Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Camelias in my next life

@brittarnhild

In my next life I will live in a Camelia House. I will sleep there, I will read there, I will cook there, but most of all I will dream there.

Can you imageine, it took me most of my life, almost 50 years I think, to discover camelias. We don´t have them in Norway, at least not where I live, and I had hardly ever heard of them.

Then one year, in Copenhagen, Denmark, I discovered Tage Andersen and his flower work shop. I saw my first camelia, and my second, and my third and my...... I bought a book Tage has made about camelias.

I was lost at once. Completely lost.

I do have a camelia at hoe now, which I bought a few years ago. After I met Tage. It grows quite a lot, I let it hibernate indoors. It is green and beautiful.

But it never gets flowers.
Not even buds.

In my next life, in my Camelia House, all the camelies will bloom though.
All through the year. Bloom together with my dreams.

 

 

I have been to Woburn Abbey and Gardens today, with a blogging friend.
Will blog more about Woburn later, but just had to share some of the camelias.

 

A Walk in the Village

@brittarnhild

 

 

After breakfast and morning prayer today I took my camera with me to walk in Turvey Village. Here are some photos for you to enjoy.

 

 

The pub is Friday night super busy tonight, and too noisy for me. And internet connection is slow, so I´ll stop here…….

 

A Walk in the Abbey Park

@brittarnhild

While Norwegians, at least in my corner of Norway, continue to wake up with fresh snow, which luckily melts during the day, I am walking in the monastery park of Turvey Abbey.

Most of the time I have the park all by myself.
Well, me and the birds that is.

All through the park there are old, worn benches. From time to time I sit down. I read from the book I´ve brought. I write and draw in my journal. I do some work writing and thinking.

Or I just listen to the birds.

 

The Gardener

@brittarnhild

As many of you know, I am working on a book. A book which might never been published, it might even never been finished. But the writing gives me a lot of fun. At one time the main character in the books goes to London to work as a gardener in The Royal Parks, or may be she does........as the book is in progress, everything might change of course.

 

 Terje and I spent yesterday morning in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Having coffee at The Lido Cafe, lunch at The Kensington Palace Orangery, and when I saw this female gardener working in The Sunken Garden, I couldn´t stop myself taking a series of photos.

Looks like Terje was more interested in photographing me though...........

 

The New Forest

@brittarnhild

Years ago, before blogging (and I have been blogging for 10 years you know) yahoo groups were popular. I ran several of them, the most popular one being Armchairtravelling Yahoo Group. We had some lovely discussions, and from time to time we read books together. The book I remember best from that period is Edward Rutherfurd´s The Forest.

One of the members of the armchairtravelling group lives close to The New Forest and she sent us great photos. We are still friends on facebook and she still posts great photos.

 These days I am rereading The Forest, and when my trip to England came up I started to find out if there was any possibility for me to go there for a visit.

 

I recommended The Forest for my friend Fran, who lives in Sussex, and soon both she and her husband wanted to come with us.

 

Yesterday we visited The New Forest, and Terje and I fell completely in love!

 

I do have more to tell from The New Forest, but the hotel wifi I am using is terrible slow, and outdoor London is calling my name, so..........

 

I need to live a million years

@brittarnhild

I am realizing, again......that the world is a big world, it is filled with so much beauty and there is still a billion places I have never been.........and I want to see it all.

 Yesterday we woke up early, to be an early bird is essential when your goal is to see the world, and luckily, both of us are. We ate breakfast in the pub where we stayed, we took two tubelines into Victoria station, we took a southbound train for almost two hours......

......and all of a sudden....

.....we found ourselves in the Chichester Marina, bordering a sailboat.

Not to sail, there has to be a next time for that, but to have tea and to talk, talk, talk with Fran and Steve. A lovely British couple which have become friend through my blogging.

 

 One of the tale Steve shared was about Cobb, his pet swan.
"I found Cobb mny years ago, when he was just a tiny little baby. He was apparently left by his parents, he was up on the road and could be hust both my dogs and cars. I took him home, and for a long time he lived inside our boat"

I looked out the window, well, I guess it is not called a windown when you are in a boat, but.......and saw a beautiful swan swimming right outside.

"The main problem with Cobb when he lived with us" Steve laughed, "was his incontinence"

Cobb has lived outside the boat for many years now. he has a wife and they have had loads of children. Still Cobb is Steve´s pet swan, he comes knocking on the boat several times a day and Steve feeds him.

"A couple of years ago we moved the bout from one end of the marina to another" Steve continues. "It took Cobb 24 hours to find us, but there he was again, knocking on the boat"

"When I feed him, he says thank you in his special trumpet blow. And the best thing he knows is when I scratch him under his wings!"

