Plants Grow, Grass Mowed & Horse Camp Begins

2021-06-08Friends, Us Standard

[Photos taken 08 – 16 June 2021, posted online 28 August 2021. Anna made it two school days before being put under a ‘be extra covid-cautious’ order due to her sharing a class with, but not sitting next to, a Covid-19-infected student. So far she seems ok…]

Life continued as usual mostly, aside from Emma beginning horse camp at a new horse-camp, as the other one up and moved to the north of the country!

The garden finally decided it was time to flower a bit, and grass needed mowing. A movie was seen in a movie theater, Finnur mastered making and fastening fly-nets, we attended a confirmation party, and I started a new psoriasis treatment. (50-ish images total)

Tuesday 08 June 2021

A flowering tree in the backyard.
We had kept putting the plants out in the daytime, and then taking them in again at night as it was still coooold then. As the weather forecast was at or above freezing for the foreseeable future, some of these got planted out that day.
The sweet peas had been declared a ‘cold-weather-crop’ and had gotten a permanent place out on the deck.
The grass got mowed.
The lemon thyme survived the winter in that pot and thrived over the rest of the summer, even flowered! The new additions (the tall ones) had a harder time.
Long pots got partially populated.
The gardener.
I took out my fancy lens, tried a few photos. I think I need to set the camera to take photos on a timer so I’m not shaking it so much when I press the shutter with my finger.
Here pretty pretty flowers…
There will be berries.
I’m too impatient to do plant photos “properly”. The right combo of opening length and aperture should enable the branch to be in focus but the background to remain blurred.
Potential wall photo…
This entire plant regrows every year. It’s so pretty!

Wednesday 09 June 2021

Funny to get confirmation that the selfie camera on the front mirrors reality! This is me and Anna going INTO a MOVIE THEATER to watch In the Heights! It was lovely!

Thursday 10 June 2021

Impromptu wind-shelter for the baby plants.
I made it outside!
The lake was still there.

Friday 11 June 2021

Dinner at Sushi train, again…! Finnur had already traveled to house #2 with Emma to start on a few projects.

Saturday 12 June 2021

Waiting on a red light, about to hit the gym which hides in that house.
Seen worse, this was probably 1000 m.
Disinfectant everywhere. At least there is no chronic sweaty smell. Afterwards I drove to house #2 for some house-keeping.
Finnur’s big project of the summer was making fly-net-frames for the windows. Such things are highly unusual in Iceland. He did something similar last summer, but the magnetic tape holding the frames to the windows began rusting which was deemed unacceptable. He therefore decided to make new frames and fasten them in a different way.
A man with his toys.
The grass had sprouted! Time to drag out the lawn-mower!
The flies get veeeery excited when the grass gets mowed.
Mostly done!
That country feeling!
My project of the summer was trying to reduce the amount of grass that was in the process of overrunning the shrubbery.
Step one: separation!
With that done, I cleared out and planted flowers in the separators on the other side.
The sky at a little past midnight.

Sunday 13 June 2021

In Borgarnes for Hrefna-refueling on the way back to town.
Yeeees.
That afternoon Bjarki again donned his confirmation outfit for yet another confirmation party!
Signing the guest-book.
Speeches!
Friends in attendance.

Monday 14 June 2021

Emma’s first day of afternoon horse camp. Our regular horse camp had relocated to the north of Iceland so we had to try a new one. This one was a little more formal with different levels, and it was going so well that we ended up signing Emma up for an extra two-week session, so she spent a total of six weeks at horse camp this summer, and progressing up a level every two weeks.
CostCo run, always fun.
We decided not to make more big lids, Anna improvised instead.

Wednesday 16 June 2021

That morning I made my way to one of the day-clinics of the hospital to get instructions on how to self-administer my new fancy biosimilar drug to combat my psoriasis.
The medicine in question. I thought is was interesting that the Icelandic text was placed in between two near-identical Scandinavian languages on the packaging. Somewhat disconcertingly, the nurse gave me a long verbal lecture on dos and don’ts but then didn’t have the same information written down, leaving me to scribble down the highlights before the leaked out of my brain. Not good.
The day after was a public holiday, so we skedaddled up to house #2 for a night.
Skessuhorn saying hi.
Finnur again tried to suis vide lamb, only to rediscover that it doesn’t play nice with lamb fat. I decided to leave it for the ravens overnight.
Aluminum foil to draw attention.
We own the land down the slope. It ends at a river. I’ve not been excited to make a path down there for the kids yet.
In the 10 pm light.