Volvo Ocean Race´s last leg..

Yesterday I watched the start of the end of an amazing journey
that took place outside Sandhamn on Thursday in splendid weather and with winds at 11 knots. After eight months and over 37,000 nautical miles, the Volvo Ocean Race fleet today is in the home straight, headed up the Gulf of Finland to the finish line in St. Petersburg. The weather conditions at the start couldn´t be much better and hundreds of boats followed the event at 2PM when the boats took of on the last leg of their long journey ending at St Petersburg.

See the video of the start of the last leg of the race outside Sandhamn on Thursday.

The Volvo Ocean Race is undeniably the world’s premier global race and one of the most demanding team sporting events in the world.
During the nine months of the 2008-09 Volvo Occean Race, which started in Alicante, Spain in October 2008 and now concludes in St Petersburg, Russia, the teams have sailed over 37,000 nautical miles of the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Kochi, Singapore, Qingdao, around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg and Stockholm, Sandhamn. (I just happened to "sail" up to view to the start under Canadian flag!)

(photo: Pia Ehrenpreis)

Gotland presented itself..

..from its sunny best around midsummer when most of Sweden had quite lousy weather..

The old crowd I met in Nicaragua some years ago when I stayed in Managua for a month came together in Gotland for midsummer. We payed a visit to the small fishing port of Lickershamn where they have a great shop for smoked fish and shrimps. Here are Don Oscar - who used to work as a driver for the Swedish embassy in Managua and took me on many trips around Nicaragua -and Eva who was our former ambassador in the Nicaragua. Eva is presently stationed as Sweden´s ambassador in Chile.

Bo, Pia, Oscar and Eva in Lickershamn, Sunday. We are all great Nicaragua-friends..

Lickershamn fishing boat.

Sunday dinner. Dessert. Strawberries, melons and peonies.

Old beauty..

The cornflowers start mingling with the poppies in my neighbouring midsummer field..

Iran: It´s building..

Analysis
Jon Leyne, BBC News, Tehran:

"The opposition is keeping up the pressure. On the other side
I get the impression the government hasn't really worked out
a comprehensive response, instead they're sort of harassing
the opposition.
There have been more arrests of opposition
figures - not the most senior leaders, but still pretty well-known
names. They've been sending in their thugs, basically, their militia,
to attack student dormitories, and they've been arresting journalists.
At the moment, there's absolutely no sign of loss of momentum, in fact it's building."

What this election result has unleashed is just a deep frustration,
an anger that I've certainly sensed in the two years I've lived here.
People are so frustrated and angry with the system, which seems to
treat them with contempt.

"It is not easy being green.."

Lummelunda is poppy red.. June 16th, 2009

As time goes by...

Soon now, in Capri..

..we have this wedding coming up.. My daughter Lina and her longtime fiancée,Pontus,are getting married on the
2 of July at San Michele! Oh joy!

The Blue Grotto, Capri

Thalia in Washington June 2009.

Soon she will be on her first flight to Europe and travel to San Michele,
Capri where we finally will meet again at auntie Lina´s wedding in Italy!

The Siren´s cliffs, Capri - from which they used to lure the poor sailors by their songs to navigate far too close to these impressive rocks and wreck their ships ..Once I lived for some weeks as a scolar at San Michele, Anacapri, and I can tell you that this island is not only one of the most romantic islands in the world, but also an island with a astonishing and sometimes both decadent and brutal, long, long history..

Blue egg falls..

Yesterday, I found this beautiful diminutive blue egg shell that had crash landed after a fall from my gutter.

It had landed and cracked open on one of my limestone slabs placed in the garden. I had no clue on who produced such a beautiful egg. The garden is a heaven for all kinds of species of birds since ther are an abundance of wetlands in the vecinity. Must have been a very small bird though..

