This is what the hallway looks like when Ingrid has a few friends over.

We’ve trained Ingrid and Adrian to at least put their shoes, bags and clothes to one side of the hallway, so it’s possible to get inside without stepping on stuff. But I guess they only do it because we keep nagging at them, not because they actually agree that it makes sense to do things this way. Apparently it doesn’t bother kids at all to have stuff lying around all over everywhere. Ingrid’s room is the same – there are things spread out over the floor and I have to watch where I step when crossing the room.

First we had the “snow” of cherry blossoms everywhere, including indoors, since we like keeping doors and windows open on hot days. Now some kind of yellow pollen is everywhere – on all kinds of surfaces in the kitchen, on the deck furniture, the car and everywhere else. In rain puddles it looks like an invasion of alien goo.

When I photograph a thing, I cannot help doing some research about it. I have now learned that the yellow dusty pollen in puddles is most likely from fir and pine trees, and – unlike most pollen – usually does not cause allergic reactions.

He builds fast and big, without any visible plan or design. He knows that triangles make for a strong construction, and just piles random triangles on top of each other until he runs out of pieces. And then suddenly, magically, it’s a castle, or an obstacle course, or a prison.

I had intended to plant a hedge along the retaining wall that we got built last summer. But somehow summer ended and I hadn’t even started planting. This year it’s definitely happening (and one of the three sections is already done).

What I hadn’t planned for were the weeds that came up in the meantime. It’s only half a year, I thought – how weedy can it get in that time? Plenty, it turns out. The earth along the wall that was bare last autumn is now covered in greater celandine, white nettle, couch grass and other unwelcome plants. They have… spread like weeds. Now I’ve spent a full day in total digging them up and carting away several barrowloads of biomass. Never again will I underestimate their growing power.

Occasionally I suffer from restless legs in the evening when I’m trying to fall asleep. I’ve noticed that this is most likely to happen if I follow vigorous exercise by around three days of unusually idle life. Case in point: today.

Thursday was a public holiday so I missed my gym workout; Friday was a so-called “squeeze day” so I didn’t cycle to work; today we drove to Sala to visit the silver mine so I’ve mostly been sitting or walking today. Already on the way back from Sala, when I was about to nod off in the car, I was woken from my nodding by a creeping, itching, restless feeling in my legs. The evening was bound to be worse.

So while the family was at home having dinner, I went out and cycled. From home to Drottningholm, then a little circuit on Lovö, back to Drottningholm where I walked around and photographed for a while, and then home. Those 30 km got all the twitches out of my legs.

As a bonus I got to see a very cute swan family in one of the ponds at Drottningholm. The cygnets can’t have been more than a few days old – all downy and wobbly and weak. Soon after I got close to the pond, the family were about to get out of water. The parents got out onto the bank easily; the babies were almost falling over trying to get up the little slope, flapping their almost non-existent wing stubs. When they got, mum and dad were preening and cleaning their feathers, while some of the babies seemed to fall asleep from the effort of climbing those few steps.

Hot summer weather arrived, not exactly unexpectedly, and Ingrid urgently needed summer footwear. We went shopping. Ingrid is now completely in love with her new sandals. They’re black, of course.

Ingrid borrowed my camera. This is apparently what I look like.

Whenever I see a photo of myself, I am always a bit surprised to see how gray my hair is. I don’t notice it when I look in the mirror.

We went to see the Miro exhibition at Waldemarsudde. Nice weather, nice walk, nice lunch at the café, another nice walk to a nice fika afterwards at Rosendal – but the exhibition itself was underwhelming. “Yep, Miro, black squiggles” was what I got out of it. I don’t know what was lacking – perhaps Miro himself is old news now, or perhaps the works just weren’t presented the right way.

Ingrid and I played Othello. I won. I had a strategy; she just tried to flip the most pieces every time.