Something by Rick Riordan.

Out in the garden, digging, late in the evening. It’s not true sunset yet – the sun stays low, skimming the horizon, for quite a while.

Adrian helps me water the garden.

Day two of scout camp. A half day – we packed up and went home just after lunch.

Everybody was happy with the kitchen team – we cooked good food, in sufficient amounts, and served it on time. However it was very hectic. And the run-up to the camp, with all the planning and preparation, was not much better. I feel I reinvented not just a wheel but a whole truck’s worth of wheels, in a few short and stressful weeks. I feel no desire to ever do this again, and I suspect the rest of the kitchen team might feel the same way.

Instead I’m thinking of how to make use of this experience so that other people won’t have to reinvent yet more wheels for future scout camps. There has got to be a better way to plan and prepare this kind of thing.

I always sleep like crap in tents. When I am constricted by a sleeping bag, I wake up every single time I want to turn the other side, or switch from my back to my side. But it’s also because I don’t sleep well on bad mattresses – I always end up stiff and achy. Eric even got me an inflatable camp mattress, which was better than others I’ve tried, but still nothing like sleeping in a proper bed.

This weekend I tried sleeping in a hammock for the first time. I bought it last autumn already, but this was my first chance to try it out.

I wish I could say that I slept like a baby. Or a log. Unfortunately I still kept waking to turn. But the hammock was great for my back – I was not the least bit sore in the morning. I’ll definitely be using it again. Now I wonder what alternatives might exist for the standard sleeping bag.

It’s Spånga scout group’s spring camp this weekend, with a record 244 attendants, and I’m in charge of the kitchen. It’s been an absolutely hectic day, I was on my feet from 8:00 until 22:00 with barely a break, so all I have is this one shot I grabbed while the kitchen was being unpacked.

Worked late, then splurged on some excellent but very expensive sushi at a rooftop bar/restaurant (appropriately named Tak, meaning roof).

This was one of those trendy places where you order a number of small-to-medium dishes. Everything I ate was both delicious and interesting. The least interesting dish was their signature “sushi-in-a-bowl”, where the salmon was nearly hidden and overpowered by lettuce and rice. The seared salmon (accompanied by things I couldn’t even identify) was as wonderful as seared salmon can be, which means it was really, really wonderful – I love seared salmon! The egg dish was puzzling, and the tofu with trout roe was an unexpected combination, but both were nevertheless delicious. I enjoyed every single bite of everything.

Sweetcorn fritters, one of her favourite dishes.

I love the smell of lilacs.

I stop several times on my way home to smell the lilacs flowering along the streets. Some don’t smell much, but the ones I think of as “real” lilacs with the “real” lilac smell are intoxicating.