March and spring

March can be potentially an interesting month. The garden is awakening at the first sun light, the days gets longer and the amount of things to do just explode as the garden kicks in.

Romeo is guarding the entrance during a sunny day

During this period I try to squeeze in even more.
1) I repot most of the plants. I don't know if also other human beings do this, but Feb-Mar (and often even April, as this year) I focus on the indoor plants.

Blurred example of the lucky bamboo after repotting

In the years I got some kalanchoe and I have managed to make the family expand. This year I am trying to make small plants from the ones I have, but they are not very popular anyway...

Baby Kalanchoe

2) The garden is getting alive. I start to cut when I can some bushes, like spirea or hortensia, before they start to grow too much. I also try to remove the carpet of leaves that are especially around the red beech. Spring flowers are popping up quite quickly.

Strong grape hyacinth are blooming

Daffodils (narcissus) taking space from the leaves

3) Seasonal change of clothes. Sometimes one can start already in March, not this year. Still pure set of winter clothes. In this case the improvement is that I got two clothes racks that I have put in the tower room, where once upon the time we had some huge and space taking wardrobes.
Now that they were gone, clothes have been hanged a bit inappropriately, so I am happy to have thought of this solution.
When it will get warmer I will switch the clothes...

Racks at the tower room

4) Easter. This is lent time and I decorate as always the house. I enjoy it a lot doing it with the kids.

This year påskris 

Not always fancy, not always jugend

Sometimes we need to look also for things that are not really matching the house style, but they are "needed" and practical.

One of the latest upgrades is a minor item that though makes a lot of quality difference in our lives. We have of course a ringbell at our main door, but if the gates are closed, noone will ever manage to catch our attention.
The previous owner had mounted a wireless ringbell, but the ringbell per se' has been standing under the rain a little too match and with humidity, the batteries have given up very easily.
We basically have never had it working in 7 years that we have lived here. Maybe a glimpse of life for the few seconds I have tried a pair of new batteries. But that's it.
I then saw a "beautiful" ringbell that use kinetic energy and hence, it works without battery. IP44 certified (water resistant, basically!).
Yes, it is a gadget. Modern. Nothing jugend. Nothing from the ancient time. But very very practical, I'd say.

Outside the gate. Yes, the weather is amazing here....

On the left lower part of the picture, the receiving part is plugged (in the kitchen) - note the fantastic woven wallpaper...

We have otherwise, always things ongoing. Mostly, cleaning, fixing, windows...
One of the things we have prioritized has been the basement. Not that we are "fixing" it properly, but we are at least ordering it a bit.

An unsorted part of the basement

Our basement is quite spacious and has several rooms. The laundry has in a semi ok status, then there is a small corridor that I use for planting when the weather outside is still very Swedish.

A big room where we have the ping pong table and the fuzzball table, with thousands of boxes I save (!).

A food cellar, that is now a storage of things to sell, some food, a lot of apple juice, some plants. It is dark and as most of the places in the basement, the cats have not had mercy and left a lot of trails that makes everything unfresh and smelly.

Finally, we have a small room with the heat pump and a small workshop. Though the ceiling has fallen and we really don't use the room.

The big room one reach when coming down has been used as a wooden workshop and repairing workshop. 

So, it has been messy also because when sawing there has been the highest particles generation that has spread generously everywhere.

Making it impossible to paint... (so we have entered in a evil loop where I have been blocked in the windows renovation, while Mattias was working on the wooden outdoor dryer).

Still a lot to do, but a bit more order

So, we have started to move things around, to make more space and to avoid this stall situation. The sawing equipment will be moved in the heat pump room and I just need to sort out all the mess I have in the painting area. And actually paint...

The repairing station

We have though successfully found a better position for the repairing corner. We have a tendency to seldom throw items, even if they are in a quite broken status. We do our best to fix them... sometimes we give up. More often we can use them a big more.

Our basement is not exactly "cosy" or hyper fresh. We would need to fix it. But for the moment at least we need to clean it and make it functional.

Let's see now when we can continue with this operation....

So be light

Having the right amount of lights and the right type of lights is of course a science on its own, also for us.
I think we have made good progresses in the light sector, but of course there are still needed improvements (some depends also on rooms that still after 7 years are waiting for a restoration).

One of the critical spots have been the "reading" light in the guestroom. We have had a relatively big lamp (belonging to Mattias' family), in a late jugend style. In search of some form of more practical light, I have put a Jugend table lamp, with a beautiful big orange shade, that can still be too far off to reach when in bed.
(And by the way, the shade is actually not secured whatsoever, so when I clean the room I am just worried that I will hit that nighttable a inch too much and I will have opal orange glass shattered everywhere - I bet I jinxed it now!)

The orange Strindberg lamp 

I have been having in the mindset for a long time to have some wall mounted lamps as reading lamps.
And then I stumbled over an online auction which sold the perfect ones (except the electrical cord being horribly brown and 70ish). I succeeded in winning the auction and after "just" three months we actually got the lamps on the wall!

The newly mounted reading lamps

The beauty of them is that of course they are jugend as they should, but they even match the big lamp that has always been in this room. Not a super perfect match (these ones are in copper style, while the lamp is in brass), but I think the differences are making a good combination anyway.

I think we can improve the cord and maybe put the lightbulbs in :)

Time to go to bed...