The visit of Lady Spring

The spring visited us for three days. All the white snow on the trees that had been there since November fell down so they looked really naked. The warm temperature is good because the snow get pressed and makes it easier to ski on when it gets colder again. I love it when the crust gets so hard that you can walk and play everywhere on it. I even play a kind of softball with skis with my students if it's enough with crust.

The warm temperature makes everybody thirsty and they were so grateful when I came with some water.

I hope you can imagine their arms hanging around their friends shoulders.

This was Friday and now it's -12°C and I wouldn't recommend this T-shirt player to have the same clothes today.

Six years and an English submarine

The conditions when we learn a new language may differ a lot. If I compare my situation when I was nine, with my nine year daughter's today, it's totally different. I had never heard anyone in my environment talk anything else than Swedish. On TV and radio there were almost only my own language. The first English song I remember that I tried to sing when I was six, was Yellow Submarine with The Beatles. We were sitting on a table at the preschool with an orange turntable and playing that song on and on. Some years later came Waterloo with ABBA. But these were exceptions and I didn't understand why I had to learn something that I couldn't see any use of outside the classroom.

I can't imagine that my daughter doesn't understand why she has to do her English homework. She has been surrounded with English for as long as she can remember. For example when her siblings have done their homework or listened to music and films on You Tube and when her parents have been engaged with blogging.

I remember once when I asked my son if he had done his English homework and he was occupied with the computer. He didn't answer me so I was a bit angry when I went to him and asked again. Then he showed me an American film on You Tube he was watching. I tried to understand what they were saying....... But my son had to translate it for me!

-Well, I said, maybe you can do your homework when you have seen that.

Me and Ella F

It's time for a confession: My real name isn't Ella!

But it is my nickname and there were some neighbor boys that started to call me that when I was about ten. I'm not so shore that my parents wanted this. But I liked it as it sounded a little tough for a tomboy like me and there were no one else with that name in my village. I had heard the name before and knew that there were a black women with a wonderful voice called Ella. I can't say that jazz was my favorite music by that time but I thought that it was something special about her. So I was pretty proud of my new name which I happened to share with this famous woman. When I got older she followed me somehow and I started to like other jazz-singers like the Swedish singer and actress Monica Zetterlund and later on younger ones like Sade in the eighties and Norah Jones in the nineties.

I have almost been alone with my name through the years, until five years ago! Then parents suddenly started to give small baby girls the name Ella. So now when I cross the schoolyard I sometimes hear a voice calling for me with:

-Hi, Ella!

-Hi Ella, I answer back with a smile to a sweet little girl in a swing.

Shame and blessing at the same time

Together around the dinner we were talking about studying far from home. I told my teenagers that I had friends who went to the US when they were about 17 and now when I got children in that age I would never let them go if they had wanted to do it. I can't imagine the feeling of sending them away so far and for a such a long time as about 10 months. I feel so egoistical when I admit it but I wont' t be prepared for this before they are at least 19.

Later the same evening my younger one asked me to read a book for her, but I was occupied reading some blogs so I told her that she was so old that she could read it herself. But then I came in on Deidras post where she wrote about saying goodbye to her daughter on the airport who had been home for Christmas but now going back to another life.

Oh shame on me, I thought, what am I doing, thoughtless stupid me. The time will run away with this little girl too. It wasn't easy to read when I thought about all this because I got blessed tears in my eyes when I was laying there close next to her reading her old favorite book.

Video Monday

Don't know much about these two singers but I like the powerful song of an important issue.

Snow Lock and Tulips

Too cold for skiing and maybe also bicycling... but I needed to get out in the sun, I also got some inspiration from Bill in Canada. So on with the clothes and pretend that it wasn't -25°!

This house was built about hundred years ago as a summer Residence for the owner of a company.

When I got out at one o'clock I only saw the sun on the treetops but I know that every week from now on the sun is visible twenty minutes more. When I saw Bill's photos I was wondering about the water on my river. Was it freeze and ice like near my house even closer to the pond.

But when I got there I could se the mist above the water.

December 2010

But the little creek that I got on my photo last december was covered with snow. Being outdoor taking photos or just playing around in the snow without getting snow in the shoes could be a problem.

But my husband found these once and I guess it doesn't sounds romantic but I think it's one of the best things I have got from him. We call them snow lock, I love them though I can use my favorite shoes from September to April.

