Preparations for the driveway project Sunday, 14-Jun-26 22:32:04 CEST

Sunday, 21-Jun-26 20:51:28 CEST

We received the stones of the driveway

This week, we received the stones for the driveway. It was 145 m³ of stones, about 5 121 cubic feet.

Monday 15 June

I was feeling broken this morning. The weekend was so busy, and my feet hurt when I stood up. Luckily, I have work sitting behind a desk. That way I could rest from the activities on the weekend.

DW went to work. The chichory plant had 26 flowers this morning.

After work, the sheep shearer came to our property to cut our sheep.

It is just three sheep, so that is no big deal for him. The thing with these ladies is that they are on the heavy side. They are keen to point out that they are fat. We don't know what to do about that because a sheep has four stomachs, and you cannot just prohibit them from eating. They had a tighter ration last winter, but now they are eating grass. What can we do about it?

 

When the shearer left, our sheep did not recognize each other. They called for their sisters, and this lasted into the evening. We went for a walk with the sheep. They like being with us because we look like we normally do, and they feel safe with us. We had some snacks from one of our cherry trees. Then the sheep started to relax and began to accept their "new friends." When it was getting dark, they were together again.

In the evening, we absorbed the news about Russia's attack yesterday evening on a UNESCO World Heritage site in Kyiv. It felt awful to see this happen.

Tuesday 16 June

Good morning! It is 13°C with some clouds, but it is not that bad, and I’m biking to work!

I have 9 gears on my rear wheel, but I can’t reach the top 4. At the other end, the chain goes too far and jumps off. I need to adjust the endpoints.

On 16 April, I talked to the farmer about this field. He had sown carrots here. You can see in the photo that growing carrots has been challenging, especially in dry conditions. There are large portions that are not growing properly. My carrots, on the other hand, are doing fine, but that is just a small experiment.

If I were Microsoft, I would make it possible to see the top 100 users of Microsoft Word worldwide. Then I would set up a top-100 team to reach out to these users and find out what they would like to see improved in their product. Then I would ensure the best suggestions are implemented.

At work, my left eye started to itch again. It was annoying. It is lovely weather, though—about 23°C. So, besides a toothache that comes and goes, there is nothing to complain about. I mean, I’m biking here, able-bodied, clever, ingenious software developer, and everything’s fine. The fact is that my health is fine right now, but it will probably not be better as the years go by. It is just a fact.

As I wrote earlier, I should program the lyrics editor tonight. So I did that, and I finished the sign-up functionality!

This evening, I started using eye drops. It could be that I got stuff from the angle grinder in my eyes. With the drops, things are improving.

Wednesday 17 June

This morning I woke up early to take a photo of the sunrise. Then I went to bed, hoping to fall asleep.

I think I was dreaming about programming sign-up services. Merida had been eating grass, so in the early morning, she made little puddles of emesis in the hallway on the ground floor. I just wanted to sleep, but she kept going, but somehow she did not put anything on our carpets. I cleaned up the emesis as she made more. She had strong abdominal contractions, with loud sounds, to get the things out, but it was not that easy—poor thing.

DW had a day off, and I worked from home in the morning. I had a productive day, and I was satisfied with the outcome. I could help colleagues with a technical issue. That is great. I used the eye drops, and that worked fine.

After lunch, it was overcast. I checked out the status in the garden. My carrots are doing fine with the 9V electrical slug fortress and watering system.

As you know, I like colorful flowers. I had hoped I could have a flower garden, but that did not work out. In that way, beautiful colors in the vegetable garden are the next best option. The more I get experienced in gardening, the more I find the flowers that I do find, as beautiful as anything, and surprisingly, they often keep their flowers for a long time.

	Garlic pods.
	Flax flowers.
	Thyme.
	Runner beans.
	Zucchini.
	Alouette potato flowers.
	Twister potato flowers.

I went out in the southwest field and collected grass. We waited too long before we cut this field. The lawnmower left lumps of cut grass here and there, and I decided to remove as much of these as possible. My current idea is that the lumps might block grass growth, which could be bad in some areas of the field. Collecting the lumps removes that issue.

I collected one wheelbarrow of grass lumps, and when I tried to push it to the compost, our sheep intercepted it and started munching on the load. I just left it stranded. The irony here is that they could have eaten this when it was standing lush and green, but they did not dare. A lawnmower ran over it, left lying for a couple of days, and now it has been collected as garbage. Now they come and eat it.

There was news from the G7 meeting, where all attending world leaders showed their support for Ukraine. Now it is important that they not only talk the talk but also walk the walk.

Thursday 18 June

We woke up early again. DW went to Brussels for a conference, and I brought her to the train station at 6:15 AM!

I arrived at work when my regular wake-up alarm was sounding.

This morning I only had 58 points for my sleep, and I think it was noticeable to my colleagues. I was puffing and huffing as the day progressed. I had a productive day, though. We had the windows open and no AC, and that worked just fine for me.

I also brought the car to the garage. They replaced the remaining headlamp today. The headlamp housing had begun to collect moisture and had to be replaced. When the garage opened, I drove there, then walked back to the office.

