orchids and million bells

I believe I am officially orchid crazy. A casualty of working at a garden center. 18 is the current count and I will leave it at this for a while. The care for them is beginning to resemble having a pet. The tomatoes and peppers are growing well and I decided after receiving my first salary to splurge on a balcony flower box. Generally I am more for perennials, but I will have to wait a bit with that until we have our own house. But when we do get our own place I have visions of grandeur! Chickens, bees, maybe a couple sheep or goats, and eventually a couple of red haired crumbcrushers. All this and an eco-built house with solar power and a composting privy (for summer). Oh, and an art studio off to the side with lots of light and a small wood stove for winter. These daydreams are like soft breezes and rocking in a hammock on a warm summer day, or a mug of chocolate after coming in from a cold winter day.
Enough with the dreaming. Back to reality! (Possibly the most hated phrase of my childhood, which often followed a trip to Florida or Myrtle Beach) Todays reality is that it has been raining off and on for the last three days. I am longing for those 70 temps that we had early on. Not working today or tomorrow and have only two weeks left at the garden center. I am going to take a little trip down to Lund and Malmö on the 15th of June and come back to Arvika for Midsummer. It is the most popular holiday here and on the 21st of June in Arvika the sun will set at 10:45pm and rise again at 3:53am.
On a final and more mundane note, this is my new hair cut. Not as exciting as I had hoped, but it will do for now. I bought some eyeliner to "make up" for the haircut.(I know how bad that joke was, please send hate mail via e-mail rather than openly insult me please.) So, yup, that about wraps it up. A special congrats to Brad, Trish and baby Hazel and a holla to those out on the west coast(esp. mi shizza)!

work and leisure

Here is a little peek at where I work. You can look online at www.Kalenius.com.

The other pictures are from our picnic walk we took, a 10-11km mini hike. Mathias walked right by that snake and it scared the daylights out of me. His mom told me they were posionous. I guess they aren't deadly and not terribly harmful unless you are allergic to the venom, or so Mathias says. I will just avoid them.
It was really pretty and no other people, no mosquitoes yet either. Another bonus, no black flies at all. You Mainers would love it. A couple other random things they don't have are skunks or sugar maples. Sometimes I really feel like I am up at Moxie. I miss Moxie the most about home, aside from people of course.

I would like to thank all of you who answered about the glasses. I actually like the middle pair best, Mathias hates all of them. C'est la vie...and my dear Jen and Marion, sorry to hear the election went as it did in France. Maybe you will move back stateside?

help me choose!

So, as it goes I haven't had any luck with contact lenses. I am gonna try one more kind before I accept that I have desert dry eyeballs. But just incase they don't work I decided to try a few pair of glasses out on my loyal readers. I think I have a favorite (which are also the most expensive) and I would like to know what you think. Send an email if you can't easily leave a post here.
I have also included a picture of the window/roof to show off my little tomato babies. Work has been full time, or even more than that. I will be working weekends for awhile I think. But fortunately most of those hours are double paid, and for this I love Sweden. Bummer because it is the opposite of Mathias' free time. But there are some nice trails in the area and today he will sneak off a little early so we can wander a bit in the forest and have a picnic supper.