April Showers and April Flowers

Spring has come slowly this year. The pile of snow that we've plowed off the courtyard, which was once 4 meters high, finally disappeared on April 11. We've had a few snow flurries this week, so it there was snow on the ground for a while, but not enough for complete coverage, and it melted the next day. We had one day in March with really lovely spring weather and temperatures in the teens/60s F (and I finally posted the pictures that went with that post), but since then, it's gone back to being rather cold and windy. I remember lying in the grass and basking in the sun while photographing spring flowers last year. So even though it's been at least intermittently sunny, I've chosen to bring my daffodils in to photograph this year.

There are some normal/modern daffodils in the garden just outside the kitchen window that have been here since we moved in, but in the forest by our house, there is a sea of seemingly wild daffodils. We heard from someone who grew up in this house, that when her parents were getting older and no longer wished to maintain the back yard, in the 70s, they put the bull in the yard. It ate most everything, but her mother rescued some of the daffodils and replanted them in the forest. It seems like every year there are more and more of them, and they are appearing all around the edge of the back yard now too.

These fluffy, double daffodils are now an unusual antique variety. A few years ago, a botanist from Lund came and dug some up for a collection of antique plants.

Despite the chilly temperature, the deer and elk are out nearly every evening. Last Sunday there were 12 elk that were particularly near the house. One of them even came into the back yard. I was happy that it didn't eat my daffodils, because then I might have had to scare them off, and I really don't want to do that. I have so many pictures of these creatures that I've made an effort not to photograph them every time I see them any more, but this time I couldn't resist.

Easter Recap

This spring we all got colds: first my daughter, then my husband, then me. Then we all got a gastro-intestinal bug: first my husband, then my daughter, then me. Just in time for Easter, my husband was sick as a dog. We'd planned on celebrating Easter with our friends in Denmark, but he spent the weekend moaning on the sofa and watching several seasons of The West Wing. So I dyed eggs with my daughter (one of our favorite traditions) and drove the two of us to Denmark.

The kids had a great time with an American style egg hunt (72 small plastic eggs filled with candy and stickers).

Later that weekend we had a Swedish style egg hunt which involved a series of clues leading to one large egg full of candy. In Sweden the Easter bunny is a hare which is very appropriate here. This time of year, before the grass grows tall enough to hide them, the field is full of hares.

Learning to Read Again

At some point since my daughter was born, I forgot that I loved to read. I remember that before moving to Sweden, I used to read a lot. In high school and college, I fed my habit by working in bookstores. I'm sorry that I've been neglecting my blog recently, but I've been learning to read again. I've discovered that with the help of a rechargeable LED flashlight, I can read in bed during that time between when my husband gets up and when my daughter gets up. This was the time that I often spent blogging, so I'll have to rethink my schedule a bit.

Last summer, my Danish friend brought along a pile of books for our vacation on the island of Aeroe, Denmark. Among them was the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and she just raved about what a wonderful book it was. In recent years, it seems like most of my reading has been done on vacations (airplanes in particular). It's also been dominated by books about self-help or parenting. Needless to say, these have not been much fun to read, and with months passing between chapters sometimes, my motivation was minimal.

For our trip to Florida, my Danish friend loaned me The Friendship Test. She said it was light reading, good for the airplane, and since I didn't have any other novel saved up for the occasion, I gave it a try. It was indeed a pleasure to read. I sat by the pool and read. I lay on the beach and read, and somewhere there in the sun, I remembered that I loved to read. When it became clear that I would finish this book before I made it home, I got myself a copy of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. This book really was lovely, and I was hooked.

I think part of the reason I stopped reading was because I'd tried so hard to read in Swedish. One would think that it's not that difficult for me these days, after all, I do read the newspaper every day. But somehow that extra effort might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. It would also seem that I haven't liked any of the books I've read in Swedish. It's probably blasphemous to say this, especially when one lives in these parts, but I don't particularly enjoy the Wallander mysteries. I've read several of them, and they're just so frustratingly low-tech. I really want to call in the characters from CSI, NCIS, or Bones, and they'd have it all cleared up in 45 minutes.

Anyway, now craving to feed my new book habit, I discovered that a library near here has a shelf of novels in English. I picked a couple of these, nearly at random, and was a bit disappointed. For Easter, we visited our Danish friends again, and I asked to borrow more books. This time she recommended Water for Elephants, and again, I totally loved it. I won't go into details here, but you can see more with the GoodReads link. Perhaps we have the beginnings of a book club here.

So, anyone read any good books lately? I'd love to hear your recommendations.