Three more curtain rods Sunday, 26-Jul-26 21:39:54 CEST

Sunday, 02-Aug-26 21:13:14 CEST

Is this the end of spectacular sunrises?

This week we prepared for the holiday. At the end of the week, we drove to Sweden.

Monday 27 July

Early in the morning, the weather was beautiful. The sun lit up the garden. There were droplets on the ground; it had rained during the night.

I picked a handful of cucumbers. You would wish we got enough cucumbers for pickling in one go, but they tend to ripen unevenly.

The solution for the uneven production is more cucumber plants and putting the cucumbers in a bowl in the fridge; it fills up fast enough that DW can pickle them before they get stale. It is vital to pick the cucumbers from the plants because if you leave them on the plant, it will send the signal to the plant that it is all over. It has done its deed producing seeds; it dies.

We got a start of the week, a glorious start. Both DW and I worked from home. At my work, there were troubles logging in, although it did not affect me, curiously enough.

This morning I realized that with curtains, I will not wake up to spectacular sunrises anymore. If I miss it, I can always pull the curtain aside. But will I?

Monday evening we started on preparations for the holiday next week. I tied the tomatoes to the scaffold because they were becoming top-heavy. We would not like a storm to bring them over; that would be so sad.

We had friends coming over to talk about how they will take care of our house next week. It is a little exciting to delegate the care of the sheep and a cat with epilepsy.

Monday evening, no time to relax. I had to cut the grass in the area where the sheep were previously grazing, between the neighbors on the west and north sides. Somehow, my two west neighbors managed to fill the areas between their properties with nettles. I find it so boring and disturbing. One thing is sure: our sheep cannot graze nettles. I have to give up on that. Well, I drove the lawn mower right into the nettles, and it really choked on that treatment. It did not feel good to have the lawn mower stopped in the middle of the nettles, with them hanging over me. I just gave up and pulled out. I came out with not too many stings.

Then I had to clean the mower with the pressure washer, obviously. That is a tedious task. I wish I had an easier setup, like a lawn mower cleaning station where I could drive up the mower and everything would be ready. As it stands now, I have to collect the pieces and, when done, put them back again.

Then Mr Radi came with the wheelbarrow he had borrowed and the spade. He also had 6 bags of sand left over from his garden project. I can use that sand.

By that time, I could finally sit on the couch; it was dark. I sat down on the couch scrolling. It got late.

Tuesday 28 July

I am on my way to work by bike and well on time. I should be proud of myself because, after an eventful day yesterday, I still managed to get out of bed this morning.

I just passed the farmer's field with the commander carrots. He was driving a little tractor pulling up soil for the carrots. I’m sure that takes away weeds; it gives the carrots more room for growing.

For two weeks, at work I’ve been working on something I initially thought would be an afternoon project. Then I programmed it, tried it, and concluded that this is not going to work at all. You have solutions that look good on paper, but in reality, from a user standpoint, it's worthless. It's like putting on another hat and submerging myself in a user perspective. Luckily, it's summer and not that hectic, and my manager went on holiday this week, so I decided to plunge into this matter. I’ve been shuffling these puzzle pieces around, and it’s been a little bit frustrating. Today, things started to click together and work in a way that even an end user can make sense of. And because of this, I was a little late biking home, but no worries; I feel happy about my achievements today.

As I said, I’m biking home, and it's warm, and I’m getting moist.

A guy was paddling in the high-farting canal. You could hear the pedal in the water. He had good balance because he was standing on a surfboard. He looked like he would travel all the way to England.

As a matter of fact, he should perhaps turn around and go the other way to get to England. And then he sat down, took a break, and then turned around. So after all, he was really going to England!!!

Wednesday 29 July

Today I worked from home in the morning. In the afternoon I did not work at all. It was 34°C. DW went to the office by bus.

In preparation for our upcoming holiday, I rebuilt the fence on the southeast field. Before the driveway construction, this field was twice as much grass; The part of the field that the sheep can eat is not that much anymore, but we want them to eat it anyhow. Hence the need for a fence, especially since we are going to Sweden at the end of the week. There should be enough grass growing there. The rain that came the last couple of days helps a lot, but 34°C is not doing any good. It would have been better with lower temperatures.

I noticed the sheep were sniffing around where we had a block of salt hanging, and it occurred to me that it was some time ago we had one of those. I went to the shop and bought one with garlic as well. They like it as candy!

While working on the fence, I was thinking about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine; I have been wondering what the reason for the invasion could be. Personally, I’ve dismissed all the things about Putin's wish to rebuild the Soviet empire, etc. Feelings are not a sufficient reason for war.

My personal theory was that Russia was preparing for future famines of climate change. The only thing making that unlikely is that Russia is a petroleum state and they don’t believe in climate change.

This morning, I came across this AI-generated video with a theory: The Economics behind Russia's war with Ukraine. I think it is a very well-made video, and all the argumentation in the video sounds solid. There was only one minor style glitch: they said the year 1970 as one thousand nine hundred and seventy, which is obviously an incorrect way of saying the year. Other than that, everything in the video is well made, with stick figures showing what is going on, and it is all very well substantiated. I watched the video twice.

Thursday 30 July

Sometimes I write things in the blog to formulate my thoughts. Later I think about it like, huh, that's actually correct. This effort of making the blog makes me listen to myself; that's funny. One such thing came yesterday night. So rather than going to bed at a proper time, I tend to sit on the couch procrastinating. So last night I broke that pattern because of what I wrote in the blog. We went to bed in a timely fashion, and I got 82 points for the sleep last night, and it feels valuable. Much better than scrolling.

