Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Wanderlust,

@brittarnhild

Wanderlust.
Once bitten by the bug, it is hard to get the poison out of your body. It is more kind of like the outher way round - I feed the wanderlust, the adventurous spirit with three course meals again and again. I read travel books, I let my fingers follow the paths not yet taken on old and new maps, I dream of all the things I have not yet seen, not yet experienced.

Terje turned 60 in January. An excotiv travel was my gift for him.......

....... and now there are two ready packed suitcases waiting impatiently in the hallway.

Both my Mav Book Pro and my travel diary are packed, so hopefully there will be a few travel tales as we go. Priority this time though has my Norwegian blog Blåklokkeveien.

 

If I was Beatrix Potter

@brittarnhild

A photo shot in the garden this afternoon.

I see so many tales in this photo. A family. Generations. Love. Support. Whispers. A choir.

If I was Beatrix Potter I would write a tale.

I am not Beatrix Potter. I am Britt Arnhild Wigum Lindland

And I think I am going to write a tale.......

 

September in the botanical garden

@brittarnhild

September in the botanical garden brings a new palett.

Sunny, and temperatures quite warm for the season.

The air feels different.

Still time to build your secret place among the leaves.

Soon they will fall.

 

 

I wander.

I stop.

 

I stroll along.

 

 

 

 

Lunch and coffee in Café Victoria.

 

 

Then

it

is

time

to

move

on

 

The wonders of a Sunday morning.

@brittarnhild

From The House in the Woods, we can walk directly into the countryside. Mile after mile of tracks and forests, small lakes, beauty and silence. In the spring I find the first flowers, in summer I listen to birds and bees, in the winter I go skiing. But just now, in the autumn, I enjoy the change of the colours, and the millions of artitic morning webs.

The hills and the countryside have several cottages and old farms where you can buy coffee and something to eat. If you are ready for a long walk, you can reach several of them from our house. No car needed.

Today we had no car. We did have a grandson and a pram though, and after breakfast we were ready for some autumn hiking. Quite common in the fall, is the morning mist. The mist was breaking while we walked, it left behind millions of tiny little webs.

 As the sun  warmed up, the moist dried up and the webs became invisible.
My camera had caught a few of them though.

 

Just so you shall not forget Trondheim

@brittarnhild

I think it is a long time now since I last showed you a photo from the most beautiful city in the world.......

 

And there I met The Green Man.......

@brittarnhild

Cabin life always means outdoor life, hiking, spending as much time as possible outside. When we arrived on Friday it was raining. Saturday was a rainy day. Sunday morning I woke to this nice sound of rain drumming on the roof. But fortunately, after breakfast it stopped, almost, and I did not hesitate. I filled a thermos with coffee, I found a few pastries in the freezer, two bananas, and packed a backpack. Then told Terje: w"We are ready!" "Ready for what?" He asked. "Oh, stupid! A hike, of course." And off we went.

The fields, the forest, the marshes, it is so wet everywhere, we did not quite know where to go. But then I had the solution. In the nature reserve, a bit up from the village, you can walk along the old cart tracks, and they would be almost dry I guessed. The charm up there is amazing. Because of the strickt nature reserve rules, the forest is old. When a tree dies it is left where it fell, and due to this, a lot of rare species grows. Species you find nowhere else.

I had my camera of course, and will you believe me - there, a little up from the tracks, I found The Green Man. And not any green man, but The One. The most handsome, charming, magic one you can inagine. My fairytale dream.

 

Dividing the work between us

@brittarnhild

We have the most perfect agreement when it comes to diving work between us at the cabin. Take water for example. When we need water, Terje is the one to walk to the well, fill the two buckets and carry them back to the cabin. When I am here alone, I can do the water job, but when both of us are here! No way! That´s Terje´s job.

It is the same with cooking. Terje can prepare dinner and all other meals, of course he can. But when we are here together! Well, I am the chef. The cook. The baker. The maid.

Chopping woods though. Yes, you got it. That´s Terje´s job.
When I am here alone, I never ever think about it. And I don´t have to. We have enough logs ready for a million years.

"What about baking?" you ask. Sure, I can tell you. Baking is my job. And after we installed electricity and have a tiny little freezer on top of the fridge, I can serve fresh pastries whenever.

Except today. Friends came on a surprise visit after breakfast, and the freezer was empty. Completely empty. We had enough logs to make it hotter than Sahara. But no patries to serve our guests.

Shame on me!

 

As soon as they left, I drove to the grocery store to buy yeast,
and now the freezer is filled again.

 

Practicing

@brittarnhild

We have spent three days learning how to be retired! We will both get our retirtement money from the state when we decide to stop working, and as the state take good care of its inhabitants, they want to make sure that we will have as good a retirement as possible. Therefore the course.

Retirement age in Norway is 67, but you can decide to quit work a few years before that, and get less money the first years, or you can decide to work a few years longer.

Terje is 60.
I am 58.

So we still have a few years to go.

Practice is important though, so as soon as the course finihsed, after lunch yeaterday, we drove out to the cabin.

Here we will have a four days´ practice :-)

 

I have moved in

@brittarnhild

I was so sure that moving in would not be possible until spring. After Terje has finished the special floor we will have in the greenhouse. The floor is not there yet, but by using some old, concrete flagstones to build a temporary floor, I have been able to move in. And fot three days now I have enjoyed my herb tea in my new playhouse.

Candles by night.

Dry and cosy when the rain pours down outside.

A book in my lap, but not much reading done.
Instead I am sitting there, my face a broad smile.

I have moved in :-)

 

A Nepalese dinner in the edible garden

@brittarnhild

Can you imagine a garden where everything can be eaten. Can you imagine a garden up north, in Norway, where you grow all what you eat through the year? British Stephen Barstow moved to Norway in the 80ies and soon afterwards started collecting edible plants. The other day Terje and I were invited to come to Stephen´s garden together with friends from Nepal, Sharmila and Kamal and their three years old daughter Rissika. Kamal is a botanist, Sharmila is a wonderful cook, and little Rissika turned out te be a perfect colourful salad apprentice.

Unfortunately it was a gray, rainy day, but still it was easy to see what a great view Stephen has among his edimentals.......Stephen has invented the word edimentals himseld, a mixture of edible and ornamental.

The view through the kitchen window. Amazing, isn´t it?

Before starting the cooking, Sharmila and Stephen walked around in the garden, collecting plants. Stephen has quite a few plants from Nepal and Himalaya in his Norwegian garden, and these were what they were looking for.

I would love to learn from Stephen. From time to time he invites people to come to his garden and he will take them on a teaching tour.

Too soon we had to go indoors to start cooking,

but not until we had walked over to look at this plant, an "Allium wallichii from high elevations in Nepal, but feeling quite at home in the lowlands of Malvik!"

Indoors, a delicious smell soon started to fill the house.

Sharmila and Kamal busy cooking, Stephen and I busy photographing. Terje busy looking forward to the meal and Rissika busy running though the house.

Stephen loves to call himself "The Crazy Salad Man", he must have the world record in making a salad with the most different plants. More than 500. I must be quite crazy as well, as I volunteered to bring ingredients for a colourful salad from my garden.

Rissika helped me make it, and she is the one in charge of the decoration :-)

Thank you Stephan, Sharmila, Kamal and Rissika for a lovely night, and as you can see Stephen, I have "stolen" a few of your photos ;-)

 

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You can buy Stephen´s Book, Around the World in 80 Plants from amazon.co.uk. Click on the photo to get there.

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Here is a link to Stephen´s blogpost from the dinner.