Wednesday, August 1

Sundö, 17:20

Today started out cold, and ever everyone moaned and wished we were leaving for Helsinki today. Then at the end of the morning, when we had finished breakfast, the clouds opened up and the sun came out.

We spent a couple of hours picking the blackcurrants off the five bushes. They were small, but last year they were non-existent. I thought about picking the cherries but there were not really enough, so I ate some instead. Last year the cherry trees gave every sign of being dead, when we finally cut down the bamboo that was hiding them. This year they have produced fruit. Next year, we might even get a cherry pie. After that I chopped down my last tree of the summer: a fifteen metre ash tree with two trunks.

Now I am walking down the road from the chicken house to the postboxes by Sundontie. I have been walking round the farm for ten minutes trying to find an image I have not yet noticed. This is a view that I have taken for granted, but turns out to deserve more than that.

In the evening Irma will sit chatting with Camilla when Mikael receives a phone call and they both leap in their car and race off. Linda’s horse has bolted with its cart attached and they will race to try and find it. It has already apparently badly damaged several cars and the corner of a house and raced along the road from Söderby to Osterby.

They will not have arrived home by the time we get back.