2026-06 SFI-D

June has been a major heatwave across Europe and it’s been hot up in the north of Sweden too. The major changes this month were moving to the SFI-D class, my mother visiting from the UK, work on the property and job searching.

Garden planting/growing

There are fewer projects going on in the garden this year because my wife has limited mobility at the moment due to a medical condition.

My main additions to the garden this month have been adding ferns to the raised hedgerow area between the house and the nearby road. My wife wants the theme of the area to be mostly green, with white flowers, and I’m trying to use the width of the area for a succession of native species that will be low maintenance in the long term.

Last year (or maybe the year before) I removed the weed control sheet that covered the strawberry patch, so that the strawberries would spread by themselves before the parent plant died out. The strawberry patch is now going crazy. I’ve removed a couple of weeds but mostly the area is just a sea of large and small strawberry plants covering everything.

I previously planted thyme in the strawberry patch as an experiment. I wanted to see if the two would complement each other, with thyme beneath and the strawberry plants above. The thyme varieties in the strawberry patch are doing ok but there aren’t many of them and the strawberries might kill them if the patch gets especially dense. We will see. There’s lots of different varieties of thyme in the garden and I like seeing the different colours of the different varieties.

There are also a lot of pansies and foxgloves self seeding around the property. I like plants that are tough enough to self seed and grow in the garden (as long as they don’t get unmanageable like mint or worse). We have some large patches of the large daisies on the lawn, which I have tried to mow around.

Although the new apple trees are doing fine, the five new plum and pear trees in the garden we planted last year haven’t recovered from the winter, with all branches dead above a certain height. They were in the right zone according to temperature data, so it might be that we had some especially cold days last winter.

Family Visit

My mother came to visit and I took her round the viewpoints and local destinations. Sadly the ferry didn’t open until the next week.

Agricultural College Open Day

We went to the local agricultural college for a special event day which had lots of stalls, horse rides, and tractor rides.

SFI-D

We started Swedish lessons with the SFI-D course. It’s a significant step up in terms of the size of the vocabulary needed, and we immediately had a lesson on “bisats” which is a tricky word order situation in compound sentences that I’ve not previously mastered.

In SFI-B we were both good students, but in SFI-D the example texts are more involved. We did also have some unrelated problems in the new class initially but it got easier towards the end of the month.

Job Searching

I’ve been applying to jobs. There are relatively few locally for my industry, so I’ve also been applying to other trades where possible. A lot of otherwise suitable jobs aren’t possible due to the need for Swedish fluency, which I’m not capable of yet.

I can’t take a UK job without either the post accepting contractors getting paid via invoice or without the employer being willing to set up a Swedish payroll which was so much pain that I don’t think companies are likely to be willing to do it unless they are already a multinational.

The ideal would be a well paid position in Sweden because it will tie into all the existing tax and benefit structures without lots of extra work.

I saw a job for an English-only position in a similar profession to my old employment. I got excited and spent a long time tweaking my resume and cover letter and applied, only to notice that it says they will review applications at the end of summer. Which is two whole months away. Drat. I’ve applied to other positions too, including things like factory work.

It’s also my first month signing on to the Swedish unemployment service (arbetsformedlingen) which has had its own learning curve. I wasn’t sure if I would be eligible or if using it would harm my residency status or future citizenship application, and so I ended up signing up late. I then discovered I had union membership but not the unemployment insurance (a-kassa). This insurance would in turn be provided by a third party outsourced via another third party. I forget the reason for not having it but I think it was crossed wires in the initial discussions with the union about what I should be doing.

In signing up to a new unemployment scheme I can claim from the first of next month onward, missing two months. I also need my former employer to complete a certificate for the company providing the a-kassa. It doesn’t mention what this certificate looks like but a commercial third party generates them but the service requires Swedish digital ID verification that I’m not sure my old employer would be able to qualify for. My former employer technically no longer exists in Sweden, and the payroll accountant no longer has a commercial relationship with them, so this might get a bit tricky and may be impossible. I’ll find out.

Cars

The two cars are continuing to be a bit of a nightmare.

The black car came back from expensive repair work, and the engine is running a lot smoother now that the flywheel has been replaced and the gearchange is a lot easier due to a new clutch.

Sadly the car went into limp mode in that it wouldn’t rev above 2800 rpm nor maintain 45 kph in a 50 zone uphill. On inspection I found damage to a duct mount that was letting air in after the mass airflow sensor, but the mechanic took a look and said that they found the carbon filter system was also clogged and cleaned it.

However there is still outstanding work; I notice the car is juddering under braking which is likely to be the front discs are warped. It’s waiting on a handbrake cable also, so everywhere I park I have to put it in gear and traffic junctions on a steep slope are trickier.

The red car was great but now has an ABS sensor fault, which likely means all the ABS sensors are of a similar age and could do with replacing. ABS is less of a big deal in summer but it needs to be fixed. In the hot weather the car also had an overheating warning incident on a short trip – which is likely to be a failed thermostat or temperature sensor.

We’ve not had the invoices arrive for the previous work yet. I’m a bit fed up of cars.

Digging out the ditch

Between our house and the road is a ditch that takes runoff from the road. Our driveway connects to the road and a culvert lies under the driveway, taking water from the ditch uphill of the house to the downhill side. The ditch eventually drains into a nearby stream.

Over the years, silt has built up in the ditch, and so also in the culvert under the driveway.

What happens is that in the spring the meltwater gets trapped uphill of the driveway and the soil around the property gets waterlogged. When it is really bad the water rises right to the roads edge and the road risks flooding, although that final part hasn’t happened yet.

It has historically been tricky getting the transport agency (transportstyrelsen) to expend effort on the ditch. After a couple of requests, they dug the ditch out one year which was great and reduced a lot of problems with water backing up. I asked about getting the culvert replaced but the transport agency were firm that the driveway and culvert are my responsibility. Which is weird because work crews with heavy machinery have historically turned up at 22:30-03:30 to dig the driveway with a 10 ton excavator, to lay new fibre cables without any advance warning.

So looking at the ditch I realised the bottom of the ditch was about 15-20cm above the bottom of the culvert. This meant there was a lot of standing water as opposed to draining water. I realised the ditch needed the sediment dug out and I’d need to do it if I wanted to have it flow downhill. It would be a lot to dig but a little each day would be enough to finish it this month.

The culvert itself is made of iron, with the ends mangled by excavators. Inside looks intact but there is a lot of sediment build-up in the middle which I can’t reach. I have seen Americans on YouTube doing exciting things like pulling a tyre through the culvert with a tyre on a chain attached to an excavator, but I’m a little nervous that the culvert would pop out with the force.

After four to five digging sessions the ditch was dug out and water was flowing when it rained. This took quite a lot of effort but it makes me happy that the property isn’t getting waterlogged.

Conclusion

Next month I will be applying to more jobs and attending more SFI classes.
I’ll add more text to this post if I recall something I accidentally left off.