 To see the world and to learn all its tales, I need to live a million years.

Spring in Kew Gardens

@brittarnhild

We woke up to rain this morning. After a full English breakfast at the B&B pub where we stay for the moment, we walked over to the house where my brother and his family live (they usually live in Iceland, but stay in London from January till July this year), our umbrellas open, our spirit........no, I am not going to say that our spirit was low. We were in London, we were together, we were on our way to my family, we were happy!

 

Not long afterwards the rain stopped, and I, Terje and my brother were on our way to the botanical gardens. (my sister in law, my niece and my nephew were busy elsewhere)

And what a day it turned out to be.

The sun shone down on the plants and flowers fully awake after their winter sleep.

I am following #kewgardens both on facebook and instagram ansd have enjoyed their spring bulbs for a long time.

With some warm, lovely days in London lately, many of the spring flowers are already gone. But Kew Gardens has so much more.

Indoors and outdoors there are plants and flowers for every season.

During our hours in the park today, we breathed it in fully.

 

 

Stylized life

@brittarnhild

Walking in The Royal Parks means smelling flowers, watching birds, photographing, teatime and reading time, sore feet and a lot of time for reflections. Outside Kensington Palace I met this "hair dresser", busy stylizing the shrubs.

Branches growing wild, in all directions, were efficently cut down. The criteria was style, beauty. The result perfect.

 

Or........

 

As I stood there watching, my thoughts wandered from the gardener and his work to my own life. How often do I cut my own branches, stylize my leaves to make the most perfect impression? How often do I display my perfect side, only my perfect side?

The gardener outside created beauty, a pleasure for the eyes.

 

But..........I do think I prepare life,
seen from all sides.

 

The day I was kidnapped

@brittarnhild

It was on my second day in the monastery. I was just finishing my lunch and was planning to have a quiet afternoon, walking in the abbey park, may be do some reading, some writing and some praying. Then the door to the room where I was served my meals opened, and one of the sisters came in with a woman I had never seen before.

"Hi, I am Lindsay, one of your blog readers. Do you have some spare time, or do you want to be alone?" Of course I had some spare time. Of course I wanted to be alone, but more than that I was ready to spend a couple of hours with a blogging friend.

We walked in the Turvey Abbey park together, both of us with our cameras, both of us with our life stories. 

Then Lindsay invited me for tea over in Emmaus Village Carlton, where we continued to share bits and pieces from our lives, and I learned about the Emmaus project for homeless. I had never heard of the Emmaus project before, but as I walked through one house after another with second hand stuff, learning about how much it means that we re-use, that we take care, that we use second hand when we can, I was amazed what this project is doing

And I never get tired of singing out aload - the blog world is an amazing world, with friends and friends to be around every corner.

You can read more about Emmaus Village Carlton here

And you find Lindsay´s blog here

 

 

Lindsay took this photo of me and posted it on her facebook page :-)

 

 

Much Ado Books, and a list of books

@brittarnhild

 

Some days are meant to have room for everything. Last Saturday was one of those day. As I sat on the train from Victoria Station in London on my way to Polegate in Sussex I had no idea, as I took the train back to London again in the late afternoon, I knew :-)

I have already taken you to Charleston, the Bloomsbury house and garden, and I have taken you to Berwich church, the old stone church from the 12th century, decorated in 1941 by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (one day I would love to attend a service in that church......one dream always creates a lot of new ones).

In between these two places, Fran took me to the little village Alfriston. "I have a bookshop to show you there. I am sure you´ll love it"

How right she was. Of course I loved it. Much Ado Books, an independent book shop, named one of the best independent shops in UK.

A book shop with new books, with old books, with stationary, postcards, calendars, paper art. Shelves up and down with dreams. And me walking there, knowing that my suitcase was already almost full.

Luckily, just like when my stomach is full there is always room for dessert, when my suitcase is full there is always room for books........

 In my second next life I am going to run a book shop like Much Ado Books (in my next life I will run a flower shop like the one Tage Andersen has in Copenhagen) Then I will invite you all over for friends´s reading nights. To be let in you need a ticket, a ticket where you list a few of your favorite books. And while inside, when we are all gathered, I will ask you to share a tale from one of your favorites, a reading memory, a quote.

 

Thought.........why wait till my second next life? Why not start this now?
Do you have a booklist to share?
Or a book tale?
A quote?

 

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Let us meet in the comment section room and let´s share.
I´l put the cettle on.

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Here is the link to Much Ado Books webpage.