Time to move south!

Many birds have started their long journeys south and it is time for me to do the same. It has been an unusual summer with the new road as the most dramatic change. My eyes are still not used to it and I have not completely accepted it but a few new bushes, a bit of grass around it and it will, probably, look OK next spring.

The wild fire that ravaged part of the deep forest not far away from Svångemåla was so expensive for the local community that the administration has decided to cancel its annual Christmas party.

From a wild life point of view, it has not been as exciting as last year when I met the two moose calves but I am happy that the rare wood pecker has found a home on my plot. The fox has not shown up but I have seen its droppings in many places so it is still around. The wild pigs are becoming a real nuisance and my neighbor has had to put up a small electric fence around his house. As always this time of the year, I have noted that there are a few mice who have moved into my cellar to get away from the cold in the nights and my answer is a new electronic device that sends out some sort of pulses through the electric wires / cables as well as ultra sonic sounds. Both are supposedly painful for the rodents and will make them go somewhere else. I am not so optimistic but it is still better than to feed them with poison and make the house a mice mausoleum.

It has been a good year for pears but not so great for apples although I have enough of them to bring back home for some pies. A unique and very old fruit is damson (krikon) (Prunus domestica ssp. insititia). It looks like a prune but is not as sweet and needs a serious frost bite before you can eat it. The core if its wood is red and very nice for carvings and other forms of wood work.