A snake in Paradise??

No, not this time. It is just a harmless Slow-worm (Anguis fragilis) but it looks a bit scary close-up.

Between a rock and a hard place

How to make a Blueberry crumble pie

Blueberry crumble pie

125 g butter or margarine

3 dl (approx 1.2 cups) wheat flour

0.5 dl (approx 0.2 cup) sugar

3-4 dl (approx 1.5 cups) blueberry

ev. 1 tablespoon potato flour

Preheat the oven to 200-225 degrees C. Mix flour and sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter or margarine into cubes and chop it into the flour mixture until it forms a crumbly dough.

Grease a pie dish, approx 24-26 centimeters in diameter. Add the blueberries and sprinkle sugar on top. For a firmer pie, you can also sprinkle it with potato flour.

Distribute the dough over the berries and bake the pie for about 20 minutes until golden brown.

Serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or custard sauce.

Blueberries!

This is the time of the year when many Swedes start looking for blueberries. It has been a bit too dry and cold to be a really good year but a short visit to a favourite place was enough for a wonderful blueberry pie!

Cikoria part 2 ? :)

Having looked at various photos and also in real, I am getting more and more confused regarding the flower I have in my garden. It is really Cikoria  (Cichorium intybus) ??  Yes, the flower looks like it but it's stem does not and the flowers of the cikoria I have seen on Öland are closer to the stem and do not grow like on the one I have. The leaves are also very different, so I think the question remains... what kind of flower is it?? 

The size of the shoe is 42 to make it a bit easier to understand how tall the stem and how big the leave are.

And the answer is PARKSALLAT ! (Cicerbita macrophylla) 

Lady Deer

The vegetation is getting so high that it is difficult to see even a relatively big animal like a deer. She still looks lovely with all the flowers around her!

Rain !

Some days ago I asked for rain and my wish was granted!  We got some good showers although not as much as the northern parts of Småland got. It was wonderful to see how fresh and vibrant the flowers looked after some water so I just had to run out and take some more pictures.

Jasmines (Jasminum)

Canarybird flower ( Tropaeolum Peregrinum)

Poppy  (Papaveraceae) 

This is a wonderful flower that I have not managed to identify, so again, if you know please let us all know in a comment. 

PS Thanks for the comments Lena and Viveca. The main reason why I did not think it would be a Cicoria is the way it is growing as seen on the new picture below. 

Visitor from outer space! 2

This just must be a visitor from outer space!  Look at the antennas!  I am sure he/she can connect with even the farthest away galaxy. Unfortunately I have no clue what kind of insect it is so if you know, please let us all know in a comment. If you need to look at it more closely, just click on the picture.  PS Thanks to help from a dear cousin I am now confident that it is a Monochamus sutor but I am still not sure about its English name. 

Stones

Småland, the part of Sweden where Svångemåla is located, is famous (or infamous to be honest) for its many stones. As you might have seen on many of my pictures, there are stones everywhere. In the fields, in the forests, in the lakes, well you can hardly find any uncultivated land that is not full of stones. It has therefore been a constant job for the farmers to remove all the stones to make it possible to grow something and one can today find heaps and walls of stones everywhere. One example is the enormous stone wall I put in the blog 2011 . (http://svangemalanews.blogspot.se/2011/08/stonewall.html)   The energy and time it must have taken to clear the land from all the stones was for sure one of the main reasons why so many from Småland left the country for stone-free and fertile soil in North America and other places.

These two photos are taken very close to my plot. The area around them is called Ida's plot, indicating that it was owned by a lady called Ida. If she is the one who built them I do not know.

This heap of stones is a good example of how stones were gathered together when they were not needed to build walls. The old trees around it is a clear indication that it was made a long time ago. 

Not far away from the above heap of stones, I found this very old and overgrown wall. 

These two photos show parts of the wall of stones that goes all the way around my plot.

I was reminded of all this when a strong and fit friend and myself the other day had to dig up and remove a stone in my garden. It was not very big but it still took us the better part of an hour to do it and when we had finished we looked at the stonewall that surrounds my plot and marveled at the size of the stones it has been built of and the exactness with which they have been stacked together. Simply mind-boggling.

And again...the Wagtail landed just in time to be in the picture!

Rain please!

We have had very little rain so far this year so I put some drops on the blog just to attract some more to come :)