Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Cleaning the stairs

@brittarnhild

We passed her house, and she looked up and greeted us with a hei. When we came back a little later, she raised her body, smiled and started to talk. "Oh, this is so hard on my back. I have had painters here painting the house, they finished yesterday and left the stairs filled with red drops of paint. I am trying the best I can to remove them, but the clorin I am using won't do." She laid her hands on her back and streched her body, "When I came to this house as a young bride 60 years ago, I remember my mother in law cleaning the stairs every Friday. I am alone now. My husband passed away last year. My back is going to kill me. I have taken painkillers  and know exactly how long they work, so I still have a little time at hand. But then I need to go indoors and find my bed." She smiled at us, wished us a good day and continued with her cleaning.

 

It was our 33rd anniversary and we had come out to Veidholmen, a small village on the island Smøla, as far out in the Atlantic as you can go.

At Havkroa they serve the local speciality, saltfiskball (balls made of salted fish), a deli we both love.

We go out to Smøla every summer, on a day trip from our cabin.

Never have we experienced such friendliness as we did this time. The old woman cleaning her stairway, a man passing us on our walk, stopping to chat, the young new owner at Havkroa, the woman who had just recently opened a small coffee house at Veidholmen.

The people, the place, the atmosphere, the houses. It all made our 33rd anniversary a very special day.

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The gardens at Veidholmen all have the most beautiful columbines.
I made a special columbine post ovet at Blaaklokkeveien

Smøla, a tiny island out in the Atlantic

@brittarnhild

A tiny little island, far out in the ocean, flat as a pancake.
Smøla is our goal for the day.

We leave a sunny cabin, knowing that the weather on the western coast of Norway chan change every hour.

And often it depend on which direction you look.
Bright sun.....

....or a grey wall coming towards you.

We chose to look in the sunny direction, and at each other, boarded the ferry, and 20 minutes later we were in Edøy, one of the hundreds, thousands of island belonging to Smøla.

Our goal was Veidholmen, a little fishing village far out in the left index finger tip of Smøla.
But before coming there we just drove around, enjoying the landscape, the old houses, inhabitants on the road.

 

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This post will continue tomorrow.........

.....with a very special lunch, and a very special meeting.

33 years of love, and another happy event

@brittarnhild

 

33 years of marriage.
Vacation time.
On the road, the first days with our cabin as the base, exploring the nearby countryside.
Terje, good best as always, stopping whenever I say stop.....for photographing.

 

And who can resist a stop anyway, when the roadside offers beauty like this.

33 years of marriage.
I would not have been without one single of the 365x33 days of this walk along the road of love.

On June 9th, on vacation in Spain, 7 1/2 years after they became a couple,
Ingrid and Marius got engaged 

June, the month of LOVE

After the nothing day came a day of everything

@brittarnhild

Picking out a plant from the greenhouse,
wrapping it as a gift for a friend
(using a newspaper page, from its garden section)

Marning walking in the Blue Garden,
among the newly sprung roses.

Lunch with a friend.......

    

presenting my gift and admiring a new piece of glass art.

 

 Visiting the annual market Martnan downtown,

Filling up on Indian music, and.......

a cup of coffee while reading about places which are on my list for upcoming travels.
(we don´t have cafes inside bookstores in Trondheim, somthing I miss deeply, but at one of the stores it is possible to buy a cup of coffee, from a machine)

Having dinner at my parent´s house,
forgetting to take photos.......
......can you imagine, not even one!

 

And then, at last,
came THE GRAND FINALE...

Going downtown to meet Elaine,
a blog reader from California.

Lovely to meet you Elaine :-)

 

 

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I am busy packing,
soon we are one the road with cabin as first destination,
leaving The House in thje Woods to my brother Børge and his kids,
who are spending a month in Norway.

I will bring my travel diary and write about my western coast of Norway travel. Thanks for your encouraging words yesterday. You will not be able to read my travel journal though, it is a notebook with handwriting. But as always, as I have done for the past 8 1/2 years, I will comtinue to write about my travels here, both those in Norway and those out of the country.

 

One of the nothings I did yesterday

@brittarnhild

I spent a few hours yesterday updating my travel diary. Now I have "returned home from Nepal" and I am ready for another travel.

I have written diaries all my life. I still have the first one which I started at the age of five. I have always traveled, and remember making travel books with my brother to prepare for our next go. We visited travel agencies downtown, carried armfuls of colourful brochures home, sat down at the kitchen table, cut and glued, using homeade glue made of flour and water, making the most wonderful travel books. I can´t remember if I ever wrote while we traveled, but I guess I did.

Some time in my teens I destroyed a bunch of diaries. 

 

In 1991 I started to write special travel journals. In the beginning from every travel, then after a while only from those abroad.

Today my travel journal, travel diary, is a dear travel companion. I write every day, page up, page down, but as the travel unfolds, it is impossible to keep the journal up to date, and I continue with keynotes in my regular journal.

And I have to do the update when back home.

Since I don´t journal my travels in Norway any more, I have not written from our week in Lofoten, which is a pity!!!, and I will not write from the weatern coast of Norway travel we start tomorrow.

 

I think it is time to change my mind.
I think it is time to include the travels in Norway in my travel journals.

