Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

From the breakfast table

I am sitting at the breakfast table trying to decide which post to write. Suddenly I have three, no, four different topics in my mind.........a walk with Terje at Ringve Botanical Gardens yesterday arternoon, my Saturday morning Trondheim walk, more from glass in Murano.........or last night's dinner.

Last night's dinner is still so fresh in my mind. I am dwelling on its memory, smiling. Sonia, the beautiful Italian student who is here in Trondheum for a few months, read my blog and then contacted me, has been here for dinner with friends several times now. Last night she came with Chinese Yanan. Norwegian friends of us and Italian Matteo also came, we ended up with 10 of us gathered around the table.

The first time Sonia came here we had pizza. Serving pizza to Italians! Ha! What did I think of? It went well though, and with Terje's chocolate cake for dessert the night was a success. On May 17th, our Constitutional Day, I served traditional "sodd", a kind of meat ball soup. Again with Terje's chocoalte cake, and also with a yummy cake which Sonia had baked and brought here in a cardboard box securely fastened to her bike. Yesterday started with "rømmegrøt". I wasn't quite sure what the non-Norwegians would think of this traditional Norwegian dish, so as a main course we served "kjøttkaker", some kind of Norwegian meatballs, or meat cakes. It looked like everybody liked the rømmegrøt though, eaten the traditional way with grease boiled out of the sour cream, sugar, cinnamon and raisins.

English was our common language. Though again I wish to speak other languages. Italian of course, most of all Italian, but also Mandarin. There was a lot of talking, a lot of sharing of stories and traditions, a lot of laughter and fun. Poor Yanan, I am not sure if she could understand all our Norwegian/European jokes. 

Sonia wrote in Italian in our guestbook before leaving, Yanan wrote in Chineese. The one and only way for me to learn is to practice. I've bought L'homme qui plantait des arbres now (thank you Julie, yes, I bought the one with beautiful illustrations), and will try to practice some of my French (we hope to visit Paris this autumn), but what can I do to learn more Italian......... May be having an Italian teacher coming up from Italy during the summer.......

Thank you Sonia, Yanan, Kristin, Mattea, Brit, Hans, Torgeir, Marta and Terje for a lovely night.

All smiles

Years ago I was walking in Roma together with Ingrid Elise and her friend Veslemøy. The girls were around 17, both of them with long blonde hair, both of them beautiful. I loved all the attention they got from Italian men.

Walking up a busy street an ambulance came, noisy as they always are in Italy, going on full speed. Suddenly the driver spotted the two Nordic girls, without speeding down he continued up the street, his head out of the window, turning backwards as he passed the girls, wanting to follow the sight of them as long as possible, or rather longer than possible actually.......

The year before, also in Rome, Marta still a young girl. We had our lunch at a trattoria in Trastevere, sitting outside with cars passing from time to time. Marta had her seat nearest to the street, and her long white hair, her blue eyes and her beautiful posture made one driver after another look one more time, honker. Marta beamed.

 

I have loved all the attention my girls have got in Italy. My heart and my eyes are seeing their beauty all the time, how lovely to share :-)

Yesterday, with all your lovely comments reaching my blog, I had my "Italy day". I beamed. Even though the day was cold and rainy I had my time in the bright sun.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I am reading every single comment every single day, often several times. I am sorry I don't visit many blogs these days, but I think of you and I appreciate the time you take to read my blog and to comment.

Photos: Rome August 2008

The new me, or what?

I was only 29 when a co-worker, an elderly lady, told me that she saw the first grey hair on my head. I removed it, and from then on I did a grey hair check in front of the mirror every morning. No doubt I am the daughter of my father, he turned grey quite young and there was no way I wanted to follow him in this. Not at 29!

I started to colour my hair in my early fourties, telling myself that I would stop when I turned 50. My half a century birthday came and I didn't have the courage! So I kept on with my monthly visits to my dear hairdresser.

I'll not bore you with my colouring stories........Finally in early March I told Elin, my hairdresser through alot of years, that that day she was colouring my hair for the last time! My decicion was taken. Finally.

