The weather has been so nice for the past several days that I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think summer has finally come to Västerbotten. Since Saturday it’s been warm and sunny with clear skies and only a tiny bit of rain (scarcely enough to mention, really). This is a very good thing, of course, but it has put something of a crimp in our ambitions to get the wall up for Lydia’s new room. We just can’t bear to be inside doing manual labor when we could be out on the porch soaking up the sun.

Even though I haven’t been getting much done in the way of real work, I have been working hard at developing my new obsession hobby, geranium-collecting. On Monday Olof and I went to one of the local nurseries, Alhems Trädgård, and came home with three new geraniums, Black Jubilee, Patricia Andrea, and Happy New Life. The tag for the Happy New Life plant actually read “Happy of New Life,” which makes me laugh every time I think about it. My mind keeps repeating, in broken English, “I am happy of new life,” and it always makes me giggle a little.

We–well, Olof–also got a fuchsia plant at the nursery and I’m trying my best not to kill it. I’m not especially optimistic, since I don’t really have what could be called a green thumb, but I have been particularly lucky as of late, so perhaps the plant will be lucky as well. On our way home from the nursery, we stopped by Obs! and bought some shelves and consoles to go in the windows of the Big Room and the kitchen. The Big Room shelves are now the proud bearers of nine geraniums and the fuchsia, and the kitchen shelf is still propped against the kitchen wall. Its time will come, though, and I’m already working on occupants for it — I got a smultron och mjölk geranium cutting in the mail today from an online auction I won and I’m expecting an Orange Appeal cutting next week. Not only that, but I’ve been in a bidding frenzy the past couple of days and if I win just half of the auctions I’ve bid in I’ll have more than enough to fill that new kitchen shelf.

As if all that weren’t enough, I’ve also set up a mini-greenhouse on my kitchen counter, under the flourescent lights there. I know it’s a bit late to be planting seeds, but I couldn’t resist and now I’ve got sixteen seedlings reaching their little heads up toward the light. These plants are well on their way to taking over the whole house, but as Olof says, there are worse addictions for sure.

Speaking of Olof (and shifting the focus away from geraniums, finally), he had a Darwin Awards moment this morning that I must share. He came out of the bathroom after his shower, bleeding profusely from the side of his face. I was alarmed, to say the least, but he assured me that it was “only a flesh wound,” then went on to explain that when he finished shaving he had some stray foam left on his earlobe that he wiped away with his razor. I shouldn’t have laughed, I know. I mean, he was bleeding and all, but come on. You would have laughed, too. Yes, you would have.