Fika - Swedish noun and verb meaning coffee break

l-r: Stefan, Andrea, Haylie, Göran, Anita, Taryn

Morning and afternoon coffee breaks (fika) in Sweden are an important part of daily life. Gotland in summer has so many wonderful outdoor settings to fika. We stopped at the parish farm at Vamlingbo in southern Gotland, which now features a museum about Gotland nature, an exhibition about the Baltic Sea, an art gallery of Lars Jonsson, and a cafe.

The church is from the 1200's, the parish manor house is from the 1700's. The red arrow indicates Vamlingbo parish.

The website for Vamlingbo Prästgården (parish farm) is found here:

http://www.vamlingboprastgard.se/

The painter Lars Jonsson has exhibited his paintings at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.

Painting with Haylie

I like painting. It's the prep work I'm not so crazy about, scraping and such. But painting new wood is fun.

Do I sound like Tom Sawyer? It looked so fun to Haylie that she had to paint too. But we still had time to "go in a-swimming" too! It was beach weather the whole time we were on Gotland.

When Tom Sawyer had a huge fence to whitewash on a beautiful day, Mark Twain wrote:

“Say - I’m going in a -swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work - wouldn’t you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know it suits Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh, come now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth - stepped back to note the effect - added a touch here and there - criticized the effect again - Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

Somewhere in the middle of the process.

Gotland Traditional Games in Stånga, Gotland

Gotland Games are held every summer in Stånga, at their athletic fields. In this video a Swedish girl shows how to throw the pole (caber in Scotland), which has to make a turn in the air to land correctly.

Another game might prove the adage, "Age and treachery will overcome youth and speed". Unfortunately, the gray haired gentleman lost his match.

Mosquito control - another Minnesota sign of Spring!

Another sign of spring in Minnesota is when the helicopter comes to the wetlands outside my classroom window. According to the local Fox News:

"The helicopters aren't spraying chemicals, but broadcasting a material much like lawn fertilizer. Granules are dropped in sites where mosquitoes are present, then the mosquitoes eat the bacteria, killing the larvae that are in those wetlands." So that's the scientific explanation.

Painted Turtle On The Move

A painted turtle had come out of the pond behind Bedman's and was on it's way toward the lake. I only messed with it a little bit. They hiss, did you know that?

It had an injured carapace, but it didn't look recent.

The ice is out, let the fun begin!

The ice went out on Friday, April 2nd. A strong southwest wind and warm temps blew the ice sheet away, and a lot of it piled up on the sandbar at Pilgrim's Point. Already the neighbors started putting in their docks and boats. Our neighbors moved a pontoon lift along the shoreline almost 1/2 a mile. As we watched them go by, Tom said, with the past experience of a guy who's tried some ideas of his own, "There's only one good outcome, and a whole bunch of bad ones." Alex said, "That guy must know a lot more about engineering than I do." We watched them until they went around the point. Good use of a floating trampoline and some inner tubes. Click on the photo for a closer look.

Aaahhh! Spring Break!

We had the best weather on spring break! We took some nice bike rides, did yardwork, soaked up the sun.

Here are some little froggies calling in the pond behind Golden Lake Road off of Canterbury. The chorus frog's call sounds like a thumb on the teeth of a comb. They usually quiet down when you come near, but these guys were too excited about spring to notice.

If you want to learn more about the Boreal Chorus Frogs of Minnesota, here's the link.

http://www.herpnet.net/Minnesota-Herpetology/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62:boreal-chorus-frog-pseudacris-maculata&catid=41:minnesota-frogs-toads-and-treefrogs&Itemid=63