Midsummer, with herring, new potatoes, and strawberry cake. No devilled eggs this year, since I’ve had quite enough of them with all the leftovers from Ingrid’s graduation party.

Strawberries are always kind of expensive this early in the summer, but the price this year was truly eye-watering. 90 kronor per litre in our local supermarket; 100 kr in Uppsala where my mum bought hers. That’s about 5 kr a bite. And I used to think that 50 kr a litre was expensive.

According to media, frost nights in May killed a lot of strawberry blossoms, and the cold weather after that delayed the harvest. There just aren’t enough strawberries.

Ingrid shared a Tiktok video joking about strawberry prices. 35 kr in 2015, 70 kr in 2025, and then 700 kr in 2030 with “we can set up a loan for you with automatic wage garnishment for the next three months to pay for these”.

Some neighbourhood cats walk around like princes, looking all prissy and fastidious. Nysse lounges around on, seemingly, the dustiest surfaces he can find, looking like a rag.

Adrian’s most recent project from crafts lessons at school – a wooden lamp. A really cool design, and very precisely executed.

A deer with a kid came by today again. I hope it’s an entirely different deer than the one we saw last time with two kids, and not that she’s lost one of them.

This baby is growing up, in any case. Eating clover instead of just suckling, and running ahead of mum occasionally, instead of pitifully trying to keep up.

The house is like a flower shop with Ingrid’s graduation bouquets. She herself is away in Budapest with her friends, but I get to enjoy them.

We overestimated how much people would eat at the party, by a factor of three for some bits, so now the fridge is stuffed with leftovers. My meals are sorted for the next several days, and I’ve got champagne for several New Years’ celebrations.

On the other hand, some platters were completely emptied. In the warm weather, strawberries and grapes disappeared quickly, and so did non-alcoholic cider.

Best snack (apart from devilled eggs): flatbread canapés with smoked salmon, cream cheese, apple and a touch of horseradish.

Ingrid’s graduation party.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. A week ago the forecast was promising 28°C and sunshine, which would have had all of us sweating and gasping for air. Now we just had a beautiful summer day, warm rather than hot, sunny but with a bit of a breeze.

I put the camera to the side for a while. A friendly soul picked it up, so now I have photos of me and Ingrid, too!

The “kids’ table” with Ingrid and some of her best friends.

There was cake – from the bakery where Ingrid works, of course.

Ingrid’s baby cousin was incredibly interested in the cakes, to the point where I felt I had to keep watch to make sure Ingrid could actually be the first one to cut a slice.

We had a quiz with 20 questions about Ingrid, and I presented the correct answers with the cake. Ingrid’s boyfriend won; I guess any other outcome would have been slightly concerning.

Took the day off from work to prepare for Ingrid’s graduation party tomorrow.

I bought most of the food and drinks earlier this week, but there’s still a ton that couldn’t be done in advance. It was a full day today. Buying the fresh stuff such as bread and fruit, making space in the fridge and freezer, prepping the food as far as possible, setting up the party tent, buying and setting up flowers, etc etc.

Tomorrow will be equally busy. Ingrid, Adrian and Eric will be here for a few hours before party to help set up the furniture and decorations, and fetch the cakes, but I’ve got 25 people to prepare food for.

Congratulations to Ingrid, who graduated from high school today!

All my focus right now is on Ingrid’s graduation and the upcoming graduation party on Saturday. It’s exciting but also a teeny bit nerve-wracking and time-consuming. I’ll be working on catching up with my daily posts after we’ve got that behind us.