Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Celebrating!

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For many years now Terje and I have celebrated our anniversary by visiting old wooden hotels along the western coast of Norway. As we are flying to California in a few days, we found no time for a traditional hotel this year, and after a little time in the thinking box, we decided to have a dinner at home, with the kids.

The preparations started right after work.
Here is what I wrote on facebook:

All kids coming home for the anniversary dinner tonight.Ingrid Elise Lindland and Terje helping in the kitchen,Marius Johansen washing windows, Ingrid cleaning the house, Marta Kristin Lindland playing with my iPad, Øystein Lindland and Torgeir have not arrived yet! My fish soup seems to be too salt, but it doesn´t matter. I play to make the beef and the potato salad perfect!

Just in time for the dinner the boys arrived, and we were complete.
7 of us around the table.

Fish soup, steak, strawberries and icecream.

Four hours around the table with laughter and chatting enough to fill the House in the Woods with happiness for years to come.

Before the kids left I asked if they could come with me out in the garden. I wanted photos.
"No photos for your blog!" was Øystein´s immediate answer.
How could he know that I had planned just that, a series for my blog............

So, what should I do then?

While waiting for the fish soup to finish I had made a series of photos of a spider´s web out on the terrace. May be those photos could do?
But, no! The photos look great, but I don´t want our kids to feel that we are spiders,
catching, keeping them in our net, eating them........

Roots and wings are what we want to give our kids.

So here I am, with the first roses of The Blue Garden,
and a heart filled with blessings, smiles and laughter from a night with
my close family.

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Have a nice Saturday!
We will be busy today, preparing the house for my brother and his family who will come tomorrow and stay in The House in the Woods while we are away,
starting packing,
and going downtown for the stone mason festival. 

 

Rooms in my garden #4, my Sacred Land

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In the backyard, in the most remote corner of The Blue Garden, you find my sanctuary, my refugium. This area was a complete wilderness when we moved here 11 years ago, but together we have transformed it to a place for silence, for reflections, for prayers, for peace. Terje doing the digging and carrying of stones. I doing the planning and the planting.

To reach the refugium you can take different routes. I usually pass the greenhouse, then the potato field. I have a little rest at the lily of the valley-stone, and here I am.

An old bench, stones, some plants.
A place to find silence inside myself, the traffic outside th garden can be heard here, sometimes quite heavy, but I seldom realize it. This is my place for the special moments of silence.

I have the greenhouse now, which in many was has replaced the sanctuary.
Still, it is a place where I love to walk though during my morning walk in the garden,  a place where I want to sit down during my garden walk at night.

 

My sanctuary, my refugium, my Sacred Land.

We all need holy spaces in our lives, sacred land. This spring Martin Palmer has helped me to understand more of this need. Through his book Sacred Land, and most of all through our meeting in Bath where Martin took me on a walk of Sacred Bath.

The backyard, whe wilderness which we have transformed into a sanctuary, has become Sacred Land for me.

32 years later

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So young. So very, very young.

So happy. So very, very happy!

I can´t remember what the weather was like, this day of June 28, 1980. The sun might have been up, it might have rained.

I have no idea.

All I know is that it was the most beautiful day in my life!

 

A summer wedding in the cathedral.
A  dinner at a hotel where I had worked for several summers.

A young man with only a couple of hours experience as a husband, giving a speach of love to his brand new wife.

Their first common duty as a married couple,
to cut the cake.

But will they make it?

The wife is not quite sure.

How handy is this new man of hers?

Let me help you.
We can face life and its challenges together,
can´t we?

 

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On the day of our wedding I started a special album.
The goal was to make one page every year on the 28th of June.

It lasted untill 1988.

Lucky for us, the marriage did not stop when the album did :-)

Nor did the kids.

Torgeir 1982
Øystein 1984
Ingrid Elise 1989
Marta Kristin 1996

Happy 32nd anniversary Terje.

Thank you for days lived,
for days yet to come.

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Last photo: placemat cards for the wedding dinner.
How I loved designing them, cutting the paper, picking and pressing the white anemones, writing the letters. 

Martnan in Trondheim, the annual market

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It is time for the annual three days market in Trondheum, Martnan.
I am not sure, but some sources tells that Martnan has a tradition all the way back to around 1540. Anyway I remember it from my early childhoos as one of the year´s highlights.

Martnan is a mixture of fun, food, traditional arts and crafts, bric a brac and junk stuff.
For many years junk took a bigger and bigger part, so it was with great pleasure I found less of it this year, and instead more food, a lot more food.
And crafts.
And fun. 

Like this woman who showed me how to do a special kind of weaving, brikkevev.

Or racks of hand knitted mittens in the traditional selbumønster (pattern from Selbu)

An international booth with crafted items from Belarus caught my interest.

 

A tivoli amusement park who came to town was an important part of Martnan when I was a girl.
And it still is.

