Sometimes there are too many telephones, televisions (but none at my place), and people in the world. And too little flowers, dragonflies, and songbirds. And if one must work in July, what is better than to work in a summer house by the corner of a pea field? What is relaxing for humans is exciting for cats, so moving home and office into the countryside is never a bad choice.
(Loviisa, Finland; July 2016)
Midnight sun above Helsinki in late June. Imagine how bright it would be without the cloud cover. This is why we survive the long, hard, cold, dark winter. It’s either totally ON or totally OFF up here. Applies also to the inhabitants.
(Helsinki, Finland; June 2016)
My father cleaned up the outbuilding at the country house. Some of these pieces of equipment are 100 years old. And no, nobody in our family was a professional shoemaker – it’s just that everybody knew how to make their own shoes in those times. Somebody should catalog these and their uses before we forget.
And somebody should scrape off the old sourdough barrel and find out if we can make rye bread out of a 50-year old root.
(Loviisa, Finland; June 2016)
Stuck in traffic in downtown Stockholm for half an hour. The reason: lots of shiny-helmeted King’s Guards on equally many pooping horses. And a few hundred university graduates driving around, honking and waving. Ah, the easy everyday problems of peaceful Sweden. At least for now.
(Stockholm, Sweden; June 2016)
Much talk about science and little time to recognize that today was an unusually warm, balmy early June night. As I sat on the hotel terrace sipping a Provence rosé, looking at the Crown Princess’s house across the bay, I could have been fooled to think it was August.
I wonder if the Crown Princess and her baby prince and princess were relaxing outside, thinking the same?
(Stocholm, Sweden; June 2016)
As we descended through the clouds, suddenly there was an island floating in the sky. Cloud people seem to tend to their land as well. Perhaps this is the place e.e. cummings meant when he wrote “who knows if the moon’s a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky – filled with pretty people?”
(Above Denmark; May 2016)
Thought of the day: to be happy with what one has means not looking for more. If one is not looking for more, one is not curious about change and new things (unless purely for speculative or rhetorical purposes). Thus, contentment kills curiosity, and without curiosity there cannot be proactive personal growth. Is it, then, an impossible equation to not chase for more (be content), and simultaneously grow as a person?
Why is contentment spiritually valued, if it makes us too lazy for personal growth? How can one ever attain the selfless contentment spiritually valued, unless one already is enlightened and has nothing more to seek?
Thoughts larger than a glass of wine above the rooftops of Stockholm…
(Stockholm, Sweden; May 2016)
Here up North, gardening is serious business and all about flowers. Perhaps a bench could be in order. Or, if one has courage, a teensy weensy fountain. Or, for the most brave: a little statuette.
Kings and queens, on the other hand, have larger gardens. Mostly parks. With lakes, forests, and hills. A little fountain or statuette would disappear in such a garden. Kings and queens also used to get quite easily bored – if there was no war going on that is. Or famine. One can only host so many tea parties in a park with the exact same landscape. And one can only re-landscape a park every so often.
The most trendy solution during the 18th century was “follies”. Buildings made for absolutely no need except for to look nice. Or for example to dine outside with a view over hill and lake bathing in the light of the setting sun. One could just have a table carried out – or one could build an oval gazebo in the backyard and paint the ceiling with flowers.
And if a tea party turns out to be a bearable pastime and a summer tent was needed, why not build a Turkish tent out of copper? Or host the party in a Chinese pagoda?
And, folly of follies, should the king become utterly completely bored with his beautiful castle, well, how about building a little garden shed, with just two wings and about 30 windows, for the king to move into? A little like a boy moving into the empty toolshed in the back of the garden? The king of Sweden did exactly this. Gustav III lived his last summers in his “garden shed” – until he was shot during a Venetian style masked ball. 
(Royal Haga Park, Stockholm, Sweden; April 2016)
If I were a painter, I would paint the play of light in Stockholm old town. I would sit on a rooftop with a canvas and colors and paint the light of the setting spring sun hitting the ochre and sand colored walls of houses.
But because I am just a businesswoman getting a breath of fresh air after work, with no canvas or colors, I use what I have: my iPhone and my memory.
When was the last time you walked in a city and looked up? Try it. It’s worth it, especially when the sun shines.
(Stockholm, Sweden; April 2016)
I need the sea because it teaches me,
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.(Pablo Neruda)
(Helsinki, Finland; April 2016)
This blue marble 