Weeks later I wrote about my growing grey hair on facebook and comments came in like a rush hour queue. Most of them nice and encouraging, a few made me feel offended and sad. I learn a lot about the importance of being nice then, nice and encouraging even when telling the truth.....

I never went back on my decision though and today, almost three months after I stopped colouring my hair, I can look in the mirror and say to myself:

You did the right thing Britt-Arnhild

Do you have a hair story to tell?   

Blessing #5, cupcakes

I am counting my blessings. Every single day, every hour there is something to be thankful for. Not the expensive, "big" stuff, but the small sunrays during the day. I have started to make a list on Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods on facebook, and here is what I wrote there yesterday:

Counting my blessings #5 - coming home from work to find freshly baked chocolate cupcakes. Thanks you Marta. This will be the theme of tomorrow's blogpost.

 
Instead of starting dinner when I came home from work yesterday, as I normally do, the chocolate cupcakes were too tempting. I made some coffee for Terje, a pot of tea for myself, and we sat out in the sunny garden to enjoy the moment.

Later, in the evening, Marta said: "Mamma, did you read cousin Kamilla's newsfeed at facebook today?" "Yes" I answered, "wasn't it nice that she had a day home from school to work at home, making pancakes and all that" :-) Kamilla is 12 and lives up north in Norway on the Lofoten islands. Marta looked at me: "Yes, sure it was, but I felt so bad when I read that she had done the dishes and cleaned the kitchen counter........."

Marta is a great cleaner. Usually we find the kitchen shining after her cooking and baking experiments. Yesterday though she was so busy and had to leave the kitchen unclean.

I didn't mind the dishes. While making the fish meal later I cleaned the kitchen and I put one more blessing on my list. The small and the taste of freshly bakes cupcakes.......I looked over at Marta's recipe book which still was open on the counter, and I smiledf.

  

I am fine! I am counting my blessings!

Thanks for your comments, prayers, emails and phone calls yesterday. I am fine! I am totally fine! The "storm in me, the fire in me" was a blessed one, the ones we need to keep the colours in our life, and I walked it with my Saviour :-)

 My garden is where I often walk with God, well, I mean I walk with God all day, but in the garden God and I often talk together. Too often I do too much of the talking, I am sure God smiles, shakes his head, while trying to make me listen. Listen to his words, to his guidance.

These days I have too many friends to pray for in my garden. Not too many friends of course, but too many friends struggling too much, if you see what I mean.

Prayers in my garden. I get the Water of Life.  Thank you Judy for remining me.......

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I am counting my blessings each and every day. Over at Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods' group on Facebook I make a list.

Where the fire stopped

I need this crusifix in the small chapel in The Archbishop's Palace. I need its story, the fact that the fatal fire in the Palace in 1985 stopped when it reached the crusifix. I need Jesus in my life - to stop the devastating fires in me, to give life to the ones which are needed to live life fully.

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I have written about this chapel before as well

Today the crusifix is my fireman.

To cook and to blog about it. Double fun.

I enjoy making food. From the decision of what to make, all the way to the meal, eating the finished products. Yesterday I decided to make an onion soup for lunch. I found an onion and  a garlic, and seeing them together I instantly knew that this would be something to blog about. And as soon as this thought came, a lot of ideas for photos followed. Soon I was just as busy finding my old fabric collection as I was chopping the onions.

 
Onion soup, so simple, so tasty. And a perfect way to make use of old, dry bread. With old lace collected from Italy, Poland, Denmark and a lot of other places, an onion and a garlic look like art.

As a child I learned not to play with food. Today I teach myself to play, have fun, enjoy, create.

Knowing that this will be put on my  blog, doubles the fun. I am asking myself; what will my blog readers want to see, how can I arrange for the best photos? At the same time I am cooking for Terje, the biggest fan of my food, the biggest love of my life :-) and always there is a thought in my brain, no. in my heart - how will Terje like this.

The love of food. The food of love.

  Today's post is not for Terje though, but for my blog readers. Terje has already eaten the soup, and I can tell you he loved it. You are here now to read this post. I am a fan of food blogs, and I can't count all the ohhhhs and ahhhhhhs I have said out load while visiting some of the thousands of food blogs out there. I am an amateur. Just a tiny, little one, pretenting for myself that I know how to design food. Know a tiny, little bit of it. But I am learning, and I enjoy the path I walk while collecting experience. So today I want to show you how I work with my food photos.