Today it’s going to be 29°C, and that's about 5°C less than yesterday. So that’s really good.

We have Internet to our cottage in Sweden. So the company Internet service provider we were using has worked flawlessly for, well, what could it be, 7 years? But you know how it is with all good things: they need to promote themselves into something more valuable and less functional. Telia bought the company, and they are not offering user accounts for people who don’t live in Sweden.

I told them it’s discriminatory for Swedes living abroad. I mean, you’ve heard of the European Union, have you? Free movement of people, services, and goods. I live in the Netherlands, and I have a house in Sweden with Internet; that should be possible. It is possible, but I need to do all interaction via telephone, and the setup for this was slow and cumbersome. So before all this was figured out, one invoice got lost. I did not notice, and I did not get any notice about it.

DD is currently staying at the cottage; she called me on Tuesday and said Dad, the internet is not working! So I called Telia and used my secret numbers, and we figured out that one invoice was lost. It was paid, and now I hope we can get this to work robustly; then I can swallow my feelings and get on with it. So yesterday evening the internet came back on at the cottage, thank you very much, Telia.

In the evening, on the way home, my blog voice has been completely silent. Otherwise, I’m babbling nonstop.

It will be a little challenging with zucchinis growing while we are on holidays. I harvested this week's zucchini. It was 15,2 Kg. We will see how that goes.

The tallest cucumber reached the top of the scaffold. We got a winner!

I cut the area between the neighbors to the east. Normally I do it properly, but this time I did just the north part. It was getting too late to make loud sounds. The electric mower tractor is not that loud, but still. When done, I put the mower back in the barn without washing it. I gave up on it. All the green stuff will have a week to get glued to the underside of the mower. I already regret it.

Friday 31 July

Friday morning I worked from home. I had taken the afternoon off. I finished the last couple of things I wanted to achieve, and then about noon I logged out of work. Moments before I logged out, a colleague greeted me in Finnish, saying "Hyvää kesälomaa Jens!" So sweet! It means have a nice summer holiday.

DW had a day off, as she usually does now that she has given up her free Wednesdays. It is still challenging for her to get used to it. Today it came in handy because we were preparing for the holiday to Sweden.

After work, we moved the sheep to the southeast field. There is not much grass left since the driveway construction, but let's make use of the grass still standing anyway. The northwest field has regrown nicely since their last grazing. It has a lot of dandelions, but that is also good food.

I harvested the Frieslander potatoes as well. I planted these on 12 April this year. They did not produce as much as the Twister potatoes I had last year.

One bucket of potatoes. Last year I had almost half a bucket per plant. There were only two potatoes with green skin; that was good. DW harvested cucumbers and also picked ones that were not ready. The idea is that the cucumbers will start growing from now and that we might be on time to pick them when we are back from our holiday in Sweden. The people staying at our house are also encouraged to pick cucumbers.

Then it was time to pack things up. DW had already come a long way with her things.

We started driving at 3 PM. At 6 PM, we passed Bremen. It had been a busy week; I could feel it while driving.

We drove to Arhensburg. It was a beautiful little city with a castle just outside the city. We stopped at the hotel in the city at 8 PM. DS got one room, and we got another. After checking in, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Saturday 1 August

This journey is less luxurious in that I am driving more. DW drove yesterday evening so that I could rest for a while, but the majority of the time I am driving. Last time we drove with DD and WB, and I could sit at the back of the car and blog and take photos. I could, of course, use the transcribe functionality of Word, but I am a little shy to do that when other people are around.

The hotel was okay. The softness of the mattresses was just right for me. We had to have the windows open, and the road outside the hotel was busy the entire night. Halfway through the night, I had to open the window in the bathroom as well to get more air in. I had to be really quiet so as not to disturb DW. That way we got more air flowing through the room.

We had breakfast in the morning. It was nice. We decided to take the ferry route for the journey.

On one side of the ferry, the water was gray. On the other side of the ferry, it was blue. I decided the blue side was more beautiful.

DS started driving from Sweden this morning. We decided to meet halfway in Solröd in Denmark. Solröd was an excellent experience.

They also had hippos and lions at this park.

We arrived at the cottage at 7 PM. I was not too tired, just happy that we arrived.

At the cottage, I got my holiday violin. It got tuned, and I practiced to play Årepolskan. I used a tuning app on my smartwatch.

Sunday 2 August

I was a little tired today. It is still a challenge to travel one thousand kilometers. I also had to blog to get it live on time. DW picked black currant berries at our cottage. I analyzed the issue with the lawnmower that stopped working during a thunderstorm last week. DS did maintenance of Jens' path; I built it in 2013. The bridge that I built in 2015 is in awful condition.

It turns out the lawnmower robot power station got lethal damage from a lightning strike during the thunderstorm. I dismantled the box, and it contains a 34-volt, 3.87-amp power supply. When the lightning struck the house, the transformer winding burned. I am just guessing because I did not bring my multimeter.

DS went to Jens stig several times today. At first he was frustrated that it was in such need of maintenance. I helped him clear out overgrowth. He then collected stones to improve the walkability of the path in places where it was uneven.

I used the brushcutter to clear bushes along the road to the house. DW made jam from the black currant berries growing at the cottage. It looks like we got a better black currant harvest at the cottage than at home.

Here ends this week's blog. I wrote 2525 words. Welcome back next week!