She's Got The Look

Most of us Canadians, when we think of ‘The Queen’ we think of …

not…

But it is kind of funny to realize that there are a whole lotta other ‘Royals’ in the world. Did you know the country that is known as being the most progressive, modern, forward thinking country in the world is actually a monarchy? A constitutional monarchy.

Luckily, we Canadians can also relate to the inherent paradox of being a democratic unstratified society which is technically ruled by an undemocratic, hierarchical handful of people born with a divine birthright to rule.

Let me introduce you to the Swedish Royal Family. And when I say Swedish royalty, I don’t mean ABBA, or Dolph Lundgren.

There is mom and dad, King Carl Gustav and Queen Silvia.

Then there is Crown Princess Victoria.

Her sister Princess Madeleine. (The Swedish royal family isn’t immune to scandal either. Princess Madeleine’s engagement recently ended after finding out her Fiance had a one night stand with a Norwegian handball star. Yes, apparently ‘handball’ can have stars.)

And last of the Royal children is Orlando Bloom. I mean, Prince Carl Philip.

In Sweden, the royal family has been in the spotlight lately because yesterday was the royal wedding of the Crown Princess Victoria, who was marrying a commoner, her former gym trainer, Daniel Westling.

Much of Sweden has been looking forward to the royal wedding for at least a year now with major preparations going into the wedding so that there were ‘official’ chocolates, candies, napkins, coffee beans of the royal wedding. The actual event was covered for about 4 days on the Swedish TV (SVT) channels.

A royal wedding is a very special thing.

Where else would you see Roxette reunite to perform “The Look” for a televised wedding rehersal dinner?

Since it was pouring rain all day long yesterday, we spent our afternoon flipping between one set of very happy royals celebrating, and a second set of royals with not too much to celebrate.

Hemlig Trägård

Secret Garden

We have now spent a year in Umeå and are heading into our second summer here. Now that we know what to expect, we are going to make sure to enjoy every possible moment of summer that we can.

One way we plan to do this is we have got ourselves a plot in the local Koloniträgård, or allotment garden. Although I am a plant biologist, I have never actually grown a garden. I have planted a lot of flax, Arabidopsis, tobacco, poplar, and hemp for my work, and I have planted flowers in the yard in our condo back home. But never have I grown vegetables.

We started working at the garden last weekend, this was the same time we saw the garden for the first time. The Koloniträgård was tucked away in a clearing in a forest, one would never find it unless by accident. As we pulled up (on our bikes of course), we saw what looked like a tiny little village of gardens.

Anyone who has ever backpacked through Europe, or at least traveled by train, may have seen these allotment gardens tucked away along the sides of the tracks, looking somehow like a cross between a shanty town and Bilbo Baggins’s Little Hobbiton. As we wandered through the gardens we saw people were quietly working here and there, some were having fika on the patio of their little kolonistuga just enjoying the afternoon sun.

As we walked towards our allotment, we took in the mosaic of gardens in this small area. Some gardens were already in full bloom, or at least full germination, with well manicured walking paths, raised wooden beds, perfectly weeded. And then we saw ours.

It looked more like a lawn than a garden.

We spent two hard days working on digging up the soil, pulling out the weeds, mixing in manure, and planting seeds. Both Scott and I have gained a new appreciation for the ‘work’ of gardening. We both could not believe how much work it would have been for both of our Grandma's to always have grown such big gardens. We both had some sore muscles for quite a few days afterwards. Scott’s best comment of the day was “Imagine if our lives depended on this – we would starve”.

Our little plot of land has now been planted with radishes (radisa), onions (lök), carrots (morottor), beets (rödbetor), lettuce (sallat), coriander, dill, peas (ärtor). I’ve got some cucumbers (gurka), zucchini squash (gröna summarpumpa), and green beans (gröna bönor) growing inside our apartment right now. And we were lucky enough to get a plot with some things already growing (other than the grass, I mean). So we’ve already got some rhubarb (rabarber!!), strawberries (jordgubbar), and raspberries (hallon) on the go.

We were back again at the garden today to check on it, and since planting last week we’ve only got some radishes germinated. I breathe a nervous breath.

Here’s hoping that someone with a PhD in Plant Biology will be able to successfully grow something (anything?) out of the garden. Fingers crossed.