperature outside is freezing again. And the almost ten-degree temperature difference outside hits by a degree or two inside, so I’m back to layers of wool upon wool.

Right sleeve of sweater. I liked the way it looked, rolled up around that little ball of yarn.

Saw a notice in the weekend issue of Dagens Nyheter about a crafts & design fair and decided that it would make a nice outing.

Small-scale crafts of various kinds. Textiles, ceramics, fancy candles. Lots of prints, especially that kind with a slightly witty slogan.

Lovely venue with lots of space and natural light, but with pretty bad signage. I almost missed out on half the fair because I didn’t realize that there was a whole other floor, until I was heading out the door.

To be fair, it’s not just the weeds that are green in the garden. The carex is surprisingly hardy and green all year round. Several of the ground cover plants also emerge green from under the snow, including both hazelwort and waldsteinia. I rather like that. Maybe I should try them in more places.

Nothing green is growing yet, apart from eranthis and snowdrops. And… weeds. How come it’s always the weeds that start first? Not even crocuses are out yet.

My family walks through the house without noticing a lot of things that I can’t help but notice. They leave chairs pulled out from the table, at an angle. They leave rugs askew. They leave doors half-open in such a way that, when I walk into the space, I am met by the edges of the doors.

The family are clearly not bothered. But to me, the doors meeting me edge-on almost feel like the doors are attacking me. It’s like walking into hostile territory. A palisade, or a barred wall.

So I keep pushing the doors away to the side, all the time. And a few hours later, they’re back again.

We’re almost at the vernal equinox and some of the city’s Christmas decorations are still here. There’s this reindeer, and also a star-shaped thing on Spånga torg. The reindeer looks a bit lost.

For a month or two so I figured that it just takes them time to get around to all of them. After all, the number of staff is probably more or less constant, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to take down all the Christmas decorations in a week or two.

But… mid-March.

I’m starting to think the city may just have forgotten about these.