Bluebells and Simbelmynë

Before subjecting you to my terrible animal pictures again, here's a terrible picture of some flowers:

Esther loves bluebells. They're (almost) her favourite flower. One of her favourite things to do in May is go to places like this:

You can accuse England of many things, but being ugly in Spring isn't one of them.
Also no, sorry, I don't know where this is. But pretty much every deciduous wood in England is like this in May.

She likes them so much that it was one of the things we researched before we came here. Unfortunately our research was somewhat... inconclusive. Daffodils are a big thing in Sweden, as are tulips, but not so much on bluebells. 

So I found myself on my way home with a bag full of groceries (blissfully unaware that the milk I'd bought was the consistency of slightly-set paint), and I see the picture above. I excitedly snap a picture in the gloom (it was nearly 11:20pm so it was starting to get dark...) and send it to Esther and we excitedly message each other about how there are bluebells here.

What's the point of this story? Well... I just actually looked at the picture in preparing this blog, and observed that they're not even close to bluebells:

Seriously, who takes a photo of his wife's favourite flower for her from point-blank range without first checking that it's actually that flower?

So the upshot of this is... Sweden doesn't appear to have bluebells. This is the first actual negative thing about Sweden I can think of. Don't get used to me finding fault with Sweden on this blog though... Finding fault with Sweden is like criticising cake, or hugs, or Christmas. Besides, all the woods here seem to be just as thick with a white flower that I've never heard of, so I've taken to calling it simbelmynë, because I'm a massive Lord of the Rings fan, because this place is basically Middle Earth anyway, and because the flowers look just like it:

Sorry, this picture's from the film, not Sweden. Your blogger failed to get a picture of the real thing. But I promise it looks similar...

Sorry if a post on Nordic silviculture wasn't what you were looking for in this blog. I'm pretty much writing about anything I find interesting or nice or weird (relative to England) about Sweden. Flowers and forestry included.