[ɑlff-ɑlff ]

No more mosquito paradise, Sverige.

Back in Luleå I discovered that mosquito paradise has turned into a rink. With all the buggers gone and the water freezing, the place is slowly turning into my paradise.

Now, only my car and my wardrobe need a bit of improving to survive up here…

A walk in the marsh, Luleå.

Despite the not very inviting weather, walking in the marsh nowadays is really, really fun and nice. Guess why: the mosquitos are gone (wohoo!) and nature starts to show off all the beautiful colours she can produce.

Berry paradise. Norrbotten, Sweden.

Summer is fully on and the country is a berry farm with self service. Lucky as I am, I found a few very good berry spots and I came home with three of the Swedish berry favourites.

Spending most of the week-end outside, I had to busy my brain to distract it from the buzzing of the mosquitos and so I came up with a very new way to establish the “value” for berries: the BPB-index (Bite Per Berry). With this, you get a very powerful tool to calculate your harvest.

Vaccinium myrtillus (Blåbär): A BPB of about 0.01-0.025 makes Vaccinium myrtillus to the hot deal amongst the Swedish berries. As they are very common and they grow in normal woodlands, the BPB is naturally low, even for people very appealing to tiny bloodsuckers. 

Rubus arcticus (Åkerbär): With quite a low plucking BPB of about 0.1-0.3, Rubus arcitcus starts out as a real bargain. However, the berry is not so very common and the sole act of finding good spots raises the BPB to higher levels. As it prefers rather moist areas, an average of 0.5-0.6 is realistic. 

Rubus chamaemorus (Hjortron): The so called gold of Lapland is - as its nickname indicates - very precious. With a BPB around 2.0-4.5, every single berry is a struggle (but worth it). If you ever wondered why the cloudberry jam (hjortron sylt) is so expensive to buy, now you know why.

Please note that the BPB depends on the quality of your blood, your mosquito repellent  as well as the weather and can therefore be subject to changes.

A run in the forest behind my house.

I actually wanted to donate blood today. As I’m not allowed to*, I went for a run instead. The effect on the amount of blood in my body was about the same. A donation would have made more sense to me, however. The “donation” in the forest made more creatures happy, though… 

*Just to avoid rumors: people not in possession of a Swedish ID are not allowed to give blood up here. It’s paperwork that’s wrong, not my blood :)

Grillparty, Luleå.

We defied all the mosquitos and fought for our right to grill. I’d say it was worth it :)

Gammelstadsviken, bird sanctuary.

We didn’t see a single bird (apart from one flying far away). But we did see other animals flying. Summer is here!