In a corner of the work bench in my kitchen I drape a table cloth, or a quilt, or some kind of handy fabric. And there I arrange the food. 

 While I have one eye on the photographing, the other one is on the food. Nothing must be burned.

Too often I am so busy with the food there is no time for photographing.

Then, when my family is waiting for the meal to be served, sitting around the table in the diningroom, I need to shoot a few more photos. While the others are teasing me - what are you doing? when will we get our food?

  Not untill I have the shots I need for you is the food served. Than, in the evening, or another night, I have the pleasure of putting together words and photos for a blog post.

Enjoy the meal.

A wet day, a garden, a camera

Summer temperatures are somewhere alse, far from The Blue Garden. Rain is here though, we have enough to share, just let me know if you are interested.

Rain and cold can't stop me though, if it did I had to move from Trondheim, which is no option!

So what do I do? I grab my Nikon, put on a pair of old garden shoes and go out for a treasure walk.

And believe me, the treasures are easy to find.

Allot of greens. Isn't green a beautiful colour? My favorite shade of it can be found on the leaves of the olive trees, but then I need to visit Italy.......

The red shades, as the leaves want to tell us that fruit will come in a few weeks. Though this red currant bush carries white currants. Nature playing with colours.

A drop of pure water. Can you see the universe inside?

The water of life. Jesus had some important things to teach us about the water of life. Do you know his word and his love?

Thank you God for nature. Thank you for the four seasons you have given us. Thanks for rain and shine, warm and cold. Thank you for creating me with my senses so that I can see, hear, smell, taste, feel your universe.

Praise be to You my Lord

For Sister Water

She is useful

And humble, precious and pure

(St.Francis of Assisi)

 

Cherries, plums, and more dreams

The cherry tree is blooming. Can you remember that we planted it last spring? The soil is not deep here, you easily dig down to the stony mountain, so Terje was not too sure about planting a fruit tree. Would the roots find enough soil to grow? Obviously they did, at least for now, and the tree stands there lush, growing, blooming. I can't wait to eat the cherries in a few weeks.

With such good lucks with the cherries I was ready to start another adventure. Last week-end I asked Terje: "What about a plum tree? Don't you think Rastarbo would love a plum tree?" He knows me too well now to start arguing against me, and I also believe he saw the charm of a plum tree, at least the charm of eating plums, so after breakfast yesterday we drove over to the island Skardsøya where they have the most charming little garden center. They had several types of plum trees, we decided on one with purple plums, called Opal.

I can't live without dreams, and as soon as the plumtree was planted, I grabbed Terje to drag him over to the terrace. There was something I wanted to show him, something I wanted done. "Don't you think it will be nice with this, and that and this......" I asked. Yes, he agrees with me, but then there is the work, and the time, and the energy doing it...........Being a dreamer like I am, I only see the results, being realistic like Terje is, he sees the way we need to walk to get there.

We are the perfect pair. Dreams and realism walking hand in hand through life. 

Now I wonder if we ever get my new dreams created into life.

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Here is the cherry tree post  from last year.

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.....and take a look at this Lucullian delights cherry dreams.....

New neighbours at our cabin

We are all alone out in the wilderness at Rastarbo (our cabin).....or not quite alone. Birds and animals are sharing the nature with us, or we are sharing with them...... And while brushing my teeth this morning, something I always do outdoors here, I discovered that we've got new neighbours. A newlywed couple and a bunch of babies.

A week ago we saw no life near the old bird house, the mother was probably busy warming her eggs then. Today both the mother and the father are busy, busy flying to and from with food for the newborns.

My new phote lense, the one I got from Terje for my birthday, is perfect to catch our new neighbours.

I am not very good at naming birds, I am learning though, and Terje tells me our new neighbours are called "fluesnapper". Can any of you give me their name in English?

I will be busy today, enjoying nature.

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Tomorrow I plan a post about cherries and plums, and probably more colours. Thank you Robin for posting about colours at The Violet Hour. Thank you Susan for your post ovet at Paint, Poems and Ponderings.