Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

50 shades of red

@brittarnhild

 

 

 

The Beauty of the Shorter Days

@brittarnhild

November is here, and with her comes the shorter days. Still the garden can be bathed in light for a few hours every day, but the sun is low, and soon she hides herself behind the hill south of our property.

The garden is very different from the neverending light summer days. The first days of bright autumn are also gone. November is a winter month, and we can already see snow on the distant mountain tops. On my daily garden walks I find tiny little hidden flowers, but when I walked around with my camera today, I was looking for another kind of beauty. A beauty found in a deep, warm colour palette never to be seen the rest of the year.

 Most of the leaves from trees and bushes have let go, the most stubborn still have something to show. A beauty which belongs to the last days of autumn only. A beauty we too often miss during this dark period of the year.

Fifty shades of orange. Red, yellow, brown, ocre, terracotta. The names of these late autumn colours are as many as their shades.

My getting ready for the dark winter days-backpack is filling up. The winter companion I can´t live without.

 

Italian lunch

@brittarnhild

 

You have met them before, Sonia and Fabio, the young Italian couple who came to Norway last year in search for jobs and a place to live. They stayed with us for a week then, becoming almost like another daughter, another son.

I first met Sonia when she came to Trondheim as a student for a few months at our Technical University. She had found my blog, she wrote me an email, we decided to meet.......and all of a sudden we were friends. Many times during the months she spent in Trondheim she brought international student friends with her to our Friday night pizza parties.

 

The two Italians have lived in Norway for 18 months now, and in August last year they bought a house over on the other side of the Trondheim´s Fjord.

Last time I met Sonia she told me that they were in a busy process of renovating the house, "as soon as the first floor is finished, we will invite you over for a meal."

Well the first floor is finished now, and a few days ago I got an email "Welcome to us for Sunday lunch"

 

Sonia and Fabio are true Italians. Food is important, meals are important and they are both born with the Italian skill to cook the most delicious food.

Today was no exception.
Cheese, ham and salami directly from Northern Italy.
A fresh salad.
Polenta cooked the typical Veneto way.
A roasted leg of lamb

 

Add infused water, a bottle of Italian red wine. A walnut chocolate cake and an apple struddle.
Strong Italian coffee.

Next time it is our turn to invite Sonia and Fabio to The House in the Woods.

I have already started to prepare the menu.

 

Autumn in the City

@brittarnhild

Trondheim on the first Saturday in November.
The temperatures makes you believe winter is still far, far away, though the wind makes the leaves dance.

Nordre (North),  the main shopping and pedestrian street in Trondheim.
As is has been since I was a little child.

Terje and I went downtown for a Saturday stroll in the city.
Met Torgeir and had lunch with him.
Listened to Giorgio playing his accordion.
Enjoying the autumn colours.

Having your coffee outdoors at Nordre in November doesn´t happen every year!

 

Farmers Market, which we have one Saturday a month here in Trondheim, is always a pleasure.

Terje is picking out a pot of local honey.
We will save it for Christmas when blog readers Jane and Lanny from California will come and stay with us.

I can never resist a skein of lokaly produced yarn.

 

Now we are back home, and it is time for coffee and some lefse we bought at the market.