I like jigsaw puzzles. Adrian likes almost any activity that he can do together with someone. So sometimes we do jigsaw puzzles together.

We do it together, but we have very different approaches. I focus on eye-catching, easily defined areas – distinctly coloured features, well-defined edges of things. I pick out pieces that appear to be part of that area, look at them to figure out what goes where, and gradually put them all together. Then I pick the next suitable area or feature and do the same thing.

Adrian’s approach is all trial and error. He doesn’t really look at the details of the pieces, neither colour nor shape. He just goes through all possible matches, methodically, one by one, until one piece clicks. Then he repeats that with the spot next to the piece he just put there. Like me, he works with one well-defined area at a time, because his approach only works if he has all the possible candidate pieces in a little pile. But he barely looks at the pieces, so what’s on them almost doesn’t matter. In fact he prefers the featureless single-colour areas – the empty skies and such – because it’s easiest to sort out all those pieces in one go.

We will hopefully be getting tomatoes this summer.

All these lovely bushes, and the cherry trees!

They would have more of an impact if they weren’t half-buried in grass, wouldn’t they… But there are so, so many more interesting things to do in the garden than mowing the lawn! Especially since mowing is a solitary activity, whereas almost every other task – digging, planting, weeding, watering – I can do together with Adrian, who loves being out in the garden with me.

I should get the mowing done on a weekday so we can do more fun stuff outside in the weekend.

Poppy seed buns, like the ones my mother used to make when I was a child. I love them.

After a few years of focused effort, the front of the garden is starting to look pretty good, even though there is plenty more lawn there, waiting to be replaced with better things.

Ingrid has been complaining a bit about how bare and boring some parts of the back garden are, especially those that we see every day from the living room and the wooden deck. I agree. So this season I’ll be switching focus to spend more time on that area. (Part 4 in this sketch that I made in 2012.)

I’ve simply been procrastinating until now because I don’t know how to approach it. It feels complicated.

Firstly, it’s very shady since it’s surrounded by large trees on most sides. And instead of grass, the ground is covered by moss. You can see all the brown patches in the photo. The moss doesn’t bother me, but it makes me suspect that it might be more difficult to get other things to thrive there.

On top of that, a good chunk of this area has a very thin layer of soil. Adrian and I poked around today with a digging bar to see what we have to work with. The arrangement of sticks in the ground in the photo above is actually our markers of places where the soil is at least 30–40 cm deep, so there’s room to plant a normal potted bush. There’s quite a large area to the right of the sticks where I kept hitting rock after just 15 cm or so. I think there’s a single large, contiguous chunk of rock down there.

This whole area needs bushes for fullness and volume, not just pretty little things on the ground. It’s too open right now. My current vague idea is that I could cut section 4 in two parts, right along the imaginary line between the cypress on the left, and the bird cherry and mahonia on the right. Plant some bushes next to the cypress on the left, plant some more next to the bird cherry on the right, and leave a passage in between. Like this:

The right-hand side wall of the passage would continue in a curve, with some tallish bushes that look good from a distance, from where we sit on the deck. In front of and around the cypress and its future companions, some pretty, colourful things to look at. Peonies, maybe.

The new section 4b, beyond the passage, will then be less important since it will be less visible. There’s an apple tree there right now. Maybe I can somehow squeeze in a plum tree there somewhere? Blackcurrant bushes, maybe?

The cardigan is progressing well. I finished the body a while ago, and now the first sleeve is done.

I’m following the pattern, but more and more loosely, treating it as more of a loose design inspiration than an actual pattern.

My gauge is much tighter than the pattern requires – I didn’t like the look of the yarn with a looser knit so instead I’ve adjusted almost all stitch and row counts. (It’s a good thing the pattern description includes centimetre sizing for most measurements.) I didn’t like the look of a cutoff right across the chest, so I moved it down for a more empire-like cut. I didn’t want a looser knit for the yoke so I stayed with thinner needles and adjusted the stitch count even more. Instead of a separately knit buttonband, I knit mine along with the body of the cardigan.

The sleeve cap was hardest to adjust because it has so many adjustable parts. First I tried adjusting for my tighter gauge by following the instructions for a larger size. The sleeve cap came out way too small. Then I tried to eyeball the adjustments and made a new attempt. The sleeve cap came out too large. The third time I measured and calculated and read up on sleeve cap shaping and even pulled out Pythagoras’ theorem. And now the sleeve cap curve length matches the circumference of the armhole, give or take half a centimetre.

