We have snow. It’s nice that the cold came first, before the snow – now it stays on the ground instead of melting into slush.

The birds really appreciate the sunflower seeds we put out. Swarms of goldfinches and greenfinches. Blue tits and tree sparrows and nuthatches and magpies and blackbirds.

Now with the snow, the deer also come by to eat the bits that the birds spill.

The old bird feeder had gotten enough bangs and dents (from falling down due to cat attacks) that it was in pretty bad shape, so we have a new one this year. It looks rather similar, because we were happy with the old one and wanted to just buy a fresh copy, but the differences became apparent quite soon.

The previous feeder was round and had three sections with three seats each, so it could be hung with six of them more or less facing the house. The new one is square and has two seats on each side, it kind of feels like fewer birds can be there at the same time.

But the construction itself is much better. The old one had a solid core, and walls between the sections, which made cleaning the inside very awkward. I was poking in there with sticks, and cooking spoons, and table knives. This one is just empty (or full of birdseed) all the way through. I can put my entire hand in there and scrape away seed gunk. Much easier to keep it clean.

The bird feeder is up, and the birds arrived immediately. Magpies gobbled up all the peanuts in the other feeder within a couple of days, and the smaller birds are all happy about the sunflower seeds. Nuthatches, goldfinches, and blue tits, mostly, plus the occasional tree sparrow and greenfinch.

Nysse has rediscovered the birdhouse outside the kitchen window. He climbed on top of it and wouldn’t leave. Not a behaviour I want him to get comfortable with, so I poked him with a broom until he jumped off. When he went there again, Eric sprayed him with water.

Unfortunately, his displeased jump-off was forceful enough to knock down the entire birdhouse. Fortunately, the inhabitants had all left. There were neither eggs nor birds in there.

Nysse’s climbing skills being what they are, there’s no cat-proof place to hang up the birdhouse. No tree branch is strong enough to support a bird house, but small enough to deter a cat. But we can hang it up more securely for next season, and maybe add a larger roof that will block him from reaching the opening.

Every spring, for about a week or two, we get ants in the house. They wake up because it’s spring, but don’t quite find enough food outside yet, so they come in to look for more. As soon as the ground comes to life with whatever they eat, they leave our kitchen alone again.

During that week or two, though, they can be quite annoying. We have to make sure to not leave any overripe fruit in the fruit bowl, and to keep the food compost inaccessible.

I’m pretty inured to the ants and just squish them when I find them and flush them down the drain. The kids both find the ants kind of disgusting, and complain a bit. And then one of them leaves half an apple on the kitchen counter, and is surprised when there are more ants the next morning. It’s like they sometimes just turn off their logical thinking abilities.

The deer are cleaning up after the birds, eating spilled seeds. Surprisingly unbothered by me standing two metres away with a camera. I guess they’ve learned that humans can’t walk through walls.

Adrian and I went out walking. I wanted someplace new, so we picked a walk from a book I recently bought, and walked around lake Albysjön, about 10 km. There are two lakes by this name, both just south of Stockholm but in different counties. This was the one in Tyresö.

Following the guidance of a route description in a book feels very different from simply following signposts or markings on trees. It takes more attention from the walking itself – having to keep the book at hand, trying to figure out where we are in relation to the landmarks described, how far we’ve gotten, have we missed the turn they described… I liked seeing a new place, but I do like following a single well-marked trail better.

The walk itself was nice. The first kilometre or so went along asphalt roads among houses, which we (especially Adrian) didn’t particularly enjoy, but thereafter it was mostly forest paths and some narrow gravel trails through a lot of greenery.

We found a nice clifftop spot for our lunch, with wide views over Albysjön. Halfway through our meal we got a tiny bit of rain – just enough to make Adrian seek shelter under a pine tree, and to get everything slightly wet, but luckily no more than that.

With just the two of us, we could take breaks whenever we wanted for whatever reason – such as finding a small jetty in the middle of a profusion of water lily leaves, which Adrian could throw pine cones at.

At the rapids at Nyfors, we saw a small, dark, furry animal run away across the stones. I can’t keep all the weasel-otter-marten-mink-polecat species straight: there are so many and they’re all so similar, small and slim and dark and furry. This one was on the larger side, and I couldn’t see any light-coloured markings at all, so afterwards, with the help of the internet, I tentatively identified it as maybe a mink.

At the end of our circular walk there was a little café where we had a lovely blueberry pie.

Our cat’s pose, in our cat’s spot, but not our cat.

There are so many cats in the neighbourhood that I sometimes wish there was a Facebook – in its earliest incarnation, when it was just a set of personal profiles with photos – for them all.

No river valleys today! We went hiking on Velika Planina, a mountain plateau covered mostly in pastureland and cows. A complete change in scenery. And we didn’t even have to climb the hill to get up there – a cable car did the work for us. At 50 EUR for a family, the cable car ticket price seemed rather steep, and I was actually considering finding an alternative hike for today. 50 EUR just to be allowed to walk! But I’m glad we went with this option after all, because the scenery up there was quite unique.

The plateau with its gentle rolling hills made for easy walking. The sun was bright but we got a lot of wind, so for the first time in a week we were actually not hot at all.

Velika Planina has several old herder settlements with shingled huts.

Cows were mingling freely with the tourists and barely even curious about us.

One of the huts hosted a museum, which was closed today for some reason. Several had simple cafes or sold cheese and other milk products. Speaking of cheese, I found these Slovenian cottage cheese pastries that you can apparently buy in most bakeries and supermarkets. The cottage cheese filling reminds me of Estonian kohupiim. I’ve been having these as my packed lunch almost every day.

Speaking of pastries, I only noticed today that the word burek/börek (“filled filo dough pastry” in various places around the Balkans and the Middle East) is strikingly similar to pirog/pirukas (“filled pastry” in Estonian, Russian, Swedish etc). Do they have the same origin? Harden the B, soften the K, and you’re there. I went down a deep Internet rabbit hole to figure out whether that’s the case, and people on the internet have had some very passionate debates about the origins of both words, but I guess nobody really knows for sure. In any case, the Slovenian cottage cheese burek are delicious.

Back to the plateau and its huts! One of the buildings was a beautiful wooden chapel. The gateway of the chapel was decorated with two spruce trees, stripped of bark and branches all the way except for the very top. Eric had noticed a similar tree while driving, so it’s not just some tourist thing here on Velika Planina. I asked around, and a Slovenian colleague tells me they’re called mlaj and put up for celebrations – traditionally for May Day (like a version of the maypole I guess) but more recently also for birthdays and weddings.

For those with tired legs, there was a two-seat chairlift between the cable car station and the top of the hill. (There’s a ski resort here during winter.) We walked, though, and actually kept pace with the chairlift. Adrian might have voted for the chairlift, had it had more than two seats so that we could all have sat together.

Mama pig at the animal husbandry school near us has been looking big and heavy for a long while now. Today Eric reported (on his way to the supermarket) that the piglets had arrived. Adrian and I went piglet-watching.

There’s six of them, and they all have different colouring. One very pale with stripes, one pale with barely-visible flecks, one beige with stripes, one pale with large dark spots, one brown with stripes, and one fully brown.