Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Back.......hopefully

@brittarnhild

Apple House has been m y second home for weeks. And a very nice young man has been working I don´t know how many hours to save my 32.000+ photos and make it easy for me to find them and use them on my new Mac Book Pro.

Today the new Mac could finally come back home with me.
The pictures are all there.......
.......and I am thrilled

 

And forever thankful to the patient young computer man.

 

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One of the 32.000+ photos:
a Somateria mollissima borealis, an Icelandic Eider

The edimental garden and its gardener

@brittarnhild

Exactly one year ago, almost on the day, I visited Stephen Barstow´s amazing edimental garden for the first time. I had dreamed of getting there for a long time then, and luckily, dreams come true.......often. In the beginning of September last year, Terje and I came there with our Nepalese friends, and we helped making a Nepalese dinner, using ingredients from the garden.
(you can read about this visit here)

Today I was back in Stephen´s garden, this time without Terje and without Sharmila, Kamal and Rissika, but with a group of about 20 enthusiastic "green" gardeners. There is a climate festival going on in Trondheim this week, and a tour in Stephen, aka The Extreme Salad Man, was part of the program.

Stephen, who got the name The Extreme Salad Man after he made a salat from his garden with more than 500 different "greens", has more than 2000 different edible plants.

Our 1 1/2 hour tour took us around to learn more about 10 of them, many collected around the world from Stephens many travels.

Though I started to make colourful salads, or rainbow salads as I now call them, many years before I had heard Stephens name, he has been of great inspiration to me over the last few years. 

Today´s garden walk was another inspiration kick.

Thank you Stephen!

By the way, edimental is a word Stephen has created, a combination of edible and ornamental :-)

 

Birding

@brittarnhild

I´ve been quite interested in birds for many years, but recently it seems like I am taking it more and more serious. Phoebe Snetsinger´s Birding on Borrowed Time, which I mentioned the other day, is for the moment playing an important role in this I think. This morning I woke before dawn, and wrapped in several blankets I sat out on the terrace, birding. With me I had my camera, a pair of binoculars and the old bird book which belongs to the cabin. It is a second edition, and it came out in 1971. Ever since the cabin was new (1976), my father has used it to make a note of the date he first saw different types of birds, and Terje and I have continued this tradition.

I posted this photo both on instagram and on facebook this morning, and it amazes me how many people still have this book. And not only friends here in Norway. It must have been a well known book.

 

We did a hike after breakfast, I with a fairly good pair of binoculars around my neck, and I did manage to spot both a cormorant and an eagle among other, more common birds.

A good birding day :-)

 

Kale soup with a view

@brittarnhild

Cabin time.
I filled a basket with goodies from the garden before we left,
and now I enjoy making green dinners.

Garlic, onion, thai cucumber and chili were added to the kale soup.

 

We ate with a view, and if it is true that the way to the man´s heart goes though his stomach, my husband loves me dearly <3

 

 

The treecreeper

@brittarnhild

Birdwatching is getting better and better. An Eurasian Treecreeper is busy outside the cabin.

And I am reading Birding on Borrowed Time by Phoebe Snetsinger.

I am starting a list of how many birds I have seen.......

.......and I am setting some goals.

 

Ready for a salad?

@brittarnhild

First thing I do when I come home from work in the afternoon is to walk out into the garden to find ingredients for the salad of the day. The more colours, the better.

Back inside the kitchen the painting begins. A few stroke og green. Fifty shades of green.  Adding some red, some blue, yellow and orange. Topping it all with splashes of rich brown balsamico.

We are really enjoying our dinners these days.

 

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I had a wonderful visit the other day, 12 garden ladies making their own colourful salads in The Blue Garden.
I blogged about it here:
sun and rain and lovely garden ladies

 

All those seeds, waiting to bloom

@brittarnhild

I am still waiting for my new MacBookPro to function properly. On my old one I had more than 30.000 photos, and even though I did have an extra harddisk on which I ran a regular backup, there seem to be some kind of problems, or rather challenges, to upload them to my new Mac. There is a very nice young man at the Apple Store downtown who is helping me. He has been on vacation, but came last week, and now he has both my old Mac and the new one, figuring out how to save my very special treasures.

I trust this young man and I am not panicking, at least not yet. And while I am waiting, I am making plans, plans for what I will do with my photos once I get them back.

Hopefully it will be fixed by tomorrow, but then comes the timeconsuming task of learning a new photo program, teaching mysel how to work with the photos, how  to find the best way to add photos to my blogging and so on.

 

I am sorry I have taken a break from my daily blogging routine, but I have been a little overwhelmed lately.......

 

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Eventually all my treasured seeds will be back though, and I will be back to daily blogging.

 

 

The very special birthday gift

@brittarnhild

Today is Ingrid´s 28th birthday. How strange to have a 28 years old daughter, herself a mother to the most wonderful toddler there is. How wonderful to have a 28 years old daughter. She celebrated the birthday with some girlfriends last night, and since  Marius had to work nightshift, she asked us if Leander could stay with us. Of course he could.

The whole family came here for dinner tonight to celebrate the birthday girl, and I decided to help Leander make his mother a birthday gift.

Tiny little hands, colours, brush, paper.......

.......and all of a sudden Leander´s first book was a fact.

Can you imagine.
20 months old, and already he has his own book "published" :-)

 

Happy birthday Ingrid!

 

Colourful salads

@brittarnhild

Tomorrow a group of garden enthusiasts are coming to my garden to learn about edible flowers, and to make their own colourful salads. I hope to be able to take a million photos.

 

Hide and seek

@brittarnhild

In one of the many lakes in Stockholm this gentleman decided to play hide and seek with me.

Quite a charming heron, isn´t it :-)