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):
03.30.08
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.
05.25.07
Posted in Valbonne at 4:04 pm by tesstess
Oj oj, what have I done? Painted the bedroom window in “mauve” = light purple. The thought was good. We wanted have purple since it goes well to red/dark/warm colors which we like to have on the bed. We bought a new curtain (gardin, rideau) in “aubergine” color, quite dark to keep out the light in the morning.
The plan is also to paint the mirrors on the wardrobe and the details on the front of the chest of drawers in this “mauve”.
Now take a look at the color on the floor. That’s right, orange. Sorry I didn’t remember when we bought the paint, and for Anthony this color combination was not strange, even though he now after I’ve painted the window sees the purple color as a bit strange.
Another problem is that the chest of drawers has faner which is not so easy to paint on.
One solution I came to think of so far, to eliminate the orange is to put a carpet on. What should we do with the rest? Take a look on my photoshop-edited pictures below and write me a comment, please!
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.
03.06.07
Posted in Valbonne at 11:10 pm by tesstess
It’s here! Six and a half weeks after we ordered we finally have our wonderfull sofa. And it’s better and more beautiful than we even could imagine!
It takes up half of our room, but since it’s so soft it doesn’t matter. And now the BIG tv doesn’t seem too big anymore.
The cuchion in the corner is a special one that I chose, it’s brown and “fury”, and supersoft.
Come and join us and our sofa!
02.19.07
Posted in Hollidays, Valbonne, Visitors at 5:48 pm by tesstess
My mum has been with me for a week and we had a great time together.
The first night we ate a french speciality with cheese.
The cheese is called a b… something… and is put on top of layers of potatis with bacon. Anthony told us it is often eaten in winter, since it such a heavy meal, and often when skiing. I can tell that it was really good. I love cheese! And my mum bought with her a cheese home and made it for my family who also appreciated it
When she arrived the daffodills had not come out yet, but when she left one week later they were opening. See the difference!
All photos are on the photo page.
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!