 

Photos: the first ones are from Garden of Dreams in Kathmandu, the last one from Stamsund in Lofoten,Norway

Those long, lazy days of summer

@brittarnhild

Long, lazy summer days.
Though I would wish for some more laziness. I am on vacation, midsummer is here, the Blue Garden is bursting with colours.......and I have too much on my agenda. The too much are all great things, yes things, how I love this things. Still, when I go to bed I am longing for those long, lazy days. Days when creative living most of all is doing "nothing". 

Long, lazy summer days.
Some days rain. Some days sun.
All days summer.

 

Some days I long to be bored. To have nothing to do. Wandering around, restless. 
Hours, days, weeks streching out ahead of me. Aimless.

 

Once, many, many years ago, I worked in a church here in Trondheim. The congregation had a lot of old people, my job was to visit some of them. To bring hope, joy, life into their days. Karen had given up all hope. When I came there she dragged all energy out of me, always negative, always complaining, curtains covering her windows, never a tale to tell. After visiting her I always made sure to go on to Annette. We sat down together in the old, threadbare sofa, drinking coffee from her best china, dipping the dry buscuits in the coffee, a photo album on our laps, tales and anecdotes from a long life filling the room, when saying good bye after a couple of hours, I danced down the stairs from the third floor.

 

I do NOT long to be bored.
But I do long to have some lazy time at hand.

 

 

I think I will take the day off today.
Doing NOTHING! 
(knowing perfectly well that NOTHING means filling my day with "those are a few of my favorite things........") 

Morning in The Blue Garden

 

@brittarnhild

For several years I have been running the blog Trondheim Through All Seasons. Some periods a busy blog, other times almost sleeping. I have now moved my Photo Walks in Trondheim-posts over to Trondheim Through All Seasons, and will continue my daily walk tales there.
Welcome over.

 

Today is my first day of a three week´s summer vacation.
I woke up to a brihgt, sunny day, and had my breakfast out in The Blue Garden.

Now I am ready for the rest of the day :-) 

Flower boxes, clothesline, a bridge, a statue, a kindergarten.........

@brittarnhild

With your ideas of what to see in Trondheim, I walked around smiling for almost three hours. Starting with a kindergarten gate, where these flags have hung since May 17, Norway´s birthday. I guess the flags are the various nationalities represented in the kindergarten.

For a few years there has been a discussion in Oslo about the use of flags in the 17th of May parades. I am so glad that ALL flags are allowed here.

Down by the canal I found some lovely flower boxes.
We have very clever and artistic city gardeners in Trondheim, they leave their marks everywhere.

This is a favorite photo of mine :-)

Several more statues along my way today.
Hard to chose which one to show here,
I must make a special statue post one day over in Trondheim Through all Seasons.

Nine statues the other day,
this one today;

which makes it: 10 
And this one comes with an extra bonus, our city tram. 

Ardi, look what I found!
A clothesline in Trondheim.
This must have been hung for you :-)

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Last in this Trondheim walk I have a series of an old railway bridge, which must be opened every time a boat need to get out of the canal.

.

 

 

 

Playing a game of counting. Statues in Trondheim

@brittarnhild

Mardelle gave me the idea when she asked about the "Go´dagen", or Torgkona as we usually call her here in Trondheim. 

I love this statue. When I first posted a photo of it, a woman from Denmark commented and could tell that her grandmother´s sister had been the inspiration for it.

With Mardelle´s question in mind, I asked myself "I wonder how many statues there are in Trondheim?"
I guess that´s a hard question, but I can start taking pictures of them, make a special statues in Trondheim folder, and see what happens.

The statue of Olav Tryggvason is the main statue in Trondheim. Olav Tryggvason, the founder of the city, is standing there, high up, overlooking the marketplace and the whole city. 

But there are so many more statues, 
let´s start a game of counting,
and see how many we find in the end.......

Go´dagen  stands on the south east corner of the market place, Olav Tryggvason in the middle. On the north east corner is an interesting statue. I have lived in Trondheim all my life, and must have passed this statue thousands of times. But somehow I have never actually seen it. Not until yesterday. It is called Water Music

   

Water Music is a fontaine, but as far as I can remember, I have never seen water playing in it.

Tordenskjold.......

The late King Olav V........

Hjallis.......

Arve Tellefsen.......

 

And this is only the beginning.
I wonder how many I will find.

 

Statues so far: 9

While looking for window boxes

@brittarnhild

I went out looking for window boxes, but didn´t find many. Instead I ended up with a memory card filled with images of doors.....and a little funny surprises in the end.

Only a stone´s throw away from the heart of Trondheim, you find old, crooked wooden houses. Come with me for a walk, and I can show you hundreds of them. Not as bright colours as you find on the Venezian island Burano, but not far from, really not far from.

The colours, both on the houses and on the doors, the old cobble stones, the peace and quiet. I love it.

Can you see the house number?
No doubt this is number 18 :-)

Once I started a collection of house number photos. My dream was to make birthday cards out of the photos. A friend, who is an amazing photographer, has used her doors with house number collection for an online advent calendar. One door to open every day though December.

 

Can you imagine, being sweet sixteen, back home after your first date, sitting down on the bench outside your door, holding hands, the first kiss. Sweetness over all!

I have so many door and house photos to show you.
I don´t think my blog has space for them all.

Better suggestion:
come to Trondheim, and I will take you on a walk.
(Elaine, I am agraid there will be no time for one when you come?)

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The funny little surprise:
-knock, knock 
-who´s there
-me
-who me
-open the door and you´ll see