03.30.10
Posted in Garden, Valbonne, Every day life, Family at 11:31 pm by tesstess
What lay hidden under the snow comes to light at last. One thing that was hidden for a long time, more than just a winter, is the brother of my mum. A couple of weeks ago they call me, my parents, and they say, a bit like when they once told me when I was 6 years that I would get a brother, that actually my mum just got a brother. I took some time to get it into my head. Can you repeat that? You just got a what? A little brother? But my grandmum just turned 80 years old!
But it’s true! Thanks to my new cousins (vink vink om ni läser detta! ) my grandmother got a letter telling that her son, Patrik (med eller utan c?), that she didn’t see or heard of since he was born, is having a good life, a wife and three daughters. She felt a bit scared that we would be angry at her now when her secret got out, poor mormor, but no, why would we, it’s just great this story! I’m impressed that she managed to hide her pregnancy for mum and her sister, 9 and 11 years old.
My parents met the new brother and his family this weekend, together with mormor and the sister of my mother. I got some photos, but I would have loved to be there with them, hope there will be an opportunity to go and see them this summer.
Some spring photos from (soon to be) our new house (final signature planned for mid april):
03.29.09
Posted in Garden at 11:07 pm by tesstess
It’s been a long time we wanted to cut this oak, which is stealing our evening sun, and this weekend we finally got it down. It took one complete day, lots of sweat and sore muscles, but it was well worth it, and no more sport needed this week.
The owner helped us by lending the chainsaw, and explaining how to make the trunk fall in the right direction. On the second picture you can see how that went… one of them ended up rigth on the fence…
It was lots of work to cut and move everything after.
These are my tulips that I planted in november, just coming out!
03.15.09
Posted in Garden, Lindy Hop, Every day life at 9:42 pm by tesstess
Well, I cannot show you a lot of flowers, they’ll come later…
But I got 34 tagetes (oeillets d’inde).
Today I attended a small workshop in Acrobatics held by Olivier & Natasha. I was lucky that there was a girl who couldn’t come so I could borrow her guy. We learnt ‘over the back’ (armkastet) and ‘la hanche’ (höftkastet) (don’t know that one in english). Well, I knew them before, but since I love acro I couldn’t resist the chance to practice them again. They taught the techique of ‘over the back’ a bit differently to what I’m used to, more round, always interesting to try different approaches. I tried to take some pictures but none of them turned out very well.
I promised mum to show my new friend Gwladys, with whom I went with to Grenoble last weekend, with whom I’ll go on all lindy camps we can afford and with whom I’ll try to start up a small lindy club in Amadeus.
06.04.08
Posted in Garden, Every day life at 5:26 pm by tesstess
I haven’t been smiling for three days now. Starts to get boring. I got all my four wisdom teeth removed on monday, they put me to sleep, took only half an hour, but the longer to recover. In fact it doesn’t hurt too much as long as I keep still. This morning I was dreaming something and managed to hit me with the hand on the side of the face where I’m swollen. Do I need to tell that it hurt? A lot. I have ice on most of the time too keep it from getting swollen, I would have been much worse otherwise, helps also for the ache.
My favorite hobby at the moment is to sit and watch anthony when he makes a hole in the garden. It’s not a grave, it will be filled with tomatoe plants. They can be seen on the picture below, four different kinds waiting to be planted. The orange flowers, tagetes, are to be planted in between, apparently they give a smell that will scare away insects.
All those pills I’m eating makes me a bit dizzy, yesterday I slept most of the day, in the sofa and then in the hammock under the avocado tree. Vincent have lent me the last harry potter book, it keeps me company but I can only read when feeling a bit better (goes up and down all the time) because it’s in french and when it hurts or I’m tired I don’t understand a thing.
