Sarah got her workout playing Florence Nightingale to her beloved and then snowshoeing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was content to watch fires and eat too much Swedish dairy, sugar & game and occasionally walk through unseasonably warm (what? global warming? See Scotland) but still magical forests.

Here I am hugging a white pine on a sea of white moss.

With the snow melted, that permitted us to do a little landscaping on the unseasonably visible ancestral ground.

This is seasonal change over many seasons. My husband’s grandfather got some bad landscaping advice in the 1960s and topped off the big birches on the property. You can imagine how tortured they look now and how the elemental landscape spirits must be suffering (See Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings)

I also found out that an ancient kind of gauntlet had existed on-site where people were punished. Thus, on New Year’s Day, we got out there and started healing. First we staked spots for new trees to be planted in the spring.

Here are my lovely Swedish mom and husband doing their dutiful best to act like spruce and birch.

Then I figured out a new design that interrupts the stark line of the run from the shed while providing a softer shaped path and focal point. Another revelation to me was the location of a spring whose end point had been planted over. Consequently, we are removing the shrub that obscures it to open up the energy. Since I usually visit this landscape at Christmas, landscape pictures may take a while.

So, here’s a shot of the garage ornament forged by cousins.

Finally, because Swedes endure a long winter, they like plants and light.

Here we are looking into the family living room

and before a fashionable shop in the old section of Stockholm.