I have a long list of non-urgent projects, some of which have been on the list for literally years. For the first time ever I feel there’s a real chance that things on the list will actually start getting done. A semi-quarantined vacation suits me just fine.

One of those projects is to repaint the garden bench/sofa. It came with the house and the paint was damaged in places already when we moved here in 2008. Finally, finally, I’m doing something about it.

First step: sanding away the old, flaking paint.

I also cleaned the “lawn” behind the house of fallen cherries. The winds we felt in Gotland have blown down a lot of berries and twigs from the cherry tree. We always lose some before the harvest, but never quite this much in one go.

This night finally brought some rain and a change of weather. I’m glad the garden got a proper soaking – I’ve been watering every other day to keep things alive. Temperatures are back to more normal levels, just above 20, instead of nearly 30.

The summer flowers on the deck attract bumblebees. I tried to photograph them but they don’t stay still for long.

The magenta playhouse has done its job. Ingrid and Adrian have outgrown it and some parts are starting to rot.

I notice that I haven’t mentioned it much here on the blog, but here’s the playhouse being painted and here is Adrian serving me coffee and cake in the playhouse.

It’s not exactly in the way where it stands, but kind of, still. I’m thinking of maybe using that spot for a plum tree instead. A plum tree has been on my wish list for years; this summer I’m determined to plant one.

As a first step in making the plum tree happen, today we pushed down the playhouse and took it to pieces, with crowbar and saw.



Look at the difference between the north and south sides of the roof! The north face is covered with mosses and lichens, while the south side is completely clean.

Heavy rain all day. The poppy flowers, which had just barely opened, were beaten down almost to the ground.

The peas are growing nicely and getting tall enough to need support.

I finally bought summer flowers! Summer is well underway, after all.

As usual, I came home with more flowers than I had planned – I kind of have difficulty reining myself in on these shopping trips. But how can I not buy dahlias, for example?

A mouse has decided that it really, really wants to move into our house. It’s made at least three attempts already. (Or is it four? I’m losing count.)

The first time Eric saw it when it was nosing around the French doors. We shooed it away. The other times it’s come all the way inside, and suddenly one of us humans has noticed small movement on the floor. We’ve managed to chase it out each time, until now.

Initially we hoped that scaring it away once would be enough. It wasn’t. After the mouse came, inside we googled a bit. The internet said to spray peppermint oil. We did that; it had no effect, other than making parts of the house smell like a dentist’s practice. We’ll try the ultrasonic thingies next, even though they’re reported to not have much of an effect. It’s either that, or give up on prevention and start trapping instead. Because living with closed doors all summer is not going to happen.

Oh, and I guess I’ll be more welcoming to all the neighbourhood cats who wander around here. I’ve generally been shooing those out of the house as well, not wanting them to make themselves too much at home here and start scratching our sofas. But I guess I’ll let them be from now on, as long as they behave.

On the positive side, the mouse’s presence has been really obvious, so it’s unlikely that it or its cousins have been spending time here before today.

The Aquilegias have decided that the crack between a concrete wall and a concrete pavement is preferable to the lovely, loamy earth just on the other side of that wall. I guess they really don’t like the competition from the other plants up there.

Another day, another hole. What would a Sunday evening be without some digging?

Though I am getting a bit fed up with this endless digging. I am looking forward to getting this done so that I can do other things in the garden. Mow the lawn, prune the raspberries, plant something other than bushes. Well, after this thuja there are only three more bushes to go, so I’ll be done soon.

Speaking of planting, Ingrid and I have been watching Garden Rescue together. The main focus of the programme is on design, not so much the implementation, but they do show bits and pieces of the actual work as well, including planting.

Their way of planting bushes is surprisingly different from mine. I follow the standard Swedish recommendations: dig a big hole, mix up the soil with some cow manure, plant, water thoroughly. If there’s one thing all the books and articles and blog posts agree on, it’s the importance of a good-sized hole. Some say 60 cm wide and 40 cm deep; some say two or three times the diameter of the root clump. But the folks in Garden Rescue dig really, really small holes, often barely larger than the pot that the plant came in! And they do nothing to improve the soil, even when it is more gravel than soil.

I wonder how well their bushes and trees develop and grow. I wish I could see those gardens three to five years later. I haven’t done any real experiments with smaller holes, but I have two unplanned data points – the elderberry and the staghorn sumac that were among the first things I planted. I just plopped them in the ground, in holes just large enough to fit the clump of roots and soil because I hadn’t read any gardening books yet.

In the first two or three years they barely grew at all. A few years later, when I saw how much better all my more recent bushes were doing in their big holes, I dug them up, made proper holes, added fertilizer to the soil, and put them back. The difference was immediate – both bushes really shot up. The sumac was later killed by deer, but the elder is growing very nicely to this day. So I’m going to keep following the Swedish recommendations, even though it is more work. I’d rather do more work up front than be forced to replant later.