Sleeve cap shaping is a whole new, unexplored corner of the knitting world for me. There are even online calculators where you can plug in your numbers and get suggestions for how many stitches to decrease on each row. And technical terms – such as “sleeve cap” to begin with! I didn’t know that that’s what the curvy bit at the top of a sleeve is called. And the technical name for a garment’s armhole is “armscye”.

Ingrid is away on a scout hike this weekend, which gave me that little nudge to also go out. So Eric, Adrian and I went for a spring walk.

Spring is at its best in leafy places, where there is birdsong and flowers, not in pine forests. I vaguely recalled a woodland with anemone carpets in Hansta. I wasn’t 100% sure of its location, but when we got there, it was exactly where I thought it was, and fully as lovely as I remembered it.

Last time we cycled past the woodland and only took a brief look. This time we left the bikes at home and walked, and took a smaller zig-zaggy path instead of the wide, cycle-friendly track.

Adrian found plenty of great sticks. (That was his main reason for preferring walking to cycling. You can’t pick up and carry sticks and staves on a bike.)

I spotted a black woodpecker. Well, first I heard it. I’d never heard one before – its call is not what I would expect from a woodpecker!

Later during the day we also saw a grass snake. They’re pretty common, I think, but I don’t see them often; this was a rare chance.

There were several concrete foxholes dotted around the forest. (Of the military kind, not the kind that foxes dig and live in.) In surprisingly good shape, given how old they must be.

We made our way to the wetlands near Väsby. There were probably all sorts of interesting birds there, but none of them had the courtesy to come close to the trail. The only ones I could see were the large, visible ones (one pair of whooper swans with their young) and the ones who are used to humans (plenty of geese and ducks).

The cafe at Väsby farm was closed, but we came prepared with sandwich materials, hot and cold drinks, and flapjacks. And because the cafe was closed, there were plenty of free seats and tables in the sun.

Adrian reduced his stick collection to just one ultimate walking stick and walked with it all day. And it was a really nice one – a straight, smooth piece of some deciduous tree, maybe aspen or hazel. Unfortunately it was a good bit taller than Adrian so whenever he waved around with it, or even walked carelessly, it came dangerously close to our faces, so Eric and I kept our distance to that stick.

When we came out of the woods again near the parking lot, Adrian finished off the walk by picking dandelions. They do quite well in a vase, apparently. At night they close up as if they had wilted, but they open again with the sun the next morning.

Ingrid, like Eric, prefers the Kindle to paper books, and often borrows mine. She often comes back to a few favourite books, such as Ender’s Game, and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe.

The best way to read is lying down.

Ingrid did her laundry today. Hanging up laundry is boring, so she usually asks me to “help” her but really to keep her company.

While she was hanging up all her numerous dark hoodies, I hung up her socks.

When I hang socks, I naturally pair them. I pick up a sock, look for its twin on the hanger, and hang them next to each other.

Ingrid doesn’t. She wants her socks mixed. I think initially she just couldn’t be bothered to sort them, but now it’s become her thing. She rocks her socks every day. Not only did she hang them all in a jumble – she purposely mixed up all the pairs I had paired up. It almost hurt my brain to hang up socks like that… She can even pair an ankle sock with a crew sock! The mere thought of it is enough to make my ankles itch.

Working from home, I’ve cut out well over an hour of commuting time from every day. I “go to work” the same time as usual, but since there is no commute, I actually get to work earlier. So I’ve been racking up overtime daily. Now I’m close to hitting the overtime limit, so I’m going to have to make changes. I could go up in working time, but I really don’t feel like it.

So: more breaks, and more days off.

I already take proper lunch breaks, with half an hour for exercise and half an hour for lunch itself. Breakfast I usually have at my desk while reading emails or doing some other semi-passive task. I’ll be taking proper breakfast breaks from now on. Especially when the weather is as lovely as it is, and I can have breakfast outside.

This is the most relaxed, stress-free daily routine I’ve ever had during my working life. I have no schedule and no deadlines. I have time to sit in the sofa and read the morning paper. I work when I feel like it. I don’t need to hurry home in the afternoon – I’m already at home when Adrian comes home. I don’t even need to plan or cook dinner, because Ingrid cooks nearly every day now, to earn money.