Ingrid on her scooter.

End of school. The children in Adrian’s class sang, got a diploma and a small gift from the teacher, then there was more singing out in the schoolyard. Afterwards we went for our traditional end-of-school conveyor belt sushi lunch at Zan in Kista.

I love this plant. I love most things in our garden, but this one especially. Just looking at it gives me a warm tingly feeling.

After my DSLR and all my lenses got stolen in the burglary this winter, I bought new gear. I had been vaguely thinking anyway about getting a mirrorless camera, but I couldn’t quite justify the expense, since I already had two perfectly good cameras.

But now that I didn’t (have two cameras) I had an opportunity to switch. And that’s what I did. Instead of replacing the Nikon DSLR with a similar one, I bought an Olympus mirrorless camera.

The camera itself feels solid and quite chunky. But the lenses weight so little that it’s hard to believe they are for real and not just fakes for displaying in a shop window. My whole kit is much, much smaller and lighter.

So much so that I don’t even need a separate camera bag any more. I tried using the bag I have, but it was worse than just cramming everything into a plastic bag in an ordinary backpack: the teeny little lenses just rattled around in it. So out it goes.

I’m trying to sell it, but coming to realize that there might not be much demand for this kind of bag any more. I guess nowadays only serious photographers use DSLRs, and they carry way more equipment than you could possibly fit in such a small bag. (It fits one smallish DSLR and two lenses.) And amateurs buy smaller cameras, or just use their phones.

We played Dixit. The kids were tired and distracted. Emotions ranged from boredom to mild hyperactivity.

The Dixit cards are quite pretty and look intriguing at first glance, but when we play, the cards turn out to be less inspiring than expected. The basic idea is great but I think the whole game could be much more interesting with better cards. We’ve been wondering idly whether the cards from Mysterium would work better, but haven’t actually tried yet.

Poppy, near bursting.

We filled the pool today.

There was a moment of hesitation, but in the end the kids couldn’t resist it, even though the water was stone cold – and will remain so until the sun has had several days to heat it.

The lawn, meanwhile, is pretty dead. And since I mowed it this morning, it’s all full of dry cut grass, which sticks to wet feet and then ends up in the pool as debris. Hence the blue carpet treatment for the bathers.

Preparing for movie night.

We really should do something about the overflowing bookshelves… You cannot see it in this photo, but there are piles of books not only on top of the shelves, but also on the floor in front of them.