Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

The queen and me, or me and the queen, or…...

@brittarnhild

As I told you some days ago, Norway is celebrating its Constitution these day, a 200th anniversary. In this constitution, which was the most modern and democratic in all of Europe when it came on May 17th 1814, there is one and only one spesific building mentioned, The Nidaros Cathedral. Norway´s main celebration was on May 17th, in every nook and corner of our long country. But such an important anniversary can not be celebrated only for one day, and yesterday it was time for a national, ecumenical service in our cathedral. The kind and the queen came up from Oslo, the Prime Minister and at least one more minister came, all our 12 bishops were here and a lot of other prominent guests from Norway and abroad.

After the service there was coffee and cakes served outside the cathedral. Beautiful weathers, the cathedral´s girls´choir and boy´s choir singing, the king and the queen smiling. And a blogger I know perfectly well smiling at least as broadly as the queen.

 

 Can you see the queen?

 

A Quiet Day

@brittarnhild

I wrote yesterday´s blogpost early. I usually read the comments though emails, not directly from the blog. From time to time during the day I checked my inbox, but no comments. How strange, I though, where are my readers today? Later in the day I was going to post in my garden blog, and then I realized why there had been no comment. Typepad, the site which hosts my blogs was down, had been down most of the day due to a serious DDoS attack. Poor guys at typepad, they worked like heroes all through the day. And now my blogs, and million of others I guess, are online again.

The cardinal butterfly visited my greenhouse yesterday. The photo is taken with my cell phone.

 

….and the letter, finally (and the winner announced)

@brittarnhild

A BLUE GARDEN LETTER #6

Finally summer has arrived in The Blue Garden. A butterfly is visiting the greenhouse and the squirrels are busy on the bird feeder. I have been planting and weeding for hours, now it feels great to sit down with a glass of cold water, listening to the sounds in the garden, smelling the fragrances, enjoying the warm afternoon sun caressing my neck and my shoulders.

A bumblebee is sucking nectar from some purple flowers. I am reading an article about bees and the colony collapse disorder. This frightens me. Nature is so vulnerable, and often it seems like we are all doing our best to destroy it. The Blue Garden is like a tiny little pinhed in the world, but this pinhead is mine and I want it to be a place where life can flourish. I feed the birds all year round. I don´t kind a few weeds, I let the wildflowers grow and I love the spiders and their webs. I am dreaming of bee hives, hens and chickens, but for the moment I can´t see how it can be done.

 

And now you ask in your heart,
"How shall we distinguish that which is good
in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens,
and you shall learn that it is the
pleasure of the bee to gather honey
of the flower,
but is is also the pleasure of the flower
to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
and to the flower a bee is a messenger of love.
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the
receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstacy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures
like the flowers and the bees.
                                 Kahlil Gibran

 

With greetings from The Blue Garden
BrittArnhild

 

ps: the winner of the handwritten letter is yael from Israel.
Yael, will you please send me your address.

 

Blue Garden Letter #6

@brittarnhild

Another week has gone, and it is time for the sixth Blue Garden Letter. Last Sunday I mentioned for you that I was reading Katherine Swift´s The Morville Hours, and that this created a new idea concering my garden letters.

For several years Swift wrote a weekly garden column in a British newspaper. In the introduction to The Morville Hours she writes about this and she sais that the column was like writing a personal letter to a wide group of friends. The idea this gave me is that I will write out the letter here in Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods, every Sunday. But the original letter will be a handwritten one, often with small surprises, and the one to receive the original, will be one of you who comment on the post.

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The letter will be written later today, out in the garden, and then copied here some time after that. But you can already now start to leave your comment.

 

Dressing up for a 200th anniversary, and an evening update

@brittarnhild

Finally, all three of us are ready!
It is "syttende mai", May 17th, and Norway´s Constitution Day. And not any 17th of May. It is Norway´s 200th birthday. 17th of May 1814 we waved goodbye to Denmark and became our own independent nation with our own constitution.

Every 17th of May are special with parades, flags, brass music, icecream and sausages through the whole day. Today is even more special and our whole country is ready.

 

The morning on syttende mai is always busy with me, Ingrid and Marta dressing up in our bunads, our regional costumes. Mine is from Trøndelag, the area where we live, the girls´are from Rogaland, from Terje´s birth area.

Dressing up in a bunad is serious work, with the ironing of the linen shirts, the polishing of the silver, the "oh, I hope the new shoes will not give me blisters" and the "oh my, I have lost weight, my bunad doesn´t look right on me......"

But finally we were all done,
and we are ready to go downtown.

By the way - can you see why Terje and I are so proud of our two girls :-)

 

 

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We are back home, we have had dinner and coffee out in the garden and it is time to relax. I had promised Robert photos from the day, but my camera have mostly rested. Partly because I forgot to think of it, partly because ten thousands of people were filling the streets to watch the parades and unlike most years, this year we were late and did not get a place in the front row. So the few photos I took ended more or less like this:

Ardi, you ask what men wear on a day like this. More and more of them are now wearing bunads as well. I have tried to persuade Terje to get one through all our married life, 34 years. So far I´ve had no luck, but today I asked him again: "listen Terje, in January 2016 you turn 60. If we visit Nordaker in Stavanger this summer you will have your own bunad for your 60th birthday. It will be my gift for you"

He still hasn´t answered, but I am crossing my fingers.
By the way, a complete bunad with its silver and everything, is very expensive, I guess I will have to pay about 7000 USD for one.

