Still a secret garden...

The days are getting shorter very quickly here in the far north. But still the sun gets warm in the daytime and the light quality is magical . It´s still nice to sit out reading and eating(or as I prefer,to lay down under a wool blanket) .  Olaf can never get enough places to sit and write ... this being his latest addition.
 Unfortunately the nights are getting colder though, and soon the plants has to go in.
My hanging plants was a successful experiment as I obviously found the right plants to use,like this,   only covered by moss .These particular plants seems to endure quite a lot of drying up, and I only dip the plants in a  bucket of water with a little organic fertilizer when they are getting too dry.

Nasturtium

One of my favorites summer flowers, both to look at and to eat. Also to grow.
I start them in doors as a early spring ritual, and get my daily kick from seeing how much they grow every day. I love things that grows so fast that one almost can see it. And that grows lush and colorful ,climbs and best of all.. also tastes wonderful.
They have been growing wonderful leaves and flowers for my salads all summer and recently I have
been picking the seed pods and making" capers -like" little pickles.
Here is what you do: keep a little jar with vinegar in it and every time you pick  the little pods with a little bit of the stalk still on, add them to the jar.
When the jar is full, store it in the fridge for about two weeks and they are ready to be mixed in with your salads , pizzas or what ever you would put capers into.

Cranberries for christmas...and Troll-cream

Pics by Johanna

It`s cranberry time and its soon Christmas! Well kind of...because I have attended the first Christmas fair meeting, where we prepare for the big event in end of November,and today I found myself  singing
a Christmas carol .
These berries are for our special Christmas dinner, but  cranberry also makes very good jams and contain these bitters that we tend to get too little of in our diet . And they are fast and fun to pick.

I remember in my childhood ,sunday afternoons ,sitting  cleaning buckets full of cranberries that our family had picked on our sunday-berry-trip in the woods. And then after dinner, my favorite dessert:
Troll-cream. Of course this is only eaten in the land of trolls and it probably would not work to make elsewhere...But it is very simple and delicious; cranberries whipped up with a little sugar and an egg-white. And it needs to be whipped until its grown big and fluffy and stiff. Eaten with some cream mixed with milk and maybe the egg-yolk whipped up with some sugar, it makes wonderful color combinations and taste divine!

Høst

Pics by Johanna

Yoga dressed in olive oil and sundried tomatoes...

Pics by Johanna.


We stayed in a olive grove in Sardinia. A olive grove with all kind of fruit trees, grape vines ,and fig trees...a little earthly paradise. And not only a earthly paradise, it`s also used as a yoga retreat where one can spend a week doing yoga ,eat tha fresh local food and home grown foods, and of course dressed in the olive oil from the very ground you live on. It`s got to be good for you !
Ateeka is a woman of great creativity,vision and energy ,and is as the italian Vouge wrote of her..".the famous yoga teacher from United States ".
She has put up big and comfortable tents on wooden platforms so that she can house groups of 12 to 15 people at the time. The yoga ,eating ,showering,cooking is all done outside in nature so that in practice one is out the whole day and living very close to nature.
And as you can see from the photo, she makes the most wonderful sundried tomatoes ....mmmmm

Sardinia, sardinia...

Pics by Johanna.


Normally we spend the summers here in the north of Europe, because this is where we like it the best this time of the year. But because we have very good friends that very kindly invited us to join them at
Sardinia this summer, we made an exception and holed the whole family along for two weeks on this magical island in the middle of the Mediterranean ocean.
And we had a very hot and sun-filled vacation. We arrived at the time the weather Gods decided to balance up for all the rainy and cool days in the north by blasting some real southern temperatures.
So coming from the cool 12 degrees celsius, we landed in close to 40 degrees in the shade.
A shook to the system it was ,but after a week of this ,we slowly started to get used to it.
Lots of hours on the beach with big umbrellas and big water melons, and a swim in the ocean every five minutes got us through. And as the rain filled up the nordic water reservoirs , Sardinia filled up our
batteries so that we no feel ready for  some cooler times. Thank you very much Sardinia, Ateeka and Ola

Pics by Johanna.