Despite the snow still lying around in patches, it feels like winter is slowly losing it's grip. The animals are more frisky and the new shoots are appearing. I noticed a few crocus shoots peeping up through the lawn by the front door. I was amazed to see them in early February, but I guess they know what they are doing. It's still cold - hovering just below zero, certainly cold enough to regret not wearing gloves outside but it's warm enough not to want to hibernate. And the sun is warm enough to feel good on your face if you stand out of the breeze.

The days are getting longer, too and I notice it especially in the mornings. It's so nice to wake up to almost daylight.

It's been a crazy sort of week and I've been flat out. I'm really looking forward to the weekend as it is one full of dinner with friends and lots of laughter over a glass of wine. Some new friends are coming here tomorrow so I've been busy cooking up a storm this evening (I like to actually sit down and talk to guests. There is nothing worse than being invited over to someone's house and they spend the whole time in the kitchen!) and then we are off to our oldest friends for dinner the following day. They live in a northern suburb of Stockholm and we haven't seen them since they arrived home from a month in Thailand just before Christmas (they fortunately arrived home two days before the disaster). So we have a lot of catching up to do. Both sets of friends have sailing boats, so I expect we'll also be talking about projects with our boats and plans for summer sailing. I've been in touch with an American friend who lives in Gävle and hopefully we may meet up on our way up to Höga Kusten.

Today as I was going to the shop, it occurred to me that Sweden has an easy, convenient re-cycling system. It's far better than anything I remember in Adelaide. We always recycled and my council area (Burnside) were environmentally aware and arranged periodic collection of recyclable materials. However, here in Nynäshamn the system is much better.

Most of the recyclable stuff can be taken to a collection point located at the local shopping centre carpark. How great is that? You simply bring your cardboard, tetrapaks, plastic containers, bottles, jars, tins, batteries etc along with you. Place it in the marked container and head in to shop. You are charged for shopping bags here, so most people re-use them and they are perfect for transporting your packaging to the shop and your shopping back home. If the bag is too old and starting to break - recycle it and buy another at the same place. In terms of convenience, the system is wonderful for the consumer - there is no excuse not to recycle.

Most people have these nifty compartments in their "bin cupboard" under the kitchen sink, but I just use my paper shopping bags and when they are full, I take them to the shop. At the carpark, I place the stuff in the appropriate bin:



Those ones take cardboard packaging and hard plastic (like toothpaste tubes, tomato sauce bottles etc). The glass is put in special containers as well. The green one is for coloured glass, the white one for clear glass containers.



There is also a system here for monetary refunds on some types of bottles and cans (pant). For those, there are special machines located just inside the door of the supermarket. You insert the bottles, cans, crates or whatever and are given a slip of paper with your refund that can be cashed at the checkout (or deducted from your bill). These machines have laser readers that read the barcode on the items. This is because it is possible to buy soft drinks from places like Estonia and Poland here. These have not been taxed in Sweden, are a little cheaper but the containers are not recyclable.



A woman was nabbed here last year cheating on the system. She had printed off barcode labels for Swedish drinks and glued them to non-Swedish bottles and tried to collect a few hundred kroner from them. Security spotted her and she was arrested. I couldn't believe that anyone would bother for just a few bucks. Surely it's not worth their while.

Anyway, I have a pavlova to get organised for tomorrow, so I'll leave you with a funny picture I was sent by a friend the other day. It's a motto to live by!