I told you about my visit to Bill and Canada but I have also been to Maldives today and admiring Kamanas wonderful photos so why not end up this post with a close-up photo of the tulips I bought. It's Tulip Day today but I always buy them this time of the year as a reward to myself for finally getting Christmas out (back to the boxes!) I wish I had made a beautiful floral arrangement like Barbara but this time I only put them in a vase.

Nuisance or Beauty

For the first time on this blog I have translated myself from a post I had on Jaknell last summer.

They have all been small seeds who get in the soil. There they got a chance to grew. Some of them needed a lot of care to develop and feel good. Others had to deal with it all by their self and it could also be extra tough when the environment made life very hard to live. But the individual's own strength have overcome the difficulties and even the most chastened has finally blossomed to show all its potency and beauty.

Video Monday

From one Dandelion freak to another

I started this blog almost a year ago but with no intention to get a reader except myself. I already had my other Swedish blog, but I wanted to do experiments and change the design so often and that was a bit confusing for my readers (like my mother) as they didn't recognize it from one week to another.

Than I decided to open up another blog where I could do all this just for fun. I also wrote some poems which also was for myself. But the blog needed a name, I remember that this wasn't easy. I think I got the idea from a photo I had taken earlier, similar to the one still on top of my blog. I am very fascinated of this flower in many ways, will write about that later in another post. But the name in Swedish isn't beautiful. We call it maskros and translated directly it is warm-(the little crawling animal) rose! So I had to check another language and English felt natural to start with. Found out that it was Dandelion, that tasted fine immediately for me. I have no idea how it sounds in your ears but that wasn't important for me than as this only felt like a play at that time. The problem was that www.dandelion was already used by someone else so my address had to be www.mazkros. Sooner I left this blog and almost forgot it.

I wrote on my blog Jaknell but when I read others and went trough comments and blogs I sometimes run into some very nice blogs written in English. I felt very exited the first time I wrote a comment on one of them so I was logged in with my Dandelion account if anything would go wrong . But I was also curious and thought about what would happen if they look for my profile and find my Dandelion blog which wasn't updated. So the only thing I could do about it was to start writing and try to do a blog that someone else wanted to read and get something of even if the language wasn't perfect. That was in May and I felt the same as when I started my Swedish blog that it was like a jump out of a plane with no idea about where I was going to land.

Looking back at this autumn and the wonderful contacts and friends I got, maybe I haven't landed, I'm still in heaven...

About a week ago I found an interesting blog called Tilting At Windmills and read new and old posts. When I find a new blog I also like to read their very first post because I'm curious to know how they all started. This blogger had started to write when she was in a life changing period. But she had a later post that really got me, a photo with a child blowing a dandelion and under the photo a poem by the blogger herself. I wrote and asked if I could put that on my blog and got the permission. Thanks Amy!

Innumerable wishes that by simply being here, makes them feel as they'll come true.

Isn't it bliss? Just remember the simple pleasure of childhood,

when blowing a dandelion's tender, feather-like puff

would make your heart skip a beat as you

waited for some facile,

yet wonderful

wish to

come

true...

Angel on Snowmobile

This is the only little glimpse we have of the sunlight this time of the year. If we go somewhere higher like on a mountain we could se more but from my house there are some weeks before the sun gets over the treetops. But the sky has been grey so many days so yesterday, even if it was -16°C I wanted to get out on my skis. Some wonderful person has made this cross country ski runs outside our house and along the river with a snowmobile. I can't tell you how much that mean for a ski enthusiast like me.

It was a bit chilly for the hands when I picked up the camera but I had warm clothes so I wasn't cold. I passed some favorite places where I had taken photos earlier this autumn and I like to compare the photos and see the differences.

Different ways of leaving tracks on the snow.

The Tracker herself in a natural appearance, smiles and thinks that this cold trip gives many warm-feel-good-feelings.

Video Monday

I have decided to develop this blog this year and one thing is that I am going to post some type of video on Mondays. Even if I am very pleased with my work there are something little tougher with Mondays so we all need something to get strength from. Maybe there will be someone out there who likes what I present as a power-giving-video. This one with Eliza Doolittle makes me happy even though I don't know so much about her.

If the video stops you might have to klick on YouTube and get another version.