To be a farmer means that nature sets the working hours, for good and bad. For the second harvest the days were very hot which made it impossible to fetch the bales in the fields during daytime. Early mornings were then switched from sleeping to working. I am a morningbird, and will remain one. So to have the reason to wake up and begin work earlier brings with it a sort of excitement.
Early mornings during high pressure weather have often mysterious and beautiful sunrises. Since it is late in the season the trees and the fields are shrouded in fog. This morning I could not resist stopping the tractor and for a moment just admire the splendour of the sunrise together with the wild animals, the cranes with their melancholic cries, the roedeer, the buzzard and the red kite and the hares attentively listening as they ate their morning herbs.
Sometimes you encounter with someone that changes your life and how you see your life, and you think you have a long time in front of you. Then suddenly everything changes and she is gone, never to return. You are left with an imprint on your heart and the hope of seeing her in heaven.
Fourth of May a little weak lamb was born just 20% the normal size of a lamb. I found her beside a stone, calling very faintly for her mother, not able to stand and in cramps. I brought her inside the house and when I passed our Lourdes Madonna I said to it and Virgin Mary, “she is yours”. A night followed of a fight for her life, feeding her with drops of raw milk, then feeding bottle, warming her while holding her in my lap. Slowly her cramps ended, she became stable and I could see that fighting spirit in her eyes I so loved. She got the name Petite Marie, or Little Mary, Lilla Marie in Swedish.
Few persons have so capture my heart as she did. She was like a little puppy and followed me everywhere when she was not in the paddock with the other sheep. She knew her name and came when I called her.
One day when she was very little she escaped from her box and came looking for me, but entered into the cow pen until my father found her scared and bewildered calling for me.
She had a weak foreleg which our kind veterinary fixed with a bandage. He was charmed by this little lamb and never took any charge for her treatments.
One day she got very ill in clostridium, but our vet came and gave penicillin, again without charge. Slowly she recovered and was her self again.
Lilla Marie was a mild little lamb and she loved to be scratched. We always had our daily moments of scratching, petting and talking. I began planning that she perhaps could get a lamb in the future, because she had gained so much weight and was very healthy.
Suddenly she was gone. I had been away for two days and when I came home I went out to her to greet her and feed her. We had a little longer time together. She seemed a little more thirsty than usual, when I went back she called after me as she used to do.
The next day I went out and called for her. She didn’t answer. I kept looking for her. At last I found her. She was lying there in the stonhedge, dead, ma Petite Marie. Death is never beautiful and the sudden shock of seeing her lying there brought me to tears, while I still petted her little white head. The same bacteria that made her ill had caused an other illness that was incurable and very fast. She had died in just a couple of hours. Such a sorrow I felt and so many tears I shed.
My father came and helped me to bury her. I still go there and say an Ave Maria or the French Je vous salue Marie. I still cannot believe that she is gone. She died on the day she would have become three months old. So sudden. It surprises me so how little I know about the time I have got with the ones I love. This little lamb I only got three beautiful months with, I gave her to Virgin Mary and now she wanted her back. I don’t regret that I saved her, but see that as a gift, a true gift from heaven…
I was out walking in the forest quite far from home last Sunday. It is an old forest partly planted and partly old natural fir forest. The moss is thick and the firs are sparse and tall. There is something wondrous about old fir forests. The trees makes a soft soughing sound unlike many trees. The whisper above you, the dusk around you, and the different species of moss under you. It’s difficult not to just lie down watching the tree tops sawying and whispering. At the same time just to walk through it is simply lovely. To discover new traces of wood peckers in the anthills, finding new narrow animal paths, and to follow old overgrown forest roads.
This forest quite near home has traces of old forest work and farmlife as it was before farming had become completely mechanized. This Sunday was perfect for a forest walk and I took a different route through the forest to explore a little. I walked to my favourite field, abandoned with traces of a cottage in the south corner.
There is a beautiful stone hedge on the east side and the whole field is completely surrounded by trees, secluded from houses and roads. I dream here, to have a little house and I ponder about who lived here, sorrows and joys, visions and reality.
Continuing through the forest on my way home I came across two steel buckets overgrown by moss and grass.
They fascinated me, likely forgotten, but by whom and why and when I will never know. Perhaps was they left behind after the farmer had planted the small firs that now old wayed over me. Only the trees and angels know. Nevertheless the moss thrived inside them, so for the growing forest floor they was not useless.
My sister and I decided to go out trekking in Norway during August. Just some days before our departure there was an outbreak of a deadly illness affecting dogs of all kinds in entire Norway. After we had waited for two weeks we decided that it was better to be safe than sorry and go to the North of Sweden in a beautiful natural reserve called Grövelsjön. It is a fjeld around a narrow lake which stretches on the Swedish Norwegian border. To the east the low fjeld stretches seemingly for ever.
After much hesitation and the second hay harvest we departed the last week in September.
What an experience of nature beauty. The dwarf birches were in full colours looking like torches as the shifted in different nuances of yellow and orange. Every shrub glowed and even the blueberry sprigs shifted in red.
We began with a day of walking on the low fjeld. The day started windy and cold as we first went up the High peak Jakobshöjden. But after lunch we continued down the mountains on the low fjeld. The clouds scattered and the sun warmed us. The remaining day was warm and sunny and just a light breeze reminded us that we were in the mountains.
The feeling of walking without roads on the plain for hours towards low mountains, surrounded by mountains and following a flood, is difficult to describe. Freedom and wonder mixed with a feeling of trying to capture both the feeling and the visible beauty.
We met raindeers that made a turn around the mountains and then came towards us very close, then down the mountain side again. In the herd there was a big white raindeer with the biggest antlers I could imagine. It was fascinating to come so close to them.
