Spring forward

Spring is definitely here,  even though it has been snowing several times the last two weeks. Surely, the snow hasn't really stayed on the ground for very long, but it has been really heavy and stormy snowfalls, not what you want to see when you look out the window in mid April! The trees are still bare but some of them are on the edge of bursting out with green leaves and hopefully flowers too.




















The earliest spring flowers on the ground however, are in full bloom. Scillas and Crocuses are everywhere in the towns and neighborhoods,  bursting with colors. In slightly more wild areas, other kinds of flowers are taking over. The anemone nemorosa is the flower pictured above, in Swedish it's called vitsippa (vit = white) and is such a pretty little flower.



















Another early flower and a relative to the anemone nemorosa is the anemone hepatica, called blåsippa (blå = blue). This feels pretty exotic to me, since I never saw it in the wild when I was younger. It's protected in Sweden and was nowhere to be seen in the suburban areas of Gothenburg I grew up in. However, my mother did have a small plant of the flower in our garden that I think she inherited from her grandfather (I'm sure she will correct me or give the more detailed story in the comment section). This last few weeks at work, my co-workers have been talking about how abundant this flower is right now in the forests so I got really intrigued and went out to a protected meadow where they were said to grow. And if they were! There were lots of them and they are such delicate and bright little flowers, I just love looking at them. I read  There's something special about very seasonal plants, you have just a short amount of time to admire them and then they're gone.
 

 

These pictures are from the previous weekend, when we went to a pretty cool place called Lekeberga-Sälven, some miles east, a small gorge with really nice paths for walking. At the end of one of the paths were a wind shed and a fire place just at the shore of Svartån, a river that goes through the city of Örebro and also provides the city with all it's drinking water. It was just such a beautiful place that I can't wait to go back soon and camp for the night there.