Adrian got a haircut. Eric suggested a mohawk. (A mohawk is called a “coxcomb” in Swedish, by the way.) Adrian obligingly had a look in the mirror, but didn’t hesitate when it came to deciding – he wants hair just like daddy, no coxcomb.

Surprisingly, the plants in those boxes had generally survived the rough delivery. Some looked more near death than others, but not so bad that I’d give up on them. So today I planted them all. Hopefully they will recover now that they can spread their branches in fresh air and sunlight instead of getting crushed and tumbled around.

Physocarpus opulifolius “Dart’s Gold”, for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing. Chosen for its hardiness and ability to tolerate less than ideal conditions. This part of the garden is in the shade of several large trees which take up much of the light and water and nutrition, so the hedge will have to make do with whatever is left over (and whatever top-ups I give it).

Planting bushes is always a mystery project because it takes so long before you can really see the final outcome. Will they thrive? Will they look as good as the photos? How large will they turn out? Different sources have very different estimates for the final size of this variety: some say 0.8 to 1.2 metres, others 1.5 to 2.0. I’m rather hoping that the harsh conditions will keep the size down – I don’t want the garden to be completely walled off from the street.

It’s cherry blossom time, and for about a week, the garden is dominated by two white giants.

Ours flower about two weeks later than the pink-blossomed cherry trees planted here and there in the streets and parks in Stockholm.

There appears to be something in privatized post and parcel companies that makes them inherently customer-unfriendly, even when it directly costs them money. (For an earlier case, do read this popular post about The total incompetence of Parcelforce.)

I ordered plants online. I’ve done this before, and the normal result is that I get a box delivered to my door. This time the plants were delivered by PostNord, which is basically the old Swedish Post combined with the old Danish Post. The experience was a bit surreal.

A week after the boxes were sent off, I got an SMS from PostNord, that the parcels were available for me to pick up at their delivery centre. After a good half-hour of waiting – while the long queue got slowly served by a single overworked, surly lady – I got four large boxes. All of them more or less mashed up, which was no surprise, given that they were handed to me in some random orientation, so they had probably been stored with the same care and attention, despite clear green “UP” arrows on each one.

A fifth box that was part of the consignment was not yet available for delivery. The tracking link I had informed me that PostNord had actually made an attempt to deliver the boxes home to me. Two days ago. In the middle of the day. Without any attempt to contact me in advance – even though they obviously had my phone number.

How on Earth can it make sense for them to waste their drivers’ time, trying to deliver to a home address in the middle of a working day, without any advance notice? How much cheaper would it not have been to send me a simple SMS, even just the day before?

Morning view from the top of Tranebergsbron.

May mornings are beautiful. I love the trees especially – all in leaf at this time of the year, but still fresh, tender, semi-transparent. In summer all trees are equally green, but in May, when the leaves are still young, their greenery has a lot more character. Some are bright green, others have a yellow tone, still others are coppery.

A singing bowl is a brass bell in the shape of a bowl. This one serves as our dinner bell.

I think of this bowl as “mine” because I got it as a Christmas gift – it was the one and only thing on my wish list for last Christmas. But really everybody in the house loves it. It makes such an incredibly beautiful, deep sound, with lovely harmonics, that carries to the other end of the house without being annoyingly loud. (Much more pleasant than me shouting “Dinner is ready!” through the house, or going from room to room to tell everyone.)

Whichever kid happens to be in the kitchen when dinner is ready gets the privilege of “donging”. Adrian especially loves to “dong” the bowl. Sometimes we do it for the sheer pleasure of hearing the sound, even though everybody is right there and nobody needs to be rung to dinner.

Already from a distance I could see that Ingrid was tired from the hike. She tends to get too little sleep on these things – can’t fall asleep, too cold during the night, has to get up for a trip to the loo, wakes up too early… I remind her every time to pack extra warm sleeping clothes, and every time she ignores the advice.

This afternoon she was close to collapsing, physically and mentally. She also insists that she is unable to fall asleep during the day. Well, I got Miss Unable To Sleep to lie down at least. She was fast asleep in ten minutes, and slept until I woke her three hours later.

Stacks of sacks of fertilizer make a perfect playground for kids with too much energy and no fear of getting dirty.

It is really hard to predict which new foods the kids will love, and which ones not. I still don’t understand why Ingrid loves sushi so much, but only with salmon and prawns. Or what’s so awesome about stuffed peppers, while other stuffed vegetables are “meh”. And why freshly baked garlic bread is the best thing ever, according to both kids, while Ingrid definitely wants no garlic in the sauce when she cooks spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Garlic bread, in any case, is delicious. I buy ready-to-bake mini baguettes and stuff them with as much garlic butter as possible (and make the butter seriously garlicky). And then I make a soup of some sort to accompany the bread, because garlic bread on its own does not count as dinner in my mind, although the kids would probably be equally happy without the soup.