As I walked I came upon a raindeer antler. I took it as a memory of that beutiful memory of the meeting with these half wild animals.
The dogs were very interested and looked a little bewildered when encountering with the raindeers for the first time, then the herding instinct was awoken…
We could have walked longer, but lacking tents we had to, however unwillingly, turn back. We had walked for one hour in during sunset, then the late day turned into evening.
As we walked in the evening we suddenly heard cranes calling. Despite the dim light we could see a flock of cranes heading south, silently calling in the darkness. Great beauty with a melancholic touch. To see cranes migrate always gives me a longing for heaven.
August was here and with it a wondrous silence. The season for blueberries, lingon berries and chanterelles.
There are few things so peaceful to search for berries and mushrooms in the sparse pine forest in and close by the mire. The only sound I hear is the buzzing flies, cranes calling and silent chirpings by the newly out flewn nestlings. The stillness is so strong that I almost can’t speak in fear of disturbing the peace. There is always this special tranquillity of August which I suddenly notice, as if by turning the page of the almanac a new theme is given, that of fruit and preparation.
While I am sitting there in midst of the blue- and lingonberry sprigs gathering blue and red sunshine under the peaceful whisper of the pines, the young birds of marsh, blue, and great tit are tentatively discovering their newly found environment.
My dogs too get in another mood when I start picking berries. From being running with the bicycle in a brisk mood, they settle down, sniff a little, make a comfortable sleeping place in the sprigs and not just sleep, but rest in a way that shows how well suited they are amidst the natural beauty.
I realise then that through them I get a little taste of sensing the situation with a precence of mind being both resting and attentive. Toby could lie there as if in deep sleep and suddenly he snaps after a fly on his nose. He could quickly lift his head directing his attention towards something he has perceived, which is beyond my senses.
While enjoying the lovely sound and view of boxes full of red lingonberries the ambience of the forest is so secretive and absorbing that it is not without an effort I leave, almost fearing that the road into this wondrous world will be lost next time I come.
Midsummer is past and summer is maturing into autumn. I do so like midsummer. At first it was the feast to John the Baptist, but here in Sweden that is now forgotten, which is a great pity. I think, Midsummer contains a great drama, everything stands on its peak and at the same time, preparing for winter. The sun solstice here in the north this Midsummer I had decided to make a daisy-chain.
My first daisy-chain
I love to have flowers in my hair, and this celebration is a celebration in nature and among the flowers. Thus making a daisy-chain is like wearing a bouquet in one’s hair. After a google search, I found useful instructions on a YouTube clip and managed to make one that I just had to take a photo of. We sat up after dinner watching the sun slowly setting behind the horizon, the longest day of the year. It also brings with it a longing for heaven, where life never ends.
The swedish flower called “slåttergubbe” which is a flower that in old times marked the time for hay harvest.
Some days ago I had to stay at home because of a poor little ewe that had fallen ill. My mother was also at home and the others went to Stockholm to the meeting I was supposed to go to. It was a beautiful weekend and I managed to make progress with my new paddock for the sheep.
My old Ajax takes a rest while I am working.
But then I decided to make a rhubarb pie the next morning to have after lunch the same day. It is such a privilege to step out in the garden with just birdsong around me, pick some rhubarb stalks and then in peace make a pie for just us two.
Pie in progress. I love this French pie plate, both beautiful and practical.
While sitting there with my mother during lunch I realised more concretely how lovely it is to have lived with her for so long, to really get to know her, to be inspired by her, to build on what she has started and just to grow in friendship. I realised too how much can be achieved in a relationship with simplicity and humility; to really see her.
After a cold and dry spring the warm and dry weather arrived. Trees and herbs seemed to be waiting for life giving water. At last it came and suddenly my whole world turned into countless nuances of green. The flowers bowed their heads as if in gratitude. Drops of water covered the petals like transparent pearls. The fragrance needs a poet to do justice… When I looked at one of our wild tulips in the garden I started thinking about how they felt the rain. The tactile sense of plants must be very developed in plants since they have limitations in the other senses. But the thought remained in my mind, how such a pleasure silent rain must be for a flower, like balm on a dry hand and perhaps also like water for a dry throat. How little we know about the nature that surrounds us.
I wonder if animals can feel wonder? Research on the self-consciousness of animals presents new fascinating discoveries every year on the issue. But can they recognise that they are created and observe their surrounding with awe? Some people are afraid of the question, but I see no need to be afraid over this question. When I look at my dogs, I think sometimes that they are observing and reflecting over what they see in the same manner as I do, but at the same time they seem to be part of nature in such a way that I feel like an outsider watching the trees and fields, flowers and birds. However, I think they sense in some way that they are caused; how I don’t know, but it is fun to speculate.
The birds of spring are here, beauty on the verge of pain. The privilege of living in and of nature have made me a little more part of nature than observer, I have noticed. As if the closeness to both flora and fauna have created a stronger sense of having the same source as the animals and plants. But the question remains if and how much they sense awe.
On an evening walk today I observed a blackbird singing on the top of a fir. I stopped and listened with both joy and peace to the melodious song. Between the parts of his song he bent his head, listened and looked around. Did he experience the beautiful view while listening and did he feel joy? I really hope he did.
The capacity to wonder has always followed and fascinated me. It is as Joseph Pieper says in his book Leisure the Basis of Culture, that wonder is the recognition of not being the cause of the beauty, a sort of bewilderment mingled with joy and surprise. For me my animals and the nature I encounter always fill me with this sort fascination and gratitude to the one who caused it.
Wonderer of Nature 