Consulting my computer and Wikipedia, I found that it must have been a European Robin (Erithacus rubecula), or, in Anglophone Europe, simply Robin, is a small insectivorous passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family (Turdidae), but is now considered to be an Old World flycatcher (Muscicapidae). Around 12.5–14.0 cm (5.0–5.5 in) in length, the male and female are similar in colouration, with an orange breast and face lined with grey, brown upperparts and a whitish belly. It is found across Europe, east to Western Siberia and south to North Africa; it is sedentary in most of its range except the far north.

The term Robin is also applied to some unrelated birds with red breasts. These include the American Robin (Turdus migratorius), which is a thrush, and the Australian red robins of the genus Petroica, which are more closely related to crows.
Well, it became very clear that I just have to put up some more birdhouses in my garden to prevent my delicate cohabitants from nesting in my narrow gutters and from taking blue egg falls like this!

Living a Monet painting..

After a night of heavy rains, I strolled around the neighbouring fields with my camera on Wednesday afternoon..

And promptly got a feeling of being in the midst of a Monet painting!
I, however did not carry a parasol!
"The poppy field" by Claude Monet

The mist was finally letting go and was slowly crawling away over the maturing rape fields..

..making way for the sun that suddenly came out and changed the colors of the poppy fields ..

..and of the flowers and the trees in blossom in the fields and in my garden.

In the back by my farmhouse, towards the woods there was an almost impenetrable foam of white cow parsley..
Trying to wade through it made you feel like being in a frothing whirlpool bath filled with expensive fragrances..

The Wood Cranesbills or Woodland Geraniums - called midsummer flowers in Swedish- carpet the meadows next door, portending the coming of midsummer the following week..
Summer in Sweden is short. It starts showing its face in May and explodes into life in June. The summer has to hurry to get things done before the nights turn cold in September and everything stops growing.
At Midsummer, the Swedish summer is a lush green and bursting with chlorophyll, and the nights are scarcely dark at all. In the north, the sun never sets.

Lummelunda kyrka
My only neighbour is this beautiful old church like cut out of a picture postcard. It was built in limestone during the Medieval times. Its tower was built around 1200. It is considered a very romantic church. However, the services are quite few over the year but it is a popular church for weddings, christenings and funerals. We held the funeral service here for my mother Barbro, who lived close the this church for many years, on a wonderful pre-summerday three years ago.

A tune that stuck to your mind for decades..

Out of order..and cyber sweating..

Something´s failed as to the access to my blog lately. It s been driving my almost crazy not to be able to log in. It´s been quite frustrating and the feeling has been that of a squash ball bouncing to and fro between the walls..user names..user accounts, upload new versions, check mails för temporary shutdowns etc.

So I almost gave up and decided that I was done with blogging. And THEN!! Oh! I saw the LIGHT! Halleluja! I found the passwords to log into the new mail, that gave me the new passwords to the accounts that gave me new user names to the blog...and on and on

So I will just test publish for the moment this favorite photo of mine (from the archipelago outside Sandhamn that I took some years ago) that kind of brings me distance and harmony! Quite needed after this debacle!

So this is just: TESTING, TESTING --no yet over and out..

I will now raise from the computer and step out into the beautiful garden (it is still cold here like November!) and breathe the crisp air and the strong smells from all the lilacs and stop thinking "cyber!" for a while..

And to you dear blog followers..thanks for your patience.

Well this calls for this one : ( Like my old friend Tore Z used to say when things occationally got out of hand)

"You can`t be perfect all the time!" :-)

Early Monday morning..

..the small harbour of Sandhamn is calm and quite beautiful and I wait with my good friend Paivi - who gave me a smooth ride to the village on her electrical moped - on the jetty for the ferry to take me back to the mainland.

And after a night ride on yet another ferry I am back in my house in Gotland. In the morning after some hours sleep, I walk around in my nightie in the garden amazed over the turn it has taken.

I feel I am walking in paradise in the midst of the heavy smells of allt the various kinds of lillies and peonies in all colors.The fruit trees are all in bloom..

A bouquet is picked that will fill the house with the loveliest smells..

The early morning sun ..

..filters through the trees..

..and the rape fields in a distance are a glowing yellow..