I just managed to open the mouth enough to see that they put some points in there. The doctor didn’t tell me after the operation how it had been, and I wasn’t able to ask… When I met her earlier she had told that it was one of the roots that went down in a nerve canal and when taking it out I would risk to loose sensibility in my lower lip. At least that didn’t happen, I have still all feeling left. I’m in a good hope that I will be able to smile again in some days.
Do you know what ‘negerbollar’ is? It’s swedish cookies, and translated it is ‘nigger balls’. I guess they exist in other places as well, but then named ‘chocolate balls’. Anyways, AnnSofie and Oscar brought us homemade negerbollar last saturday and I was so happy, I really missed them! But I forgot to take them out and serve after the dinner and now Anthony is eating them with good appetite. I’m happy that he likes them. I get plenty of saliva in my mouth when I see him eat, so I tried as well. I took tiny pieces of a ball, to make tiny negerbollar, and then chew with my tongue. Not easy, but well worth the effort.
This morning I got strawberry milkshake for breakfast. Delicious. For lunch and dinner I’m having soup, a very tasty soup made of lots of different vegetables, well mixed. And of course I’m eating it with a straw. I’m looking so stupid!
Frustrated. When reading harry potter I’m realizing that things happened that I don’t recognize, and after some discussion with Vincent I realize that I haven’t read book 6. Pah.
Taking pictures doesn’t hurt. Karin, have you seen how beautiful the Lobelia is this year compared to last year!?
03.30.08
Posted in Garden, Valbonne at 8:06 pm by tesstess
A couple of weeks ago I took these photos of our garden. I wanted to have them to compare with when later we have planted flower and everything is full of colours.
The most interesting photo is this one:
Can you guess what it is? It’s a hiding place, not obvious? When looking in between the back rests of the two chairs the frog will look back at you! He was sitting there quaking, really cute. Some days after he had moved to the pipe of the water can, not very safe either. Today I heard him in a crack in the wall. Funny that it’s still around. I guess he will go and join his friends when they start quaking later on in the spring.
My geranium/pelargoner are not too happy these days, but I have given them some engrais/näring now to boost them a bit. I’m also afraid I have let them too long when I was cutting them… but these are the ones behind where we hang the clothes so I really wanted them to hang down later when they are flowering. We’ll see if it was a good or bad choise.
Here is a small plant that we hope will survive, it was so cute last year.
And here is a big one which now is FULL of flowers. The only problem is that we probably should have cut it down because in the middle it is all empty, as you can see. Now it hurts our hearts to much to cut of the branches full with buds and flowers. Does someone know how this plant should be cut?
These two have so much energy this year. The first one tries to break the border and the second one (hm, don’t remember the swedish name now) we are really surprised about since it was so sad last year.
And these two to end with, our favourite one, the fushia which will soon start flowering, and then continue until late fall. And the cyklamen who have given as much flowers as you can see here all the winter.
02.02.08
Posted in Garden, Every day life at 11:00 am by tesstess
It was some weeks now since I took this funny picture of our frog. I was going to lift the brown box you see on the second picture when something green fell down on the shelf. I screemed and jumped backwards, but then I saw it was only a toy, and I was wondering why we had a toy frog there… and then I realized - it’s THE frog! Fast out with the camera. The frog hid itself between two tea jars as you can see. I waited for the frog to start moving again after taking the picture, and I was standing just close, but when I turned back my head after talking to Anthony it was suddenly gone, probably it jumped silently back into the plant which is just under.
He is still making ‘quack quack’, almost every morning around five. Sometimes I count, and it’s most often around eight ‘quacks’, which is a little bit short to be able to record the noise. Karin promised me to analyze the sounds, to see what kind of frog and if it’s a he or she… but even if I have the recorder close, there’s not enough time to sit up and turn it on before the frog stops again.
