People often ask me why I miss the US so much when I am in Sweden and I always find it kind of hard to explain. Usually, I start to ramble something about people being nicer over here, which always offends someone. I also have a hard time coming up with good examples, just because they are every day things that just make my life so much better one little bit at a time. But today I had such a great encounter that I thought I would have to a) share it with you and b) use it whenever people question my love for this country.
Went for a walk with Lakrits in the park while Jon was watching basketball in the bar. Saw an older man sitting on a raised vegetable bed, and of course Lakrits wanted to go say hi. He was just enjoying the garden and his cheap white wine in a plastic cup with ice (not a bad way to drink such things, according to me – I usually mix it with Fresca, but you get the picture) and was all to happy to have someone to chat with. Turns out, almost all the vegetable beds there (around 13 of them) were actually planted by him, because his neighbors showed no interest in them. As a result, he had way to many herbs and showed me around for a good half hour. After the little gardening lesson, he went back to his house, brought back some plastic bags, a pair of scissors and some paper towels and proceeded with giving me a little bit of everything that he had. Later, his wife came out to join us and we had a lovely time in their garden. Now, I have an open invitation to come back whenever I want and harvest herbs and strawberries, get my own sticklings or just hang out.
You can see the result here – a wonderful collection of herbs (spear mints, pepper mints, lemon balm, chives, garlic chives, parsley, oregano, terragano, sage etc) that will become a tasty soup tomorrow, and the leftovers will be left in jars to get roots and be planted.
USA! USA! USA!
