June 30

"If your eyes could speak, what would they say?" (The book thief) This is what my eyes tell me.

The world is deeply green.
Flowers are shouting "here I am".
The birds are patrolling land and lake.
Light will never go to sleep.

June 29

It's 11 pm: the Dandelions are waiting for wind.

June 28

I like the poem “No man is an island” by John Donne.  

While I’m drinking a cup of coffee in the garden I watch the ants working on the ground. Their work contains mostly of carrying different things; seeds, tiny sticks, grains etc. They are absorbed by their work and nothing can stop them. I put my foot in their way; they walk round it. I put my finger in front of one; the ant smells it and then passes it. I drop blades of grass on them and they continue like nothing has happened.

I imagine myself walking in the forest and then suddenly have five logs falling on me. I would either die or panic. On reflection, I would first panic and then die. But the ants just continue like nothing has happened. I find this interesting.

First the practical question, why don’t they die even though the blades of grass are as heavy to them, as a log would be to me? My husband, the biologist, explain that the energy in the blade is much less than in a log. Hence, the actual weight of the blade is the important thing, not the size. 

Second, why don’t they panic? Even when I try to chase an ant with the grass, it doesn’t react. It just continues forward like nothing has happened. Are ants stupid? No, I don't think so. I ask the biologist again but he doesn’t have any explanation to this. Thus, this question might not have any practical answer. It may be existential instead. Maybe the ant doesn’t panic since panic wouldn’t change anything in the context of the ants society? One less ant doesn't matter to the ant society.

Sometimes I discover an ant-nest under a rock in the garden and when I remove the rock the ants are in total chaos. On these occasions they panic. Hence, this is my theory; the ant is part of an anthill. The ant is nothing without its anthill and the other members of the anthill.  So, I guess the ant can’t see the threat to it self as anything dangerous, since the ants focus on being a part of the anthill - not to live alone. It is a complete unselfish species.

Maybe John Donne was inspired by ants when he wrote that poem? Or are human beings like this as well? Do we fight for our community or do we fight for ourselves?

June 27

Let's see what there is to tell you today. Hum, hum, hum... my brain seems to have left the building. Why? Oh, I just finished two projects and my brain must be emptied due to all the deep analyses I have done the last days. Puh, I don't think I can manage to create anything thoughtful for some time. I'm gonna spend time in the garden instead and rebuild my brain.

Talking about the garden, do you remember the vegetables that froze to death a couple of weeks ago? I started over with the cucumbers and they are growing. There is still hope that we will have pickled cucumber this winter. The potatoes that were under the soil when it was so cold has finally appeared. Green and alive! Another project in the garden is a path made of flat rocks. The rocks were in the garden when we moved here and we have been think a lot about what to do with them. Then we decided to use them for a path. It's still not finished but in a couple of weeks it will be.

Potato plats - surviving north Swedish climate

Cucumber plant - trying to survive under an old window

Path - will last at least for a couple of years

June 21

Midsummer eve showed us what real summer should be like. Sun, soft breez and the company of good friends. The evening ended with a fire at a cliff and watching the sun set at 23.07. 

June 19

Breaking news of the week: I have been dancing. Couple dancing. This is news because it is far beyond my comfort zone. I dance – but only alone or in the kitchen with my husband. When I danced this week it was with a customer.

I’ll give you the whole story. I went to Lycksele to give a lecture about Sustainable development in fish farming. They invited me to have dinner with them the evening before the lecture, which I happily accepted. They are nice people and I looked forward to have extra time with them and catch up with the latest news about fish farming and aqua culture. We were around 20 people and the dinner was as nice as I expected. After the dinner, the manager told everybody, there would be a surprise . “I wonder what that will be and I if I should attend this surprise”, I thought to myself. I’m not very fond of surprises when I’m at work. And you know the feeling of being the only one who is not part of the company and people start to get a bit drunk. I decided I would be off if it didn’t feel comfortable, I could always give the excuse that I had to… call somebody… or sleep… or find my hotel room… I don’t know what would be an acceptable excuse when you are invited to a dinner and the clock is just 8.30 pm.

The surprise showed up and turned out to be a couple that would teach us couple dancing. My heart sank. Why? I’ll tell you:

1. We very only ¼ women in the group. I suddenly understood why they needed me. A traditional dancing couple is made out of two – a man and a woman. Thus, no way out, no excuses would be accepted.
2. I can’t dance. I totally do not dance. I get really shy and sweaty. I trip on people’s toes. I make a fool of my self.
3. I needed their respect for the lecture next morning and this would totally ruin in. They would look at me like the woman who flattened their toes instead of the person who inspired them to become more sustainable.
4. Darn!!! 

