I finally got around to..

"Izzy"

..make a watercolor of baby Isabella - my second grandchild. Here she is, captured at the age of three months! I almost forgot the satisfaction of handling the paint brushes after months of total focus on "house renovations!"

Finding the truffles..

Nena and Darwin - with the "Black Gold" of Gotland!

Truffle snooping..

Today, we had booked a professional truffle searching Lagotto Romagnolo dog by the name of Darwin, to search our premises for the delicious truffle Bourgogne. As it turned out, Darwin sniffed out half a kilo of the "Black gold of Gotland" in a very short time! Did we celebrate with a glass of Bourgogne! Yes!
Now my whole kitchen smells of truffles...
Here are a few of them after Darwin had claimed his commission!
Not bad harvest for a truffle beginner like myself!
Oh joy!

Picking out lambs..

Yesterday we went to visit a sheepfarmer to pick out two new young lambs for my sister who already had two - Hildur and Signe. The rams that met us were quite impressive, curious, friendly and handsome dudes! Future fathers of the sheep group, so to speak..

Here Sis is picking out one of the year old lambs to bring along as soon as she has been impregnated. The lambs alas. Not my sister!

Sheep are never called "sheep" in Gotland. They are all "lambs" - young or old. The babies are simply called baby lambs ="Lammungar" (Swedish).

Here is one of the lambs we picked. We already named her Gertrude! The other sweetie is pitch black and will probably be named Ruth. All very old fashioned names picked from our grandmothers´generation.

It will take a while until they can be transported back to the farm. Meanwhile, autum is
falling and the colors of Gotland change..

Pardon my French!

I finally got my hands on a small blackboard in Visby..I had been looking for one for a long time to give my kitchen a bit of a French ambiance! So there I was working away with my chalkstick dreaming up a mock menu of Coquiller St Jacques and Bisque aux Crevettes and alike..(One has to pamper one´s dreams a bit extra in the creeping darkness of the oncoming winter..) The homemade Limonchello in the decanter is Italian inspired though! As is the photo of the mouthwatering crevettes above shot in Sardinia by my friend and excellent photographer, Helmut B. But of course there are no fresh seafood like that in Gotland. These things you will find on the West coast of Sweden far away from here.

These little delicacies are what we get here though. "Crawdads" I think they call them in the Deep South. (I fished a lot of those in Northern California lakes in the past when they were considered cheap soulfoods still.) The crayfish are found in fresh waterlakes and rivers here. I actually put a few catching cages into the pond behind my house but there was nothing.. These ones are bought. And from China! Sic! The ones caught in Swedish are sooo expensive!

We will have to do with the rustic Cruditées des Saison of the farming belt instead.
Presently I collect heaps of walnuts! No so bad after all! And HUGE country eggs!
This is my sister´s pantry ajacent to her kitchen which she recently created from a wardrobe full of old clothing.. It now holds rows of jars of country goodies and preservatives instead. A resonable switch one would think! Who doesn´t dream of a walk-in pantry?

I love this old hardboard poster that is now hanging in the new kitchen. French. No doubt! It´s been with me for a long time now and in travelled with me to many places where I lived over the years.
Today I fell for this little shabby-chic-bench in white wash in a nice shop in Visby . It will do nicely in the narrow hallway in my house I think.

The last flowers of the season are brought in from the garden to decorate the dining table. I tried to take a impressionistic (French again) view on these last signs of summer with this photo..
Now this you could call a blackboard! Oh Paris!
My son - the gourmet - who lived there in the French capital for many years. What he does not know about wines and dines is probaby not worth knowing.
We- mothers of minor blackboards- have to try harder!

Have you seen the very first kiss on the silver screen?

Thomas Edison’s movie, The Kiss, was the first to show a kiss on film. The 1896 film is around 47 seconds long, and depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical, The Widow Jones. The film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown.
Hmm.
We come a long way..

The New Yorker:

Fragments of postscript: Leo Cullum. Posted by Robert Mankoff:

"The cartoonist Leo Cullum died yesterday, at age sixty-eight. He had a long career with The New Yorker, publishing eight hundred and seventeen cartoons since 1977, and a long career with TWA, where he flew the big jets for thirty-four years.."

"This cat cartoon appeared about a month after 9/11, and in that dour and fearful time Leo showed us that laughter was not only permissible but necessary. He had already led the way with the very first cartoon we published after 9/11:"

"..Leo assured us that, autopilot technology notwithstanding, he never worked on cartoons while airborne. He might have thought of ideas, but he inked his cartoons on layovers in such glamorous locations as Rome, Paris, Rio, and Newark."

"When he retired from flying, the cartoons kept coming from Malibu, California, as wonderful as ever..."
Read more

A great place to spend an afternoon..

..and to have a vegetarian lunch based on fresh produce from Gotland is Leva Kungslador
just south of Visby. It is a great meeting place for any one interested in an ecological lifestyle.
It is beautifully situated in typical old Gotland limestone barns here called "The Kings Barns". I have been going there off and on lately to have lunch with friends in their laidback ambiance.

And to buy their inspiring groceries and produce from the store that smells like I imagine stores used to smell before plastic sealed off the pleasures of sensitivity: spices, freshly stone baked bread, apples, home made soap, candies, honey and candies.

In the eatery there is a library corner filled with books and cosy sofas were you can easily spend a rainy afternoon reading and sipping a mint tea and have a piece of home made cake.

The Barns are also a meeting place for all kinds of functions like lectures, exhibitions, pottery making and alike. And the food - is like a dream! Mmmmm mm.
A visit to Leva - Leva means to live in Swedish - is compulsory for any Visby visitor!

Leva Kungslador

Three sisters..

..came to visit me last Sunday. Three lovely graces. Not any sisters. No.
They all grew up in the house I bought. And came to see the changes the house gradually are going through.

They are all full of laughter and fun and tell me stories about the past - of what happened in the house many years ago, what the garden looked like and how they planted, played and about their parents and grandparents who lived here and about the closely knit relationships of the people of this county where almost all used to be related.

The great thing is that it almost feels like they now include me in their network of relations to carry on the traditions of the house - with some minor alterations and modernisations, of course. I feel quite priviledged to know them!

Fall is now upon us and Sunday night I caught these dramatic skies from my bedroom window..

18/10 is her birthday!

Her very first birthday as a mother. We all wish her a wonderful birthday and new year with her little baby, Isabella! Hip, hip hurray!