Week 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 & 35 - Summer!

Well that went too fast! I thought I'd post a few blog posts during the course of those hazy summer days, as I usually do, but then I thought... well no, why not enjoy the time I have to the fullest and post a recap when I get back? So eight weeks later... here I am (and I wish I'd managed to post this on Sunday so it really would've been two months exactly)!

I'm back in Stockholm again, in Bro, slowly but certainly catching up on all these worldly and other events that have been passing by unnoticed during my leave. Elections. Other... stuff. What have I missed? I'm totally oblivious to any potential international incidents that may have occurred during these past two months, and I'm nowhere near caught up on my YouTube subscriptions either. Skimming through the list a lot of the things I was hooked to before summer no longer seem that important. It's good to get away every once in a while and get your priorities straightened out; perspective changed.

Up North it's been a blast of blissful happens. We've swum in the lake, soaked in sun and dirt and shed curtains of sweat on summer work. We've plowed up aisles in the garden, and spent hours on our knees pulling out weeds, and watered, canoed, fished, walked, jogged, run, reconnoitered the forests in search for berries, played games on rainy days, built a couple of small bridges, repaired, rummaged, gathered together and celebrated our birthdays and special events, tanned, trimmed, shopped, stopped, laughed, smiled, and the days they passed us by.

In late July we finally started to drag crops out of the ground, with fresh salad, carrots and turnips as complementarities to our dandelion leafs and weeds. We stopped buying local tomatoes and cucumbers and feasting on our own instead, and soon fresh potatoes with butter and onion, and pike with buttered horseradish, and we sat around the fire and roasted our fish for the first time in too long. Then came berry-picking season, and we went through the cycle: cloudberries, blueberries, red currents, black currents, lingonberries, crowberries, gooseberries aaand that was that. Each grand endeavour was often followed by a swim and an afternoon slice of black bean chocolate cake and cup of tea in the garden, and a steamy sauna session each night - especially when the days grew shorter and the nights pitch black and cold. We put out our solar-powered lights and read until they turned dim, and started waking up to the sunrise when it arrived as late as we woke. And then I flew back to Stockholm with a backpack packed with sugarsnaps, and a case full of berries and greens, and here I am.

It's been a great set of days! I'll see what pictures I can dig up for a more visual recap later on. This is the summerized recap. The fifty thousand word version is coming soon (a picture tells a thousand words you know). For now I'm digging my way through a long todo list of tasks, most of them digital, that await. I started my main part-time job again at the end of last week, my minor part-time job at the start of this one, and next weekend I'm traveling back North for just a few more days. One last glimpse of that wild freedom I love, before it's buried under a blanket of snow for the winter. And that'll make it just over two months of summer this year. It's never enough, but I know I'm fortunate to have this much still! And more to come...

I've been picking apples this weekend. Southern specialties. Slowly settling down. Contemplating how I'll make best use of this winter without gaining (too many) pounds. Hmm... and then there's that much awaited return to sound! I've been away, but I've come around. I'm going up, then it's going down! And I went to a pretty amazing Mando Diao concert last weekend too. If you're wondering what unheard band they might be, let me present you with one two three short clips that hopefully give you a proper first impression, because Google does a horrible job with this one. They're a band that's been through a bunch of styles during the latter ten years or so, and though I barely knew anything about them before I went to their concert, it feels like they brought their best selection to this one show. The energy was all over the place, and skimming through music videos it looks like they're one of those few bands that are better on a stage than in a studio too.

It's been a blast! Both summer and these few days into the past; here's last week.