17th of May is a popular day to visit Norway, from all over the world...... and the Norwegians are not the only ones with their national, traditional outfits.

 

 

Three siblings playing in The Blue Garden

@brittarnhild

I feed the birds all year long, and because of this we have a wide range of different birds visiting our garden. But the birds often have to wait, till the squirrels have had their share. The new squirrel babies are born, and this morning three sibling were playing around the bird feeder, quarreling just like siblings do. I was inside with my camera, having a really hard time following the super fast animals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Room with a View

@brittarnhild

I am sitting in my Blue Studio. Looking out the window which is just in front of my computer. The Blue Garden is out there, but the garden is not what my eyes see. Nor is it the rain, the blessed drops which are life for my plants. An old woman is walking up the road with a bright yellow sou´wester on her head. That´s not what I see either. Not actually.

No, I am sitting here seeing...........

that I wake up every morning to a new day, that I put on my feet and walk into the day. Into my day. Food on my table. A  job I love. Family. Friends. Books. A garden. Hiking trails. Raindrops. Wind. Sun. An everchanging sky. 

I put my hands flat on the window glass and let them rest there. The feeling of deep blessings is overwhelming. My eyes, my heart, my hands......I need my whole body, the palette of my senses to take it in.

I have a room with a view.
And I keep the curtains open.

 

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The photos in today´s post are from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The glass sculptures are by Egidio Costantini (1912-2007), made after sketches by Picasso.

 

I´ve started

@brittarnhild

I am sitting here in my Blue Studio, having my first solo lesson in Travel Writing. And I love it. I don´t aim to become a top ten travel writer. I don´t aim to become rich and famous. What I do aim is to keep on enjoying what I am doing, travels and writing. And to share it with my blog readers.

I had only just started my lesson though when I knew I had to write a blog post. And I did, over in Caffe Avec

 

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The photo is from something I scribled during one of our Venice dinner.

 

The Nature Notes of a Silver Haired Lady

@brittarnhild

I am sure you know The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady, the beautiful book which Edith Holden wrote and drew in 1905. My copy of the book is from 1989, and it has been read again and again over the years. Some years I keep it at the cabin, other years at home. Always at hand. Right now it is on my desk, right in front of me while I write this post.

The book has inspired me to start my own Nature Notes. Not in a notebook with beautiful covers as all my other journals are. No, this diary is kept in a word-document on my MacBook. The reason? This way it is easy to add photos from my nature hikes.

 

Photos from the change of seasons. Flowers. Birds. Snow filled mountains. Green from Creation´s first morning. Summer´s rainbow. Burning autumn.

I love to go back and read from my nature notes. A sentence here, a page there. Memories floating like a playful river.

But most of all the Nature Notes is an inspiration. To rise from the sofa. To put on my hiking boots. To get out and enjoy the amazing nature.

Like yesterday´s morning hike in Bymarka.

 

(the book is published under different names, I see this one is called The Country Diary....... but it is the same as the one I have)

 

ps - I am working on the travel tale over in Caffe Avec. It will soon be published

ps ps - the winner of the Blue Garden Letter #5 is announced in the post

 

 

A Fork in the Road

@brittarnhild

I got an email a few days ago from Travellers´Tales, with an invitation to attend a workshop in London:

JOIN THE FAST TRACK TO TRAVEL JOURNALISM

Learn how to create professional travel articles and get them
published, at our weekend masterclass with travel editors from The
Guardian, Sunday Times Travel and Traveller magazine.

Plus – our 10% early booking discount is available until Monday!

Key topics include pitching to editors, structuring articles,
describing places and people, creating strong openings and endings,
researching the market. 

These are invaluable insights for success in the marketplace, and
rarely available from such top professionals.

My heart started to beat fast and I could hardly sit still. Oh, how I would love, love, love to go!

It is not an option though. Of course it is not an option. I had to tell myself this over and over again. It is not an option.

After saying this too many times, I had to tell myself to stop. To stop this negative thinking. To turn around, to see with my eyes that there is always a fork in the road, and it is up to me to make my decisions.

I am not going to London (though I still would love, love, love to go), but I will make my own workshop. Gather a pile of books, pick out some photos, write a tale, and then another, and yet another. I will be my own teacher, I will give myself homework, and I will ask you to be my audience, to give me feedback, to cheer for me.

 

The photos in this post are from the old postoffice in Sabaudia, a small town in Italy. My first study will be to learn more about this town and my first homework will be to write a travel tale from there.
The travel blog, Caffe Avec, will be where I will post my travel tales.

The pile of books I have so far consists of:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is a link to Traveller´s Tales webpage.