How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Sweden is rich in square miles, poor in flowers. It's just too far north I think.

Oh, there are wildflowers and some flowering bushes like forsythia and lilac, and of course flowering fruit trees, but there don't seem to be gardens bursting with blossoms and no one seems to have vases filled with spring flowers picked from the backyard. I suspect that if people have flowers in the backyard, they're too precious to pick.

Instead, one clips bare branches from trees before they've started to bloom, sticks them in water and watches them slowly burst open over a weeks' time, perhaps. It's a lovely ascetic beauty, albeit one born of necessity more than anything else.

The Swedish word for the day is blomma. It means, of course, flower.

- by Francis S.