But fortune was on my side. I found a man from Afghanistan.

Me: Salam aleikum!

Him: (Smiling) Salam aleikum!

Me: I’m sorry, I’m a disaster when it comes to dancing. I’m from the south of Sweden and we don’t do couple dancing there.

Him: Me too. I have never been dancing with a woman. It’s forbidden since I’m a Muslim.

Me: Oh, but are you ok with this anyways? You know, you don’t have to do it. (Hoping for him find his way out and then rescue me from it. We could go to the bar and drink juice instead, and he could help me develop me Arabian vocabulary)

Him: No, it’s ok. I’ll do it.

Me: Ok, lets do it.

So we danced and we made the best out of it. And I must say; we were good at it. We were the perfect couple. We danced and both of us were so careful and modest to each other. And we smiled all the time. After one hour I found it possible to thank the host for the evening and excused myself with “I really have to... take care of my... you know... stuff... work... you know".  Nobody was offended and nobody had flat toes beach of me.

The lecture the next day was maybe one of the best I have done. I think they loved it.

June 12

Thursday morning I was at the campus of Umeå. There was a colleague of mine and myself who guided 10 men from Ethiopia. They had come all the way to see examples of Sustainable development in Sweden and the university’s campus was one of the spots. We walked around and looked at some good examples of social and ecological sustainability efforts and we really had a nice time. They asked a lot of questions and were really interested. Afterward we had a photo session and we all posed in the sun. I would say this was the high light of the week.

The worst thing of the week was that all of the plants for the garden that I had pre-cultivated in the kitchen, died when I planted them outside. They froze to death even though I had put protecting fabric over them. Rest in peace cucumber, bean, zucchini and pumpkin. I miss you so much. I hope the potatoes and onions will show up soon and comfort me a little. They are still under the soil and can impossibly have frozen.

I’ll make a new attempt with seeds inside and hope for warmer days. While I’m waiting for them to grow I have started to build a protecting fence against the wind. I’m not giving in.

Even if it’s cold the evenings are amazing. It’s almost midnight and it’s still light.

June 09

Kings landing? No Uppsala. 😊

June 09

I see a lot of Sweden. 

June 09

The scary thing about what I am going to tell you is not that the train company (SJ) just left us, 30 travellers on our way to Stockholm, in Västerås instead of Stockholm. No no no, it’s worse. It’s neither the fact that they (SJ) told us that there would be a bus waiting for us, which would transport us to Uppsala, but there wasn’t. Of course it was awkward to stand in Västerås, which is quite far from Uppsala, and not knowing how to get away from there. And of course it’s super scary when you start thinking about the fact that Västerås sounds very much like Westros (Game of Thrones) and you start thinking about the young evil king and the nasty incestuous siblings. It gives you the chill. But still, that’s not the worst. 

But let me give you a short summary of what happened before Westeros. This is what happened. I was on the train from Göteborg bound for Stockholm. Time for arrival was 18.50 and then I would make a transfer to a train to Uppsala at 19.11. But the train from Stockholm was delayed due to a broken electric wire south of Stockholm. Therefor the train took a detour to get into Stockholm from the west side instead of the south. The train was standing still for a long time in Vingåker, then Katrineholm.  We passed Flen and after that the speaker told us people, who hade planned to transfer to Uppsala in Stockholm, to get off the train in Västerås and catch a bus to Uppsala. They promised the bus would wait for us. But it didn’t. Hence, 30 people without any guide or anything was standing in Västerås at 20.45.

Back to the scariness. The scariest thing was, while we switched a couple of busses while we passed many little villages in the middle of Sweden, the number of people in our group decreased. From the beginning we were like 30 people, but after Enköping we were around 15. I know I saw maybe 10 people who didn’t seem to know each other, but obviously had left the train with the rest of us, outside the first bus when we left Westeros. (No dwarf or evil child king hovering around them though which is a relive.) When we arrived to Enköping many of us left the bus – but not everybody. Some were still on the bus when it drove away. The rest of us, continued with the bus.

It’s 22.20 o’clock and we are still not in Uppsala and I wonder about those people whom disappeared. Where are they now? Why didn’t they continue with the rest of us? And what’s going to happen to them – and us? Will I ever reach Uppsala or will this bus end up in… Winterfell?

To be continued…