h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When my alarm clock went off this morning, I had not finished sleeping! From long experience, however, the necessary steps has been engraved into my brain so my body is completely able to go through the morning routines by itself. No amount of warm water was able to make any significant impact on sleepiness that lay upon me - so I was still yawning and stretching when I came down the stairs to take the dog out.

Whenever I come home in the afternoon, Castor jumps all over the place, pants maniacally, barks and whimpers, wags his tail starting from somewhere around the shoulders - a full, happy, high-energy welcome. That's flatcoats for you! In the morning, however, he just jumps to his feet, sneezes a few times and trots off towards the rear door. Maybe dogs also work on morning routine levels?

It rained. Not cats and dogs, just a very insistent drizzle. The kind that leaves you wet inside half an hour. The Rain God would have a number for it. 117, very likely...

Dog into the car, me into the car. Off to the nearby forest. A big yawn took me out of the car, the dog took off. A rainy morning forest contains all sorts of exiting smells for his nose. I really believe it's the equivalent to me reading the morning paper when I get back...

I started walking slowly down the regular path, looking a bit around for the appearance of spring proper - the light green colour of budding beech tree leaves. Surely, as for the last few days, you could see a few of the youngest, thinnest trees being green - and the large trees beginning to show leaves on the lowest branches. It seems as if the light and warmth of spring make the saps rise slowly from the ground, making the leaves come out slowly from the bottom to the top...

Through the pine part of the forest. No green leaves here - just the usual dark green of the needles. Walking through the next patch of beech, I realised that the birds were really at it. Larks, sparrows, blue tits - I don't know the voices of each of them well enough to tell them apart. But they were chirping away rather loudly - whether it was to lure this season's only one to their nest or to mark a hardly earned territory I don't know. Or maybe just to wake me up - anyway, I did allow myself a little warm smile.

Then, turning right down a different path - BANG! A bolt of sheer green jolted my retina and stopped me dead in the tracks. A big beech, by the size of it surely 100 years old or more, was all covered in delicately green leaves. Standing amidst all the other dark trunks with only a little bit of green here and there, the sight was spectacular enough to stop my breath for a moment. Wow...

I tend to think of the forest as My Forest - at least at that time of day. I see deer for a moment or two far more often than I see other human beings down there at that time of morning.

Spring has come to My Forest at last

Very nice writing!

*breathes in the scent of wet earth*

I'm glad to hear that you're full of the joys of spring, SV!

Unfortunately, it is raining here in northern England!

all!

Sunshine and 17°C when I drove home

Ti - your Stockholm station story probably pulled this one out of the closet. Kind of, at least

Oops - Ormy Long time, no write...

*dreams about Denmark*

Such a beautiful place... I want to go there again some day.

You're always welcome

Have to - probably not back later today (meeting later tonight)...

- I forgot the anemones

Where? Where?

Two answers to the question, really...

Forgot to write about them - they're literally all over the forest atm. Barely open in the mornings, just tiny whites against the green carpet of their leaves.

And forgot to water the ones I brought home from the forest the other day. Not too much there to write about...

They're still there I just did a 5-6 km bike ride through the forest just for fun and being there...

Actually, in visual terms, it's quite stunning. You get the big patches of the dark green leaves of the anemones on the ground - and then the contrast of the sheer light green leaves of the beeches.



Spring truly is a miracle.

The spring is very late this year around here. I was out hitchhiking this weekend, everything looked like early April. No leaves on the trees, almost no grass, only very few birds...

I am waiting.

*tries to push some nice weather eastwards*

It'll come

It's kinda wet here now and then - but in general terms OK. In fact, probably the somewhat cool weather makes the light-green spring draw out a little -- which is by me.

We have that April Fool's weather today.
The sun is shining like hot pancake and everything seems so spring and - it's only +1C! I am trying to talk my kids into warm clothes...

*decides not to mention today's weather forecast. Instead, keeps trying to push some of it eastwards*

We had a really nice weather for Valborgsmässoafton (you know, lighting big fires, shedding skin, turning from a Winterswede to a Summerswede...) - as if someone had ordered it; sunshine and warm (+20º) - but the next day (May 1st) it was cold and rainy again...

Not so bad atm, +13C and still sunny.
Valpurg's Night was ever so cold. Do you have longtimer forecasts for your region? I mean I will travel in July. I shall be in Sweden for sure and Norway or Denmark is in plan too. In July, that is. Here they say that the summer will be in July. You know, those old men knowing everything about hedgehog's fat and so on.

Let's see... best summer months will be July and August, with 80% certainty, said by a German professor who has an average of 75% correct prognoses

The second half of July sounds fine then.