What time is it?

I bought this sun dial at a Past Time shop in newcastle last month. We haven't found out how it works yet (why is it always so hard reading instructions?). Meanwhile it is a charming decoration on a cafè table in The Blue Garden.

New plants.

We both agreed that roses was not what we wanted for our 27th anniversary. We will be away this week-end, and Monday morning we are laving for two weeks in Italy. And when we come home in mid-July, the garden will hopefully be filled with blooming roses. So instead we had our first stop during our drive around The Trondheim Fjord yesterday at a nursery which has fucsias as its speciality. We bought a few, and also a couple of other plants which now stands on The Blue Table ready to be planted out.

Anniversary

Today is our 27th anniversary. We have the day off and will take a long drive around the Trondheim Fjord.

During my morning walk in the garden I hoped to find a rose to post here, but still they are all only in buds. So a bud will have to do. May be that's a sign that our marrige still has a long life ahead :-)

Yellow in the Blues.

I have very few yellow spots in The Blue Garden, but this iris is a remnant from the previous owners. It grows under the huge sembra pine trees, and the first years we lived here only the greens of several irises came up. I was sure all irises were purple, and was surprised last year to see the first yellow flower. This year three of them are blooming, and I love their bright yellow in between all the red and blues.

Thanks Geum for teaching me that irises can also be yellow.

The Fairy Garden

So many different fucsias.

My parents had coffee in the Blue Garden yesterday. My mother found my basket with old garden magazines, and in one of them she read about a Norwegian lady who has a collection of 700 different fucsias in her garden.

A neighbour two houses up from ours is a fucsia collector and mum and I decided to go for a walk just to peek into his garden. "Flower - Ola", as he sometimes is called, was outdoors and asked us to come into his garden to have a look. He has reduced his fucsia collection now, from about 350 different plants till "only" 40.

Looking at all his beautiful plants created a dream in me. I want to start collecting fucsias.

The photos are of the only ones I have in The Blue Garden this year.

Blues in the Blue Garden

A second life indoors.

Summer vacation started today!

It is summer vacation. It is Friday night. The weather is warm and nice. The house is empty of kids!

We could have gone downtown to find a nice cafe, walked around and watched life. We decided to stay home enjoying the quiet midsummer garden.

Outside the kitchen there is a roofed veranda where we get the evening sun. A perfect place for a meal for two. On the supper menue tonight was rhuburb pie with hot, homemade vanilla sauce. A glass of white wine for me, some non-alcoholic beer for Terje. Coffe for both of us. Nice talks for both of us.

If I was a goldsmith

If I was a silversmith I would make an enameled brochè like this flower. I would wear the brochè daily as a reminder of the beauty of creation.

Read more here.

Peonies

Old lupins

These red lupins are remnants from the previous owner of our house and garden. Last year they didn't bloom, so I was afraid they wouldn't show their red beauty this year either. But I was wrong. In a corner of the Blue Garden they are now standing erect, singing to me "Come, look at us, aren't we beautiful?"

Rhododendron at its best.

This is absolutely the best time of the year for our big rhododendron which grows outside the walled garden, faced west.

Our son Øystein phoned yesterday to tell that he would stop on his way home from work, "can you make me some supper mom?" Of course I could. And to decorate the supper table I picked one of the purple beauties from the rhododendrons and placed it in a glass bowl.........Not that I believe Øystein would see it though :-), so it was mostly done for me.

Weeding the vegetable patch

I have been weeding the vegetable garden today. Looks like most of what I have seeded is coming up. The ruccola salad is growing almost too fast. I pick handfuls and make salads every day.

Colour play

The colours in The Blue Garden changes every month, every week.....and at this time of the year even every day.

The photo is taken from my favorite chair where I often sit down with a book or a garden magazin.

The Blue Garden

The Blue Garden is what I call the part of the garden which is inside the wall. Most of the plants here have blue, purple, pink or red flowers, I have an extended collection of blue pots in various sizes, and the old, wooden garden furniture is painted in a fresh, sparkling blue.

Afet a cold and wet period, the sun is shining down on The Blue Garden again, and we are enjoying outdoor life!

White and purple

White and purple were the colours of my wedding bouquet. I have always loved the combination.

Rhododendrons

Night walk

Cold and rainy, but the garden seems to love the blessed water pouring down. I have been out on my daily night walk in the garden, as always accompanied by my camera.

Soon there will be cherries.

Burial

Marta and I found a dead squirrel in the back yard the other day. We burried him outside the playhouse. Luckily for us there are more squirrels still coming to the feeder.

In Between

Thursday night I had a grill party in the garden. I had very little time for weeding before the party, but yesterday afternoon I finally did a weed chase and the walled garden looks so much better now.

It is a kind of "in between" season in the beds. The tulips and daffodils are all gone and alot of the summer perennials is bursting to bloom. I took these photos last night, and already today the colours are changing.

This is a wonderful season where life grows from minute to minute. And I love to sit at the Blue Table to watch it all.

At Sunset

These days the sun goes down at around 10.15pm in The Blue Garden. Before it leaves it says goodnight to the red Japanese Maple

The Playhouse is dressed for summer

As a girl I always wished for a playhouse. I remember a book I inherited from my mother about a pair of twin girls who were allowed to live in their playhouse for a few summer weeks, with their own budget. I loved that book and read it again and again.

Our two firsl children are boys, and I never thought of building a playhouse for them. Then Ingrid-Elise was born in the autumn og 1989, and the next summer my husband and my father in law built her a playhouse. I was thrilled.

When we moved here the playhouse moved with us. Not at all an easy task, but we made it! And now the playhouse has its place in the garden. Never used as much as I would like, but still a nice plays for playing. And one day I will ask Marta if she wants to paint the inside walls. She can choose the colours herself.

Plant a tree.

Last night I saw Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. One of the things we were challenged to do by the end of the film was to plant a tree.

We planted an apple tree in The Blue Garden last week. There were no fruit trees when we moved in, and a few years ago we planted a plum tree and a cherry. I have always wanted an apple tree, and now it is there, with its beautiful blossoms.

Hidden

Part of gardening fun is to create hidden spots of colours. Surprises for eyes and mind when you wander around and suddenly are met by dots of blues or pinks,,,,or yellow, orange or purple. I want my garden to be a place where you can walk and be met by colours - the smiles of God, on unexpected places.

Details

Doing daily garden walks mornings and nights open my eyes to details, new leaves growing, a flowers soon to open into a feast of flowers, a bee busy in a blackberry bush, a raindrop here, a raindrop there.

Cobwebs are in many ways a sign of spring for me, then they are everywhere. But last night I had to stop up to watch the sun playing in this fairytale lace outside the kitchen window.

Creation can not be explained, but it can give you reason to keep on living every day in praise.