I’m putting a couple of worms every third day in a cup placed in the plant next to the small bath I also put there. Some time ago though I realized there is a problem with the worms. Just before putting the cup down it was standing on the kitchen bench while I was closing thing with the other worms, and then I saw the worm coming up from the cup, straight up, and then over. Which means… that each morning when I think the frog has been eating during the night, the worms might just as well have escaped and now live happily in the big pot of the plant. Anthony gave me a quite discusting solution - to cut the worm in two. First I refused, but then he say that worms have no sensations, and I was thinking of all people going fishing with worms, so I cut it. He wasn’t very happy at first, the worm, making all kinds of strange movements. But then… they were two. And then, two worms started going up the side of the cup and were just as good at escaping as when they were just one. Puh.
Now I’m having a bit bigger cup, and I try to give the worms just before going to bed, hoping that the frog will hear the worms and be able to catch them before they go down in the ground. I’m not sure though how the frog actually hunts, if he can hear and see the worms…
It’s just some weeks left now until I’ll put the plant back outside. It seems like our frog will have survived the winter!
07.02.07
Posted in Garden, Pearls at 12:00 pm by tesstess
This morning I started by eating a breakfast consisting of raspberries with some serial under. Very delicious.
Then I took some photos of the bracelet I finished yesterday. It’s Odile who taught me how to do it.
It was not as complicated as it looks, but it still took some hours of course. For me it’s a new style of pearling to use fish thread and go back and forth as in this bracelet, a fun technique, because it opens up so many new possibilities!
And then suddenly, when I was sitting here surfing on the terrasse, a snake cames from the grass into the flowerbed just two meters from me. I got it on picture but not the head. Can you help me to see which kind of snake this is? Is it dangerous? It was about 40 cm long, looked like a young one, light brown and I think a little zigzag on the back.
06.05.07
Posted in Garden, Visitors, Beach at 4:18 pm by tesstess
Karin was with me here for five days and we did lots of fun together. And for you who don’t know her you’ll have to take a look at her homepage www.nejlika.se. You should also know that Karin = Loriel, who has written a comment on almost all my blog posts!
We began by visiting Nice and ate lunch at a nice Créperie (which can now be found on my restaurants page, I will tell you more about that one in another post). After eating we walked down to the sea and on the way we found a zoo with sooo cute rabbits. Sorry I didn’t take a picture on them. After seeing them I was totally obsessed with rabits and couldn’t think about something else than how to be able to have one at home for the next few hours. Poor Karin.
Karin was of course happy to see the sea and to go down in the water. Unfortunately there were jelly fish, so it was not possible to swim really.
When we came home Karin investigated the garden and documented some of the fruits we have. Upper left: Nefle (Mispel), upper right: Valnöt, lower left: figue (fikon), lower right: mullbär. Ok, now half the names are in french and half in swedish… don’t remember/know the translations.
The next day we went to a red beach in Les Esterelles and here even I managed to go in swiming, only saw one jelly fish this day. And on the way back we got some nice pictures of the bubbel house, or barbapapa house as I call it:
In the evening we went climbing with Anthony and some other guys. I managed to forget the rope so since there were only two ropes for six people me and Karin decided to stay at the stream instead.
I kept my clothes on but Karin went down into the icy cold water.
I’m impressed by her. I spent the time playing around with her camera. I more and more want such a big digital system camera. One day when I’m earning lots of money I will buy one.
From the stream we had a good view of the climbers and after a while at the small beach we climbed up to where they were.
Two different flowers. The one to the left is innocent and kind, but the one to the right you should be really carefull with. If you touch the flower, you will not notice anything strange, but two days later the place will burn, and it becomes big and nasty burn marks. Anthony has a scar on his leg from last summer.
The next day it was supposed to rain so we took a walk in a forest nearby, named “La bois d’Opio”, meaning the forest of Opio. For me it was more a biology lesson than a walk, it’s so fun to be with Karin, I allways learn a lot about all the animals and plants around me which I wouldn’t even had noticed without her.
Trip to the Paradis
Anthony had recommended the stream/smal river La Seigne, so we looked it up on the map and went there. It’s just close St Vallier de Thiey, which in turn is close to Grasse.
