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.

School’s out and after-school care has a day off, so we were all at home today. Work didn’t get quite as much attention as it usually does.

I did my lunchtime workout as I try to do on most days, and I jumped rope as a warm-up exercise. Adrian was bored and got curious and gave it a try as well. He found it harder than it looked. I don’t think he quite understood that it’s not enough to just turn the rope and jump occasionally: that the timing is quite essential. And – just like Ingrid when she first learned to jump a rope – he puts an awful lot of unnecessary energy into the jumping. As if jumping higher and harder would compensate for the lack of coordination.

He got better and better, but never managed more than two jumps in a row.

Adrian’s class has been working with the theme of “Stockholm” for the past few months.

In a normal year, the class would have made several trips to various parts of Stockholm to see all the things they have been talking about: the Old Town, the City Hall, and so on. The coronavirus pandemic put a stop to all that, so the kids have been limited to theory.

Today Adrian and I made a trip to the city to at least see the Old Town. Old Town is normally so full of tourists that it’s no fun – all those families of five walking side by side, foreign tourists spreading cigarette smoke, etc. But today is a working day so there won’t be many locals walking around, and all the tourists are staying away anyway. So it should be really empty, I thought. Let’s seize the opportunity!

It turned out exactly as well as I had hoped. Beautiful sunshine, no people, clean streets… We almost had Old Town to ourselves. This was a great way to see Old Town.

We visited a few of the most famous sights: the royal palace, the Riksdag buildings, Stortorget (where a famous bloodbath took place five hundred years ago), and the narrowest alley in town. But also the street where the executioner used to live, as Adrian told me, and Slussen, which did not look like Adrian had expected at all.

There were lots of little shops to look at as well. Mostly souvenir shops with various kinds of viking- and moose-themed objects, and Pippi Longstocking – but also little odd crafts and design shops. This is the shop of HildaHilda, who make textile goods with quirky designs of pigs, dachshunds, daisies and other nice things. I really tried to find something we needed or at least could use but couldn’t think of anything, but I think we’ll be coming back here to buy presents for people.

We had excellent though expensive pizzas for lunch at Stortorget, at a nearly empty restaurant. (And within great hearing range of the church bells of Storkyrkan.) We’ll likely never get another chance at that!

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.

I am pretty proud of that neat and tidy and even shoulder seam on my cardigan.

I’m still not done with the assembly. Knitting it was something that I could do any time, even as a background task. But the assembly is fiddly and takes my full attention, so I’m doing it in little bits when I have the time and energy and peace for it.

1.
I baked a rhubarb cake with a sour cream filling, using an Estonian recipe. For some reason the rest of the family who are normally quite happy to eat cake decided that this one is going to be too sour, without even trying it, so I’m going to have to eat all of it. It’s absolutely delicious, juicy and just at that sweet spot between sweet and tart, so I really don’t mind, but it’s going to take me a while.

2.
Both ICA and Coop have decided that plastic bags are out and fruit and veg will now be sold in paper bags. I don’t mind the paper bags, they work great for the veg. But I miss the plastic bags, because I used them for all kinds of things that paper bags don’t work for. I used to have a little stash of rolled-up bags in a kitchen drawer. For covering up that cake in the fridge, for example, or bringing home trash from a hike, or throwing out small stinky garbage.

The plastic food storage bags that you can buy on a roll can fill the gap in some situations, but not all. Covering up that cake in the fridge, for example – even the 5-litre bags are too long and narrow to fit the cake. And they don’t have any tie handles.

So now I guess I’m going to be hoarding plastic fruit bags. Because the market stand at Spånga Torg still uses them!