Welcome trick and treaters.

Short Days

It is dark when I walk to the bus stop in the morning, dark when I come home from work in the afternoon. My daily garden walk is a memory from lighter, longer and warmer days. The garden is going to sleep, just like the bears, through the winter. Though the sleep will be filled with dreams of another spring and another summer. I am a dreamer, and a Nordic gardener is forced to live on dreams months of the year. Dreams of seeds to buy, dreams of new beds to make, dreams of colour combinations to try out and dreams of laughter in a garden which never goes to sleep.

Though being a gardener still is something you are all year round. I still fit in my daily garden walk, if only to feed the birds and the squirrels. I read garden books, I visit garden blogs, I buy garden magazines, I write letters to other gardeners around the world, I draw plans for what we will do in the garden next summer, and I write invitations for my BIG 50th which will be celebrated in The Blue Garden next summer.

Photos: the playhouse is ready for Halloween. While I write this, Terje and Marta are busy in the kitchen making a pumpkin ready for trick and treaters. And through the house flows the fragrance of freshly baked sweet rolls which will be our treats for those who come.

a winter quilt

The flower beds in our Nordic garden need winter quilts during the long and cold winter months. Terje cut branches from our pines and fir trees and make soft and warm quilts.

The week-end is dry and mild, and perfect for winter preparations. The garden season is soon over for this year - though when you love your garden and its work, one season ends just as another one starts. The winter months will be used making plans for next spring and summer.

More winter preparations

Needles and leaves everywhere

Nice to work in the garden together.

The snow might be coming soon, so it is important to remove as much as possible of the pine needles from the roof.
The pines are growing. We cut branches and use them to cover the flower beds.

Chive

Right outside my kitchen door I have a pot with a chive.

Handy when I cook.

pots, pots, pots......

Terracotta pots - even the word is filled with charm. Terracotta - my tongue makes a happy tango tasting the word.

The blue garden has terracotta pots everywhere, and there are always room for more. With blue pots in between.

Many of the pots are filled with annuals and they are now emptied and cleaned, and stored away waiting for another spring. A potting shed is high up on my wish list, and Terje and I are making plans and drawings now for one we might build in the back yard next summer. But so far I clean many of the pots indoors, and dry them out on the kitchen veranda.

A garden walk before dinner

Having had long days at work this week, and with Terje away for four days, it was a special treat to come home today to find Ingrid and her boyfriend in the kitchen making pizza. I had time for a nap before eating, and then a garden walk for me and Canon. Charming and colourful Mr.Autumn is fading, preparing to give room for Old Man Winter. Actrually the old man has been here already on a couple of short visits, but left again to gove Mr.Autumn some more time.

The colours of the garden are fading quite fast now, though the red currant bush, which actually is albino and gives us white currants, still has a few leaves left. Everything si brown and grey in the sanctuary-to-be, but I have planet burbs which will bloom in different colours next spring. Hopefully.

When Christmas comes, the Christmas gnome (julenissen) will come though this passage to look for his rice porridge. I still need to rake some leaves here to make the passage nice for him.

Follow the links and you will be taken to my other two blogs and their post for today.

White daisies

Most of the flowers pots are emptied, but a few white daisies are resistant, bringing life into the garden.

Ready for a long winter.

Resistence

Snow has come and gone a couple of times already, thoughvthe Peace Rose still struggle to open her last buds.

Almost too late?

These days there is not much time for garden life. It is too cold and wet, and most of the time I am at home it is too dark. It is still dusk when I leave for work in the morning, and the afternoons are short. But due to a dentist appointment and also Marta's flu I came home earlier today, and couldn't resist some late yellow happiness.

Red morning.

Monday morning I left for Sweden for three days. I said goodbye to the Blue Garden before I left.

Autumn decorations

The play house and the front door of The House in the Woods - friends are welcome.

Tulip fever.

Winter is arond the corner. I have been planning to prepare the garden for the winter season for some time now, but rain and terrible cold weather has kept me indoors.

Then finally, yesterday the rain took a break. I found my old, brown garden coat and my garden boots and made myself ready for some garden fun.

After lunch Marta and I drove over to the nearest garden center to buy some new tulip bulbs. There alot of autumn plants and decoration ideas tempted us - both the play house and the front door area have n ow got their own flower arrangements, but to get the tulips into the soil had to be my main priority.

Darkness comes early now, it is not like midsummer when I could play in the garden untill midnight. I worked hard, and just as I had put the last bulb down, darkness came, and with that the first snow.

Now it is time to sit down close to the burning hearth with a cup of hot chocolate and Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever.

Time to move

Frost is just around the corner. This morning there were some snow flakes in the air, though now the sun is shining and I plan to go out and do some garden work.

Many plants are moved indoors now. I have undressed them from dry leaves and carried them down to a couple of cold rooms in the basement where they will spend their winter sleep.

My tomboy girl

It is autumn break this week, and my tomboy girl loves to play out in the garden

We have a small forest in front of the House in the Woods, and there she has created a world of her own.

I asked her the other day what she was playing. She looked at me with a smile and said: "That's for me only to know"

Autumn painting.

Home from a week away

For a week I have been browsing the secret gardens of Venezia. Such beauty, such charm, such nice weather - the week has been a dream. I am sitting in my first floor studio looking through photos from La Serenissima, but can't stop looking out of my window which faces The Blue Garden. A wonderful autumn palette is here to visit for some short days, and I drink greedily from the red and yellow wine of colours.

The maple has lost most of its leaves now, but it will savour its life deep into the soil to bring us joy and beauty again next summer. And good memories will live on.