The small road should lead us next to the water and our plan was to park the car, walk a little bit along the river side and then take a swim, if not too cold. But we didn’t see the river from the car. We parked and followed a path down the vally to where we thought the water must be, but it was completely dry, and had not been filled with water for a long long time. Strange.
There was a water leading system, so we figured out that they must have taken the water from the stream. We followed the signs up on the other side and then along the mountain side, in fact the path were really flat since it was following the water system. The whole place smelled of Timjan and the birds sang beautifully for us.
A lilja, a snake a view and a lizzard (for my dad), found on the way.
It took a loong time, and we were close to turning around and head back when we heard something that sounded like water. Since we had gone straight for so long we were now high up compared to the bottom of the valley which were going down all the time. Luckily we found a path down and began walking towards the water.
Halfway down we found this place. A big roof in the mountain and in the innermost part there were built small walls dividing the place into small room. It was easily to imagine a big fire with people from the stone age.
Three hours after leaving the car we found ourselves in the paradis. This place was worth all effort of getting there. We were stunned! I never saw a nicer place and we were all alone in it.
Karin took a short swim before eating. It was cold, but not too cold and the sun warmed well.
We had brought bread, cheese and apples, and it was a feast.
And then it was my turn to try to get into the water. It took some time, but ooo, it was fantastic when finally in!
Better than Liseberg!
Karin was most brave and went in under the waterfall.
Who needs to buy an expensive bubbel bath? Wiiii!
After some hours we noticed dark clouds coming up. These two pictures are taken at the same time, in different directions of the valley.
Time to go. Or, rather, run. The way back took us only one and a half hour instead of three and we were totally exhausted. But we didn’t get the rain on us. As soon as we came to the car the rain started and just a quarter it had completely drowned the world.
End of hollidays
The last day it was supposed to rain all day, but luckily the weather forcast was wrong and we had sun half of the day. We went to the beach, played beach-badminton and Karin took pictures of the jelly fish.
All in all we had a really good time together and we’re hoping to see Karin back here soon again.
04.19.07
Posted in Parties and dinners, Garden, Valbonne at 10:23 am by tesstess
Yesterday was the first time I celebrated my birthday away from home, without swedish birthday song in the morning and without anemones (vitsippor).
In the morning I got these beautiful roses from my love together with a gift card for walking shoes from Alti Coop in Nice.
Karin saved the anemone part for me by making me a beautiful birthday card.
I spent all day cleaning, using my normal strategy: starting on one place where a lot needs to be done, then taking one of the small things and carry it to another place where it should be and put it in place, then I’ll se that in this place a lot needs to be done, so I start there and picks up a new thing that should be in a third place, and then I continue cleaning in this third place. Someone else having the same strategy?
In the evening we had invited some of our friends for a small but tasty BBQ. The first BBQ of the year! But definitely not the last.
Here is Pierre (the cook) and Delphine, and to the right the beautiful bouquet from Sebastien.
Pierre takes care of the meat. The menu this day was porc ribbs in two variations, one chinese marinade and one with chili and honey (and some more things I don’t remember now). To this we ate pastasallad and the dessert was the giant easter rabbit in chocolat that we got in Etzling.
The meat was so good we all sat silient for a long, long time just enjoying it. Alice was running around all evening, so much energy in this small body!
All in all I had a wonderfull birthday and I want to thank everyone that made it so happy! Not least the parents of Anthony who had ordered flowers for me! I was so surprised when the flower shop called me and said they would come and deliver flowers to me, first time in my life I get flowers like this. And the parents had scanned a handwritten greeting for me.
Thank you, thank you, thank you 
Posted in Garden, Valbonne at 9:25 am by tesstess
This weekend we started the spring work in the garden with buying new flowers and planting them. Last week I cut the grass for the first time, it took me three hours since it was so high and I had to dig out some small, nasty plants with needles on.
