GreenDreams

Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share! What can I get you? The coffee is strong, and the tea is ice cold. So there’s been many great weeks so far this year, but I believe this week takes the prize!

The week started with my daughter’s birthday on Monday. We celebrated with family, and she was so happy. There was gifts and cake.

On Tuesday she had a birthday celebration with her best friend, my daughter is not a fan of big parties, but love to celebrate with the ones that means something to her. The girls had so much fun! They played, had lunch and cake, and played some more. There was a ”fishing pond” (the kids gets to fish small gifts with a fishing rod, and an adult is behind a curtain and attach gifts to their fishing rod.) One of my friends came over to style their hair. It was perfect. After playing intensely for five hours my daughter fell asleep at 8pm and slept for more than 12hours!

On Wednesday we went to Mora, where one of my brothers live. We had dinner at a really nice restaurant with my brother, my sister in law, and my nephew. Mora is a picturesque little town and there’s many wonderful places to enjoy a meal there. We spent the night in Mora.

Super-excited on the bus taking us to Fulufjället National Park.

Early Thursday morning my daughter and I took a bus up to the mountains. It was a three hour ride up to Fulufjället National Park. It was a very pleasant ride (clean and comfortable bus, great air-condition,) through beautiful landscapes. I could easily see myself living almost anywhere along that drive. Hiking at Fulufjället National Park is something I’ve been wanting to do for several years, and I am so grateful that it finally happened. I had really high expectation but the reality was a hundred times better than any of the photos, or films I’ve seen about the park. The weather was perfect, 35F in the morning and around 75F later in the day. The air was cool and crisp, and the sky very blue.

We had planned a shorter hike to a famous waterfall, Njupeskär (less than 3US miles back and forth.)

After hiking to the fall, which we enjoyed tremendously, we had lunch at the restaurant near the entrance. The food was excellent!! I had a vegan burger with homemade spicy avocado cream, and sweet potato fries. My daughter had waffles with cream, and cloudberry jam.

After enjoying the meal we decided to look at the nature learning center next doors. It was beautiful, and very informative about the local plants, animals, history, and geology. I purchased a beautiful coffee table book about the park there.

Perisoreus infaustus is the symbol of this park, in Swedish Lavskrika. We learned that they are very curious and bold. When I was trying to zoom in for a better picture of one of them (impossible since they danced around all the time,) the bird I was trying to photograph landed on my left little finger for a few seconds.

After some coffee we decided to go for another short hike before heading back to Mora. The landscape didn’t disappoint this time either. It was a very long, and totally magical day! We spent another night in Mora.

Yesterday we packed our bags and took the bus home to Falun in the morning. This trip proved to me once again that I can manage without a car, and live a rich, full life. This month it’s exactly three years ago I decided to sell my car and see if I can manage without one. I definitely can. The bus ride between Mora and Falun only takes 1,5 hour, and most of the day was spent quietly, relaxing at home (read:watering plants, and reading books.)

Today I rode my bike up to the gardening plot early, early, to beat the heat of the day. I watered my plants and bushes, mowed the lawn, trimmed some edges, and picked several gallons of berries. There’s an abundance of raspberries, and blackcurrants at the moment. There was also some ripe redcurrant and gooseberries, but not as much.

I am so grateful for the love of family and friends, great health, vacation, gorgeous nature, clean air, good food, an abundant harvest, and life itself! This summer really is one of the best summers. I hope your week is fabulous! Thank you Natalie for hosting the Weekend Coffee Share.

Are you enjoying summer? Or perhaps it’s winter where you are? Tell me what’s going on in your neck of the woods! I am off to the beach 🙂

Love,

Maria

Welcome to the *Weekend Coffee Share*! This is where I’ve been enjoying my morning coffee every morning this week.

What can I get you? The coffee is strong, and the tea is ice cold. We’ve had some really hot days this week, with high’s of 94F/34C. That is hot for our area. Around midnight Thursday it started to thunder, like no other thunderstorm I have ever experienced. The lightning struck all around us. Today it’s been raining all day with a high of 57! We enjoyed the warm days earlier this week, and now we’re enjoying the rain.

One of my favourite stretches of the bike path to my gardening plot.

Mon-Thur I’ve been riding my bike up to the garden around 6AM to water the garden, especially all the new plants and bushes I’ve planted, before the heat of the day. Today there was no need for that! I am super happy with how things are progressing at my new gardening plot. Most days this summer I’ve done around 8miles/13km on my bike before 9am (riding uphills to the garden, and downhills home from the garden.) My daughter likes to sleep in, and when I get back home I can focus on her the rest of the day feeling great in my body, knowing that I’ve already had my main exercise taken cared of for the day, everything else is just a bonus. Some days we visit the garden together later in the day, but only if she feels up to it, if she’d rather do something else I am free to say yes to that.

Blackcurrant bushes that I planted on the edge to one of the neighbouring gardening plots.

I made some room in one of the flower beds for some redcurrants. There is one more bush nearby.

I planted two gooseberry bushes in one of the existing raised beds, after adding more organic soil.

There was several different varieties of raspberry bushes already on the gardening plot when I took over the lease, some where next to each other (likely intentionally planted like that,) but most were spread out all over the place. I’ve started to water them, and gently dig up the runners, planting them next to the others. This might be a never ending project, since raspberries are notorious for sending out runners, but hey..that’s the fun thing with a garden – it’s never done, it’s a never ending work of love. I’ve already eaten some of the raspberries, and within a week, or two, I believe there will be a bigger harvest.

A new gardening friend gave me a squash plant as a welcome gift. That was so thoughtful of her. I did not plant any squash this year since they took over my balcony last year, and I did not know coming into the gardening season that I would have more space this year.

I planted the beautiful plant in a raised bed, and added some herb seeds (oregano and thyme) around it, as companion plants.

This vacation is so much more than I expected going into it, and I still had pretty high expectations, and there’s two more weeks to go! I am filled with gratitude. My plan is to add a few raised beds for vegetables every year. I feel that I am on the right path to a more sustainable life, keeping my dream alive. I’ve made some wonderful new friends with similar interests, and my feeling of belonging and being a part of the local community is the strongest it’s been since I moved back to Sweden. I’m not going to lie, it was a big change coming back home after several years abroad, and then Covid hit the world right after our move.

Next week we are celebrating a big birthday, and afterwards we’ll have a little adventure. I’ll write more about the celebrations and the adventure next weekend 🙂 I hope your week is fabulous! Thank you Natalie for hosting the Weekend Coffee Share. Tell me what’s going on in your neck of the woods. I’m going to try to visit everyone’s coffee share some time this weekend.

Love,

Maria