Month: July 2011

Welcome to the jungle

djungle

The jungle outside my bedroom window

This is the jungle outside my bedroom window. Most of it will be removed when they finally build the fence towards the road later this autumn. I’ve slowly started to remove some of the thorny rosebushes. Leaving me with problems like the one below.

root

Stubborn root

I dug, I hacked, I dug some more. But it refused to come up. Finally I borrowed an axe from my neighbor Lasse. And managed to hack it off. Haven’t held an axe ever in my life before that. It was a bit too heavy for me. So far have removed 4 bushes from the jungle. Only the rest remain…

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, 0 comments

Olive-tree gone crazy

Olive-tree

Olive-tree before re-planting

I have an olive-tree that I’ve had for quite a few years by now. For years it looked quite normal and grew slowly. Then, all of a sudden, last winter, it starting growing with amazing speed. No, it did not get any fertilizer at all. Just water from the tap. One single branch went high up into the air. And it did it again this winter. Another single branch going high up into the air. So it has now got a bigger flower-pot and some support for its very long stems/branches. And recently a new branch started growing on one of those long stems. Also vary fast. It has definitely gone crazy. And it doesn’t really look like an olive-tree any more, does it?

Olive-tree

Olive-tree after re-planting.

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, 0 comments

R.I.P. Feri Svéd

Feri Svéd

Feri 2008-05-10 Photo by Nini. ©nini 2008

On Wednesday afternoon, July 20th, 2011, Feri Svéd, husband to my old friend Ulla Svéd, passed away after a short time of illness. He was diagnosed with a huge tumor on the flank at the end of June. Then got treatment at home but went into hospital on Friday Juli 15th. On Wednesday his struggle was over – despite having promised to live until 120. (It’s a saying in Hebrew on each birthday, ad meaveesrim – until 120 years – as in English you simply say Happy Birthday. I just noticed WordPress won’t let me write in Hebrew on this page). Feri became 88.

Feri, Ullas husband, was originally Hungarian and Jewish (though he converted to Catholicism when it was hard times in Hungary – only on the paper though). He was 20 years older than Ulla and had his 80th birthday on January 6th, 2003.

He was pensioned long ago, but on his spare time he worked as a photo-model for advertising films. He was actually quite popular for modeling for those films. During the summer of 2003 he was seen on TV before the weather report several times a week. He was quite a personality.

Feri visited Hungary the last time just shortly before he fell ill. He actually fell ill when in Hungary and his friends doctors told him to go to a doctor the first he did when coming back to Sweden. It was then he got his diagnose. Then everything went very fast.

He was a great personality and always very positive. He believed in a life after this one.

He will be missed by family, friends and everyone who knew him.

Family Svéd 2009-08-02

Family Svéd 2009-08-02. From the left Ulla, Rafaela, Leon and Feri. Photo by Nini. ©nini 2009

Feri Svéd 2011-03-31

Feri at Fotografiska 2011-03-31. The last picture I took of him. Photo by Nini. ©nini 2011

Posted by nini in Thoughts, 0 comments

Spammers…

Due to an increasing stream of auto-spam in my comments, I’ve installed better protection against it. I’ve also deleted some registered users in the process. If you feel you shouldn’t have been deleted as a user, please re-register. Sorry about that but the noise-volume was steadily increasing without any true comments, only spam.

Posted by nini, 1 comment

Flaking paint and rust… is that beautiful?

Worn wall-cupboards

Worn wall-cupboards

Presently many articles about home decoration are about using – and creating – rusty and worn things. They call them “vintage” or “old style” or “country style”. You find them in almost any home-decoration paper you open these days. It can be furniture or things in the garden. The items can be of wood or tin or iron. Flaking paint and worn and torn corners or rusty metal… that is THE thing presently.

Worn bench

Worn bench

Is it beautiful? NO, definitely not. At least not in my eyes. It is ugly.

A thing looking like this would never enter my home.

Unless it could be restored, old paint removed, new paint applied.

Flaking paint

Flaking paint

The worst example of them all are those rusty cupboards. You either buy them as is, with rust and all (and prepare them so the rust doesn’t stick onto you and your surroundings when you touch and use them), or new, and MAKE them rusty with all kinds of methods. There are plenty of descriptions of how to do that on the Internet.

Rusty cupboard

Rusty cupboard

Images above are borrowed from the internet in various locations.

Actually, I wouldn’t even enter a new tin cupboard into my home. Not even if they were as nice-looking as those IKEA sell (see IKEA models below). They belong in storage rooms or locker rooms. Maybe in hallways. But today you see them in living rooms, bedrooms, anywhere. No, thank you. Not for me.

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, Interior Design, 0 comments