Keith B

By keibr

What's that flower?

The day started early as we delivered the camper van to our favourite car workshop so they can fit the air suspension kit we recently bought. It took longer than expected to arrive so they only had two days to do the work, and it wasn't even booked in! I was sure they'd say "Sorry, can't be done", but instead they said; "Leave it with us and we'll have it ready on Thursday." Amazing service! One of the things I really like is the international crew who work there. There is at least one Swede, a young mechanic who comes out front when there are a lot of customers. The owner, and several of the mechanics are from various other countries and either arrived as refugees, or are the children of refugees. It has a really good reputation in town, and this is the third time we've used them. Having written all this I really hope they do a good job as promised!!!
So early this morning we were handing over the keys and popping round to Lidl for croissant and pasteis de nata.
The rest of the day I spent outside in the garden, picking the last of the broad beans, shaking the wild plum tree for the plums, weeding the veg beds, and putting the dried logs under shelter. It was a lovely sunny day so it felt good to be outside. As I weeded I kept coming across flowers that we didn't plant but that looked rather lovely.  What were they? I took pictures and allowed Apple Photos to give me suggestions as to what they were. The blipped flower (I discovered) was Linaria vulgaris, the common toadflax. It looks lovely and provides food to a wide range of insects. I left it in place. As I did with the foxglove leaf crown I found. (The actual foxglove will appear next year.) Likewise with the mountain cornflower (Centaurea montana) and the rough cinquefoil, (Potentilla norvegica). I sound like a real gardener/botanist here but I was actually just using AI to feed me information. How much I will remember is another question.
In the evening it was the first of 10  FilmStudio evenings. The first film was a feel-good Finnish film, called "Grump" in English. The Finnish landscape in the film could have been shot around the Swedish village we live in, and some of the slightly eccentric figures in the film also reminded me of people we have known! The director is Aki Kaurismäki who has directed three other wonderful films we've seen (Leningrad Cowboys go America, Le Havre, and The man Without a Past). I would go and see any film by this director!
And that was today! 

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