Den blå hagen på Huseby

The first primulas

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

I have dirt under my nails again, and I love it. My fingers smell of abrodd (is that only a Norwegian name of a wonderful fragrant herb?????) and i love it. My garden muscles are sore after a sunny day out in the garden, and I love it.

The first primulas are blooming, AND I LOVE IT.

....

Mary A. Robinson's Primulas. The Complete Guide was waiting in my mailbox when we came home from our week at the cabin, and I love it.

Waiting for the Greenhouse

 

 

I bought myself a greenhouse for my birthday. It si a small one, but hopefully it has room for a lot of plants! It is still packed in cardboard and I don't know when we will be able to set it up. Meanwhile my plants find other places to grow.

 

A small paprika or sweet pepper seedling.

 
The small plant fills me with hope. With the new greenhouse I might even get ripe fruit some day.

Stubborn roots

 
You need patience, a lot of patience, if you want to follow the growth in a Nordic April garden. Still there is too much snow, but as it slowly melts, there are new signs every day that life is still living, deep in the soil somewhere.

Here a primula is forcing her way through the ice and snow.

Colours of the garden

text and image Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
Can you imagine a world without colours? A world in black and white? Our first television set was in black and white. I still remember vividly the day we came to my parents after they had bought their first colour TV.

Yes, I can well imagine a television in black and white. But a garden? A garden is created to show off colours. To show the world in all its glory. A playground for God's rainbow.

 
Spring is late this year. My Nordic garden still has a lot of snow. But colour preparations have started. For the time indoors. I am seeding. And I am filled with hope......for a rainbowgarden to come alive.....

 

Visitors in the garden

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 

With longer, milder days, the garden is coming to life. More so every day. The squirrel is a guest all year long, sharing the seeds with the birds. Soon he will be able to find the food he needs in the growing nature, but i guess, being invited over to our small bird seed restaurant makes him a bit spoiled. And I don't mind. I love having him here.

 
Last year a pair of skogduer (forest doves?) visited The Blue Garden for a couple of weeks in spring. The other day one of them was back. I spotted him through my livingroom window, and was lucky to have my camera at hand.

Several days of mild temperatures, and I am out with my teacup, with my coffee pot, with my book, and with myself.

Camellia, Gertrude Jekyll and some sun

Text and images Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
Sunny, bright, snowmelting and absolutely fabulous in the southers wall of The House in the Woods.

 
My camellia is moved out to enjoy the spring together with me, the biography about Gertrude Jekyll is filling my heart with garden dreams.

 
Life is perfectly good on a Nordic spring day.

The Nature Notes

Text and image Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
Yesterday the weather turned. It stopped snowing, milder temperatures started to melt the huge amount of snow we have had for months now. When I look out my kitchen window I see this old wooden bench, today the snow has melted. Soon it will be possible to sit out there in my silent garden, my sanctuary.

I am reading The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady. How different her life was from mine. How different her British April was from my Nordic, close to the Artic Circle one. How similar our love for nature is.

 

Love among the magpies

Text and images Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

 
Two magpies are busy, from early morning til late night, builting a home high up in the fir tree. Two crows love to tease them

 
A gardener loves to watch life preparing for another spring.