If our own tree has a disappointing cherry harvest then I can just go to the store and buy some, can’t I?

Yes, but nope. Our cherries have a rich, deep, sweet flavour. These store-bought ones were sort of sweet but mostly bland and watery.

I don’t even understand how I could expect them to be the same. I know that about every other kind of fruit and berry – you can’t just buy any old thing and expect it to taste good. Golden delicious apples will never be anything but blandly sweet. Belgian and Spanish strawberries will never compare to Swedish ones. Please, my Belgian friends, do not take this personally – that is just the way it is.

I wonder how much this is due to geography (the longer days and cooler nights here in the north are good for strawberries, from what I understand) and how much is simple selection. If you’re going to transport your berries all the way from Belgium to here, you would naturally prioritize a firm texture over juiciness and flavour. So perhaps we here in Sweden just get the firmest but least flavourful of Belgian strawberries.

The cherry harvest this year is really poor. Half the tree has borne no fruit at all, and that’s the south-facing side which is usually heavily laden with fruit. The north-facing side had some at least, but many have gone bad and fallen to the ground before even being fully ripe.

Even when there is a box of macaroni in the pantry, it doesn’t mean that we actually have macaroni. Or, well, I guess technically we do have macaroni, but the amount is a rounding error.

How hard is it to actually empty the box? Would cooking these last 25 pieces of macaroni really have made that lunch portion too large? Argh.

This is our drawer of boxes. This sounds much better in Swedish because a drawer is låda and a box is also låda so the whole thing is a lådlåda.

It’s funny how some concepts are narrow in one language and broad in another, and vice versa.

A “bag” in English (and a kott in Estonian) can in Swedish be kasse, väska or påse, and those three are definitely not interchangeable. A påse is a bag for storage or containment (like a freezer bag or a drawstring bag); a kasse is a simple soft bag you carry something in (like a shopping bag); a väska is structured (like a handbag or backpack). Despite being 100% fluent in Swedish, it isn’t rare for Ingrid and Adrian to mix those up, and I suspect it’s because they grew up with me always calling all three things “kott” when talking to them.

See also: maa in Finnish and the same in video format.

Our old toaster died, after serving us well for 19 years. Or rather, it started behaving in dangerous ways (heating up so much that I could barely touch it, and burning bread instead of toasting it) so we were forced to retire it.

Here’s the new one. Transparent sides! It’s a bit gimmicky but also rather cool. It also gives more even results than the old one, so it’s actually an upgrade. A toaster is a toaster, I thought, it’s just aesthetics, how much can the results differ – but they do.

The build is very solid so hopefully it will last us as long as the previous one.

(No scale but this thing about as long as the first two joints of one of my fingers.)

For the last few days, we’ve had these large moths flying into the house in the evening. Once they’re in here, they just fly around sort of stupidly. They clearly have no idea how they got here or how to get out. They keep bumping into walls and doors and ceilings, not even aiming for light sources or anything. With their size, they’re damn noisy about it. And when they accidentally fly into me, it’s enough of a bump to cause a full-body flinch. It’s annoying, so it’s a real relief when they finally stop in one place for long enough for me to take them out.

Wasps and flies on the other hand seem to navigate by light. When they get in here, they bang against the glass of the French doors until they tire, and then they crawl along the same. The wasps I take out; the flies can either figure it out themselves – or get swatted if they annoy me enough.

When bumblebees fly inside, they usually make a wide loop or two and then immediately fly out again. It’s obvious that they are not lost and they know which way to get out. Butterflies do the same. Clearly they have completely different navigational abilities (or different goals) from wasps.

Look at me totally adulting the heck out of this day with a hot cooked meal and everything, even though I’m still all by my lonesome. (Carrot pancakes.)

Eric and Adrian are away staying with friends; Ingrid is away staying with other friends. I’m on my own for a few days.

I can enjoy the peace and quiet during the days, but I’m really not cut out for living on my own. My sleep schedule starts slipping immediately – I kind of don’t see the point of going to bed, so I stay up way too late and only finally go to sleep when I really have to. I wake up as usual in the morning, but around midday I can’t keep awake anymore so I end up sleeping on the sofa.

I’ve never had a home that was only mine. When I moved out of home, I moved straight in with Eric. My only longer stretch of living on my own was a term as an exchange student and it was the most miserably lonely half-year of my life.

Even on days when the rest of the family are all doing their own things most of the time, I like the feeling of just knowing that they are here.

Just like always at this time of the year, we have an infestation of fruit flies in the kitchen.

The red wine vinegar fruit fly trap is still my go-to solution and works pretty well. Except when the flies forego the actual vinegar and congregate on the walls and edges of the glass instead… Are they just sitting there getting high on the fumes or something?

Schoolteachers here like giving kids reading challenges for the longer school breaks. Both Ingrid and Adrian have them for this summer break.

Adrian’s challenge is twofold: read 10 minutes every day, plus a bingo card with specific challenges. I think it’s the same one he’s had before; probably something the teacher found on the internet and now keeps reusing for every single school break. At least the “read in your swimming clothes” square makes a bit more sense now that it is summer.

Except swimming clothes are actually not that comfortable when you’re not swimming, you know? So Adrian used the same workaround as he’s done in the past. Put his arm through his swimming trunks, read for 10 minutes, and crossed of that square.

He really takes this thing seriously, even though there are squares there that he really doesn’t look forward to. It’s more of a compulsion than something to enjoy. And he is quite uncomfortable with the idea of cheating, or even thinking outside the box, when it comes to this. Even when it is as innocent as the swimming clothes thing.

Least favourite square remaining: read in a car or a bus. I’m pretty sure he’s going to ask me to keep him company. And I think I’ve convinced him that it is perfectly valid to do this when the car is standing still and the doors are open.