In order to be fit for fight for a long day of gardening I did a warming up, washing both cars. Anthony didn’t understand what I got all my energy from I perfectly well understand where it comes from: But hey, we’re going shopping! Flowers!
We have a big gardening store only some minutes by car from here so this Sunday we went there two times to buy things.
The digging was harder than expected. First all the pine had to be carefully removed and cleaned from ground and leaves, then the good ground lifted out and then really hard digging to get away some of the mud. We wanted to get the flower bed deeper to make the flowers happier.
When we got the deepness we wanted we filled again with old ground mixed with ground we bought.
This winter I managed to kill our last Pelargonias, plus two other plants that we put in the small studio we’re using to store things. Anthony’s analysis is that I gave them to little water. But now we bought new Pelargoinas to have outside the bedroom window. Anthony promises that they will grow a lot and hang down beautifully over the edge.
All those previous pictures are from last Sunday, which was the fiftenth of April, and also our celebration day of seven months together. And look what appeared in Anthony’s coffe!
Anthony had a good eye for seing where each plant should be put.
Here is the plan for the part of the flowerbed closest to the door.
And now comes the result:
Those are our favourites, so intensive red! They close at night and opens up the morning after.
The four small ones in the front doesn’t look so much to the world yet, but they are supposed to grow along the ground and be full of small flowers, flowering from May to October. Sorry, Karin, but I don’t remember the name of all those flowers, and in any case they would be in french if I remembered them.
Isn’t it beautiful?!
And some herbs: persil and siboulette (gräslök alltså).
There wasn’t room for all plants we bought, but we are planning to extend the flower bed on the other side of the terrasse, so they will all get happy homes in the ground this coming weekend.
These small friends were also supposed to go in the ground, but now when I see them like this I think I will keep them in the pot. Just hope they don’t want to grow too much.
This last picture is a link to the next post I will write, because the day I finished the planting was the 18th = my birthday and I cleaned all day to get the garden, terrasse and inside ready for the first BBQ of the year.
01.15.07
Posted in Garden, Valbonne at 3:41 pm by tesstess
Påskliljor = Daffodills are allready up visible in the garden and the mimosa tree are in full bloom!
We also picked three avocados from our avocado tree!
The avocado three is in the middle of the picture. Unfortunately it didn’t give more than tree fruits this year, but it was very fun to pick them, Anthony up on the ladder with a rake (kratta) to his help to reach.
Lots of leaves to take up.
Luckily it was so warm this day that it could be done wearing just a t-shirt!
Eating lunch outside on the grass with the sun warming our backs, isn’t that just too good to be true! Hey, it’s January!
Posted in Garden, Valbonne at 2:43 pm by tesstess
I know this post is a little out of date, but I really want to show you some pictures of Valbonne, the village we live at walking distance from. The pictures are taken the 18th of November, and we went out this day to catch the autumn colors.
This first picture shows the shop with fruits and vegetables. Anthony told me about this place before I moved in with him, that it was his favorite store, and now I share this with him. All fruits are as beautifully stapled like those clementines.
All year around it is possible to find all sorts of fruits, but then of course with varying price, for example the blueberries are very expensive this time of year.
Here is a photo taken from where the fruit store, bakery the other small stores are towards where we live. Our house is approximately in the middle of the picture. I have zoomed a bit here so it is not as close in reality as it looks.
Following is some pictures of the old town of Valbonne.
View from the place where the small shops are towards the old town.
The central square in the old town. Notice people sitting outside in the sun with no jacket!
Warm colors
… and narrow streets.
Wonderful autumn colors on the trees.
Me outside one of the many art shops in Valbonne. The name of this one is Carpe Diem. Exactly what we were trying to do this day!
Flowers all year around.
This is the view from the small road that goes to our house towards Valbonne. The village itself is just outside the picture to the right.
And finally a picture of our garden where the leaves are still green on the trees.
I love this place!