Summertimes in the Stegaryd Sjöbygget Garden

 

Queen of sun and sand - Jasione

When your are driving somewhere this summertime (in Europe), just have a look beside of the road. Sometimes you can see something shining light grey glow blue beside of the road. Good chance you will find the small flower Jasione, the Queen of sun and sand. In Dutch it's called Sandyblue. No matter how sunny, warm and sandy her place is: she will always flower anyway. Then you know it's summertime 😄.

Normally in summertime you will have less jobs to do in the garden, only some maintaining like cutting the gras and keeping weeds way. Unless you have a summer like this. It has been very warm for weeks already (20-30 degrees) and we have short big showers so the humidity is very high (about 75% right now). It feels like we are living in Indonesia... not Sweden with normally very dry and stabile atmosphere. I have been cutting the grass last week for some hours, it was horrible. I almost got cooked with some proteins of horseflies. So the weeds are growing even faster and we meet a lot of biting insects...

From beginning of June the temperatures were very high. Always above 25, some weeks 35 degrees with full sun 🌞 and strong blue skies. And it is still going on. While the rest of Europe is struggling with thunderstorms ⛈ and water problems we face the 🔥 risk (till now it is ok). It’s amazing and exhausting at the same time. Very nice when you are celebrating holidays, floating in a matras on the lake, dreaming away every day and not having and deadline. 

It’s less nice when you want to prepare the garden to open again end of July. While the fysik working you will get very sweaty 🥵 and uncomfortable. It needs to be done to keep the weeds away (or overgrown your garden), to water 🚿 the plants frequently special now to get the big garden (2500 m2) in best shape. We tried to work early and late on the day but met another problem. Because of the extreme high humidity the number of horseflies totally collapsed. When the midgets were gone the horseflies came. The last ones cause really big and painful bites. Not funny. So it is really impossible to work outside now, without damage. The only thing you will do is chasing away those flies from your body without finishing your job 🤬. In the end we decided to give up, we will forward the event. And we decided to enjoy 😊 the summer weather for a while. The only thing we needed to fix, is to harvest and pick the black currants, they will not wait for better weather, they are ready now. 

So when you are looking for news we are busy to take a swim in the lake nearby, to read a book in the shadow and meet friends outdoors. Happy summertime to all of you 😎. 

I saw we have been here before some time ago, only less wet and no open garden planned yet... do you want to know? Read this story : Summer heat in Småland Sweden