Grandpa Johannes had 21 grandchildren, and he set himself a goal, to win teddybears for all of us at the raffle tombola at Martnan.
He must have used a fortune, and
he made his grandchildren extremely happy :-)
If i wrote this blog in Norwegian I would now quote Alf Prøysen´s song Teddybjørnens vise, The Teddy Bear´s Song.

Writing this I realised that Marta doesn´t know Teddybjørnens vise, so I had to sing it for her. All six verses. Sweet memories.
Blogging leads to so much........

......one can easily get addicted.

Martnan, the last week of June, a perfect time to come if you plan a visit to Trondheim.

Rooms in my Garden #3

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Already post #3 in my series of rooms in my garden :-)
I had planned to give you these posts over the time of a whole summer, and here I am with one garden room post every day......almost.

Well, my garden has many rooms, so it might still take a long time to show you all.

A gale wind, at leat it felt like a gale one, came in yesterday afternoon. Rheumatic as I am, I could feel it coming from early morning,
burning in my body.

We had dinner outdoors when we came home from work, but afterwards I was not worth a penny and a half.

 The I discovered that inside the greenhouse there was no wind, and a warm humidity.

A perfect refugium.

Perfect to smell the soil and the growth.

Perfect to learn more about my plants.

Perfect for some reading.
(can you see which book I read?)

Perfect to watch the first tomato flowers. 

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All the years I´ve been dreaming of a greenhouse,
I had no idea it would be such a good cure for my rheumatism. 

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My husband has just made the flag stone floor of the green house.
You can see the whole prosess over in
The Blue Garden

 

Rooms in my garden #2

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A couple of days ago I started a series of posts which I call Rooms in my garden. First one out was the space outside the playhouse.

From time to time rooms in my garden changes. Chairs and tables are moved, a new bench appears.

The brightly blue furniture inside the front garden, the walled garden, has been there "always" though. Originally the furniture had a light yellow colour. Then one spring, right after we moved to The House in the Woods, it must be 10 years ago, Marta and I went to Iceland for a few days to visit my brother and his family.
When we returned home Terje had painted the furniture.
"I don´t know what you think Britt-Arnhild, the colour turned out so much brighter than I had planned........" Terje´s eyes were filled with question marks.

I HAVE LOVED THE BLUE FURNITURE FROM THE FIRST BLINK!!!

And it promptly gave the garden its name; The Blue Garden.

The Blue Garden, the blue sitting group, is where we have our summer Sunday breakfasts, and it is where we have our bbq dinners.
The blue coach is perfect for a nap, and situated under the yew trees, I get perfect shadows for reading during the heath of the day.

This weekend I have been weeding under the yew trees,
and then played with a few pots and plants.

I even started to make a dry river bed :-)

Saturday morning I had breakfast with my parents.
I talked enthusiasticly about gardening and The Blue Garden, and my father asked;
"How can you leave your garden for such a long time during summer?"

In a week we are leaving for three weeks in California, for three weeks filled to the brim with the best California can offer. We are thrilled, we are counting the days, we know we will have the three weeks of our lives.......

........but my father is right!
How can we leave the garden for three weeks in July, just when the garden is at its best?

Peonies, the birthday flower

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A birthday coffee,
and I was asked to bring flowers from the whole group.

The birthday girl had already told me that peonies were HER birthday flowers,
so instead of driving to a florist,
I did a garden walk.

I have always dreamed of a garden where I could make my own bouquets,
to fill the house, for gifts.

Now I am living this dream.

Post written from the kitchen veranda at 9pm in the sun,
fihghting the tiny mosquitos which we call knott here in Norway.

So far I am the winner. 

Happy Sunday

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Happy Sunday!

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and welcome over to
The Blue Garden 

Rooms in my garden #I

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Any garden, big or small, should have different rooms.
Small corners where you can hide,
a bench or a chair where you can sit down,
one place for silence,
another for parties.
Places where you can greet the sun in the morning,
the shadows in the afternoon.

Outside the playhouse I have my green corner.
Though it has the best morning sun, I seldom sit there in the mornings.
on hot afternoons the shadows under the huge branches are perfect though.

Just sitting down,
thoughts wandering.

A perfect place to work on my garden book. 

My tiny little "strawberry field" close by.

As the summer unfolds,
I hope to take you on a journey to the different rooms in
The Blue Garden.

How is the garden of your dreams?

Blue Garden, preparing for colder days

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Summer Solstice.
Midtsummer.
Santhansaften (St.John´s night)
Longest day of the year.
Sun.

It all happens at once.
And on top of this, after a cold, the coldest in 50 years, summer so far,
sun and some warmth are visiting
The Blue Garden.

But colder days will soon be here again.
And I am prepared.

A blue hand crocheted cover
for Blue Garden chilly nights.