Spring turned into summer....

And we relocated to our little summer home. We still wear wooly blankets at night, though.

I am working from my incredible super compact mini work space now, very busy with an interesting project. Outside my window, less than a meter from me, a couple of exhausted blackbirds are feeding their young, in their nest in the hedge. Let me tell you; being a new blackbird parent is no picnic!

Someone dear to me gave me a crazy Venetian glass bowl, and outside the garden is going wild. 

Our peonies exploded, as if on steroids, this year.

And this year I am managing to harvest a bit of rhubarb - last year they were out-grown by weeds, because we were traveling all of May. I will be making the world's best rhubarb jam, with vanilla and ginger, when I have a bit of spare time (not much of that right now). 

Jam recipe after the photos!

World's Best Rhubarb Jam - at least according to me!

From Swedish foodie, writer and tv personality Leila Lindholm - and since this particular recipe is not on her website, I will take the liberty to put it here. It is very easy to make, and you will love it.

About 500 grams of fresh rhubarb, rinsed and cut into small bits

About 30 grams of peeled fresh ginger, cut into thin, small slices

One vanilla pod (scrape the seed paste out and add that, but put the peel into the mix as well)

Juice of one lemon

Half a cup of water

1 kilo of sugar, perferably 'syltesukker' *

OR add a bit of starch for jam making. In DK I would use Melatin.

(*a product very common here in DK - it is ordinary sugar which contains just the bit of added starch needed for jam- and marmelade making) 

Mix everything, except the sugar, in a sturdy, large pot, and let boil with no lid, for about 15 min.

Add sugar, while stirring the pulp - gently and slowly. Let boil for a couple of additional minutes. If you use starch, it is usually added as the very last thing, and then the jam has to settle a bit. Read the instructions!

If you like, fish the vanilla pod peel out (or leave it - it has lots of taste and looks decorative).

Pour the jam into sterilized hot jars (this amount should make about four jars = about one litre).

Let cool and enjoy!

PS: if you can't make the jam right now, when rhubarb is in season, just rinse it, cut it, and throw it in the freezer. That's what I just did!

Crash

About a week ago my old (old being the operative word), otherwise trustworthy DELL pc finally decided to crash on me, and go out with a bang. I work with a laptop plus an external harddisk, attatched to a docking station, and have a large screen on my desk, as well as a traditional keyboard, a cordless mouse and a pen + pad thingy (which I am in the process of learning to use, by the way). The particular way my workstation is set up, is a very personal thing to me - I'm not saying I can't work anywhere else, but it's like an old favourite overcoat, where everything is just right. The perfect number of pockets, not too warm, versatile and timeless, and you always know exactly in which pocket your keys or your phone are. You get the drift. And as to the interior of the pc itself, oh my, everything is just customized and arranged in the very particular ways I like to organize things - and I am fiercely protective of my pc, nobody gets to muck about in it, or install or reinstall or what have you, without my being very wary about it.

The thing is, I am not a nerd who knows just everything about how to maintain equipment. I guess I'm a typical old school creative sort of gadget user; I know just enough to keep out of support's way - but when the shit really hits the fan, I am lost.

So the other day, I just sat there, in my good old office chair, having a jolly old time with some work, when the display started to zig zag in some rather pretty, pink hues. The fan went whirring like crazy, and the whole thing sounded like an old microwave oven. My husband - the software engineer - told me to lock down, carefully vacuum the fan through the lattice, let rest, and reboot.

I did, and I all I got was this. Green, fluttering pixels.

Not exactly as pretty as below, but I will show you this instead, because it looks much cooler.

And gone it was. That is, all of it's everyday, vital functions. Apparently this is what an overheated, overstuffed old pc with a smashed graphics card looks like. Enter the husband - software engineer and life saver - with a gizmo, in which you could insert the disk from this stranded whale, and sort of make a transplant of its brain contents, into a new, fresh body. I was lucky, and lost no files, as far as I can see. Phew.

So now I am in the painstaking process of moving thousands of files into a new pc, and everything is just white and empty and smells like paint. I don't know my way around the neighbourhood, so I can't find a supermarket or the short cut to the metro station. You know the feeling. But I am getting there. Today I restored my hundreds and hundreds of organized and categorized bookmarks from Firefox (I've never tried that before, and it was really easy!), and it's starting to feel like home again.