It was funny that I started walking back to the old office. It is the second time I am doing this after bringing my car to the garage. I made a mental note of the incident and decided I was not going to make the same mistake on the way back when picking up the car.

I got myself a complete surprise when picking up the car. The route that I missed in the morning was completely blocked for reconstruction. I ended up walking a detour much like in the morning.

When I got the car with a new, brilliant, clean headlamp, I decided to go to the nearby hardware store to see if I could pick up some better eye protection, bright and clean as well.

I have to take eye protection seriously now that I have itchy eyes. This is not something that had any priority until now. That is stupid, and I agree. I found goggles at the hardware store that suit my needs. I wear glasses, and the combination with the goggles is slightly uncomfortable, but it works.

When I came home from work, the news from Moscow reached me. Oil refineries encountered several hits by drones and missiles from Ukraine. The lid of an oil storage tank flew high into the air. Ukraine has the momentum right now. Not only that, Moscow cannot defend itself. Where are the defense systems? No defense alarms are sounding over Moscow; it looks so amateurish how Russia is handling the situation. I am baffled by this weakness.

I made dinner for myself. It is a luxury that DW likes to make our dinners. She was in Brussels at a conference. There she enjoyed a dinner at a restaurant. I made a Dutch-style fried egg and cheese sandwich. I also included fried onion, garlic, and bell pepper.

Friday 19 June

This is the midsummer as it is celebrated in Sweden and other Nordic countries. Most celebrations take place in the afternoon and evening, and they continue tomorrow. I am not celebrating anything. I had a regular day of work. Kind of, it did not start regularly. Someone pressed the bell at the door. Whom could that be?

It turned out to be the delivery of the stones for the driveway. One hundred and forty-five cubic meters of stones.

	Nobody said it was easy.
	At this point, the truck driver unloaded the bucket and loaded the trailer's bucket. I removed our car. I also set coffee for the driver.
	The truck's front wheels were hanging in midair!!!
	The thunder was overwhelming.
	The stones are evenly distributed and not so much in the way. Brilliant!

When the front of the truck was hanging mid-air, I told the driver to wait a moment. He was curious. So I said I had to take a photo of his wheels hanging in the air, and then he took one too. He was really glad that we had sufficient space for his load of stones.

This was early in the morning before work. It was not that hot at this time, but I was sweating when the truck driver left.

Pawel came along, too late, to check out how the delivery went. It went fine. He told me there will be another delivery with concrete slabs, but it was okay to put these at the end of the existing driveway because he had tools to move them around. We will see when they arrive.

No more exciting things happened this day, so I thought. Just a sheep climbing on a fence to reach the branch of the willow tree as if she were a mountain goat. A thick mountain goat. The idiom "When pigs fly" is used to mean that something is impossible. I can see that our sheep are not far from the impossible, and they are almost as fat as pigs.

I called the doctor, and she said I should continue using the eye drops and that if it was not better by next week, I should call them again. That was how I remembered it.

In the evening, a massive thunderstorm passed over the Netherlands.

Saturday 20 June

Most of the plants in our garden were fine after the thunderstorm. Some of the potatoes were lying down slightly, but not bad at all. The corn needed some support.

The chichory plant survived the storm, and now it has produced about one hundred flowers!

We took our trailer to the recycling center. I brought DW to the farmers' market. There she met up with other enthusiasts from the local wool club. She spun wool, and others from the wool club sold other wool products.

With the trailer empty, I went to a garden shop and picked up bamboo sticks to revive some plants damaged by the storm.

At the garden shop, I picked up some bamboo sticks and two strawberry plants. At the bottom of the carriage, an earlier customer had left broken off branches of some plant. I collected these. I plan to grow roots on these at home.

Sunday 21 June

Early in the morning, we were blessed with a beautiful sunrise.

This morning, the chicory plant had 140 flowers! I counted them by hand because AI will not do it for me. Oh well, if there is no effort in the writing of this blog, it is not that interesting to read either. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

It was time for a meeting with the road association. That was just our first appointment of the day. The association is reaching a productive stage, with constructive people running it. It was a great meeting. We did not reach a quorum, so we could not vote on anything in this meeting.

On the way home from the meeting, we inspected our plants along the road.

We even got hazelnuts to be harvested this year. That is great!

At home, the salvaged plants from the garden store had started flowering in their glass of water!

Then it was time for DW to harvest the garlic. She sowed these last year in bed B1.

The sheep has eaten sufficiently near the house in the southeast field. Just like last time, they are skipping the part near the road. Last time, I set up a fence to try to push them into the dangerous area. This time, I had the idea to cut off the already eaten part so they could concentrate on the remaining part. That was the theory. Now, of course, our sheep always has the last word.

Here is the first time they noticed I cut the safe zone.

We went to the PILs after lunch. The PIL's living room was on the warm side. MIL was talkative as she always is. FIL did not say much. He had not slept well last night due to the warm weather, so he had trouble staying awake. Their former house is for sale, though they are not bothered by it. The plants on their balcony were doing fine. The madonna lily had not started flowering just yet, so we have to wait for that.

Here ends this week's blog. I wrote 2331 words this week. Welcome back next week!