Grandma's sour cocktail 🍹

After the summer solstice and several days of intense sunshine, the wind finally blew and it rained heavily after a long time. It was a refreshing rain that cleared my head, as if washing away the dust from my brain and heart. When I went for a walk, the birch trees were almost ready with their seeds, the linden trees bore tiny fruits, and wild blueberries (pictured here as a snack) were growing along the forest path. I am always truly impressed by how plants manage to accomplish everything smoothly during the short summer.

Here are a couple of amusing anecdotes (for me) from June:

A small pocket watch for women is called a Mormorsur in Swedish, which literally translates to "grandmother's watch." Mor means mother, and Mormor means maternal grandmother. A paternal grandmother is Far (father's) Mor (mother), so Farmor. This is very easy to understand. There are two types of grandmothers. Similarly, grandfathers are Farfar and Morfar. In katakana, they are pronounced Mor-mor, Far-mor, Far-far, and Mor-far. That was your mini Swedish lesson. Now to the main topic: Somehow, when Mormorsur was put into Google Translate, the translation that came up was "Grandma Sour." It interpreted Mormor + Sur (sour drink) to create "Grandma Sour." (The "s" between Mormor and ur is the possessive "s.") Grandma Sour 🍹. This unexpected power word caught me off guard, and I quietly laughed to myself for a while. Grandma Sour sounds like something you could make by mixing Grandma's secret plum and red shiso syrup with spirits and soda. It would be so sour it would make your mouth pucker. By the way, being in a bad mood is also expressed as Sur (sour). "Grandma, you're a bit sour today!" (Laughs.)

Next, the chimney sweep who comes once a year was, this year, a man who bore a striking resemblance to Salvador Dalí. The intensity in the eyes of the man in all-black clothes, and his thin, upturned mustache – there was no mistaking it. I froze for a moment at the entrance. Dalí came to my house. Dalí was vacuuming the soot from my fireplace, Dalí was on my roof sweeping the chimney. It was a restless 30 minutes. I would be happy if Dalí came to sweep the chimney again next year.

Recently, I was watching the news and saw a video of what appeared to be city officials pulling out roadside lupines. I asked my high school son, who interpreted the news for me, and he said that lupines are an invasive plant introduced to Sweden, and they have been increasing too much recently, so they are being pulled out. As a result of increased and widespread human activity and movement, invasive plants and animals might be a problem everywhere.

I had no idea about this and was surprised because I thought lupines, with their beautiful appearance and colors, were part of Sweden's traditional early summer landscape. I like lupines, so I once went out of my way to buy seedlings from a garden store and planted them in my own garden, but they didn't grow well. They multiply on their own by the roadside, but perhaps my garden didn't suit the lupines' taste?

There's a picture book called "Miss Rumphius," which is about a Miss Rumphius who travels the world scattering lupine seeds to make the world more beautiful. Looking at it realistically, would that story be about the grave act of scattering invasive plant seeds everywhere? Of course, Miss Rumphius is fiction, and the essence is the theme of making the world more beautiful.

Things done with good intentions sometimes lead to unexpectedly bad outcomes. The act of scattering seeds to beautify the world was extremely troublesome for plants in other lands. Inventions intended to enrich human life ended up causing suffering. Kindness intended to help ended up hurting people. Attempts to bring peace led to the expansion of conflict.

These are all various stories, stories we've heard, and stories that are currently ongoing. I might do such a thing at any time, and there are probably countless instances where I've already done something but haven't realized it.

And as someone who has come all the way from Asia to Northern Europe and been allowed to live here, I presumptuously spent another day today, eating, laughing, and getting angry, yet living peacefully and uneventfully.