I have been robbed!

Last Sunday I was reminded that it was time to harvest nuts from my Hazel shrubs - a pair of spotted nutcrackers were robbing me.

I seem to remember that the thieves of previous years have been eurasian jays. Last year they took everything. But this time I joined the harvesting and managed to secure more nuts than I have ever had before. And still there were more on the shrubs that I let the birds handle.

I don't think I have seen spotted nutcrackers before. They were beautiful birds, and I hope they stay in my area. They are welcome to more nuts, and maybe they will contribute to spreading hazels in the neighborhood.

Conquerer of cowberries

My stores of cowberry in my freezer have been running low. So last Saturday I made a trip into the woods to pick some more. I brought my berry collector (red thing in my right hand), and I set off to harvest.

I remember when I did this last - I ended up overdoing it. It resulted in many jars of jam that still have not been consumed in addition to frozen ones. This time I was not going to make the same mistake again, I thought. On the picture I am carrying a framed backpack I found as a kid. It has been my faithful companion on berry picking excursions ever since. Usually I am satisfied if I fill the backpack, but there were so much cowberry that I simply had to fill a shopping bag as well. The berry collector of course made the picking easy, but there is the need to sort through the harvest afterwards.

My yellow sweater was an attempt to avoid the interest of the annoying deer fly. This leather-like insect may appear in large numbers and they settle on anything that may resemble an elk. Experience shows that that may include me! But maybe the sweater worked since the deer flies didn't bother me this time.

But when I came home I could not find my berry sift, so I ended up hand sorting into the night. The result was 16 liters of cowberry, and again I can make cowberry chocolate cake and other delicacies

Easy living

It has been a wonderful week. A week back a friend and I celebrated that we both had turned 50.

We had a big party in my garden with friends, live music, good weather, food and drink and everything else we could wish for. As you can see by the picture I was all smiles!

And it didn't stop there.

On Thursday I had my last day at my job in TraceTracker. I handed in my resignation some time back since I got an offer for a new challenge in a major engineering company. But first I cashed in a gift certificate for spa treatment on Friday to "wash off" my old job. And yesterday, out of the blue, I learnt that a musical wizard from earlier times, Ken Hensley, was performing at Eidsvoll Rock & Blues Klubb not far away. So I got to get my head cleaned out with old Uriah Heep music as well. Big success!

I start in my new job tomorrow, and I look forward to coming back to low level programming in the hardware/software interface.