Ups and downs

I went to the hospital to see a specialist yesterday about my back.  The good news is that he does not want to operate at the moment because there is so much positive improvement with my training (the operation would have been to fuse two of my vertebrae together).  However I have a degenerative disease; inherited from one of my parents which means that the tissue between the disks breaks down and eventually I will have to have the operation.

In the picture below the healthy disks are thick and have much grey colour between them.  The last three disks (especially the middle one which causes most pain) has almost nothing between the vertebrae.

Last week my employer terminated my employment because I have been sick so much and can’ do my job in my current condition.  I think it will be a challenge to find full-time employment again up here.

Last weekend we were at the cabin.  Teres wallpapered the veranda that I built a couple of years ago

I had left my fly tying equipment at home, but found a hook, some feathers left over from Easter and some fine fishing line and inspired by an article in the latest issue of “The Bushcraft Magazine” I decided to make a Pike lure.  I had no clamp to hold the hook, so improvised using my Leatherman Wave and a little vice

I was very pleased with the end result, and in fact we caught a 40cm Pike with it, but I dropped the fish before Emma could take a photograph!

Emma kept both herself and Kelly entertained while in the forest, by crushing up Blueberries and painting stone art with the juice.

Kelly even made me a stone cake

On Saturday night the temperature dropped down to -6 C, the first frost of the autumn!

 

The cabin has arrived.

The cabin was loaded on the back of a trailer on Friday

and driven to our new house

On Saturday we went fishing with Teres’ parents.  As usual we made fire and grilled sausage

We have even managed to get my dad into green forest clothes now!

Emma caught 4 small Grayling, which we put back again.

and on the way home we saw some Common Cranes feeding

Cabin on the move.

I’ve had a busy week and haven’t had time to write before. 

The cabin that I bought a few years ago and put on our garden at the old house 

My neighbour here at our new house has helped by preparing the ground for the cabin 

and another person in our village came with a larger tractor

to lift up the cabin so that we could get under to put more insulation under the floor. 

Tomorrow the cabin will be loaded onto a trailer and driven here to our house. 

More pictures next time! 

Tying flies

Emma is here at the moment and today I have been teaching her how to tie flies for fly fishing 

Her first attempt is better than most I have made! 

These ones that ones that I make  (black with a red tail) I catch Grayling with

I have been training to build up the muscles in my stomach and back using exercises from a physiotherapists 

and it is really helping my back.  Unfortunately my pelvis is displaced and because of my slipped disk there does not seem to be an easy solution to get it back into place. 

Swifts and a weekend at the cabin

Last weekend we were at the cabin.  Teres was out on the marshes picking Cloudberries

and Kelly was in the forest picking Blueberries, which she ate on her cheese sandwiches!!

One day Kelly had nothing to do, so I created a fishing game for her.

I cut a piece of Willow and attached a piece of cord to it

and at the other end of the cord I attached a “Birch hook”

Kelly stood on the veranda with her fishing rod and then I placed toys on the grass below, and she had to hook them

and then pull up them on to the veranda

This kept her entertained for much longer than I had imagined.

Today I have been to Hakkas where Professor Susanne Åkesson from Lund University was catching Swifts.

Here nets are being set up at the nest sites to catch Swifts (Swifts here in Lapland are a little special because they nest in holes in trees)

The Swifts were weighed and DNA samples taken.  the two birds caught today were already ringed, but if birds are caught that are not ringed, then a ring is put on.

When young Swifts leave the nest, they can spend up tp 10 months in the air without landing!!