Longing for spring

The hill up the street is a perfect place for some winter fun.

Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope you all have nice and interesting events and adventures to look forward to this year.

I look forward to spring. Mid-January is maybe the most dreary time of the year. Christmas and the holidays are over and spring and summer seems so far away.

What I normally do to overcome the January down is to make sure to have some fun outside during day light. A little jog, some skiing in the woods or a brisk walk in the park. Sleighing on a slope always makes me laugh!

My garden right now!

The other way to beat the blues is to start planing my garden. Ordering seeds and looking for inspiration is a great and fun thing to do and filled with expectations of lazy summer days.

So where do I look for inspiration when all is frozen and covered in snow?

I have some favourite web sites that I can spend hours browsing. What you sow is an independent online shop selling all things garden! Check out the mini townhouse garden. 

The make the perfect little gift or a fun green addition to the window sill during January.

I could not get sowing going without the seed pot maker. With help of this clever and fun contraption I make seed pots from news paper and feel good for recycling. Don't miss their January Sale! 

From What You Sow blog.

What You Sow has a great blog too where you can find tips on growing, cooking with your produce and much much more!





Obviously I need some seeds and I get mine form  Burford Garden Company on my frequent trips to England.

I bought literary hundreds of bulbs last autumn and just imagine how exciting it will be to see all the flowers when summer returns to my part of the world!

A Bungee Bird Feeder from What You Sow!

A bed for the night

All creatures in the garden should be treated as special guests. I came across a bee hotel on Etsy a week ago. To me it was a whole new concept all though I had read a bit about caring for the insects in the garden. The bee hotel is now on its way from Mike in Scotland to my garden.

On a trip to Durbach in South Germany last week I saw bee hotels, or rather insect houses, at the museum!

It's such a basic thing to care for the beneficial insects of the garden. They work for us to pollinate plants and make our toil bear fruits - literary!

To bee or not to bee.

Very eager for the growing season to begin last spring, I did buy a garden magazine that had free seeds attached. They where described as deep red velvet sunflowers. Here are four of them! What ever colour, they make me happy! They also make the wild bees around here happy. Bees are heading very close to the list of endangered insects due to extensive use of pesticides, large areas without food, climate changes and other reasons. It's nice to grow flowers that feeds the bees! Our food production relies on them!

Here are some facts about the ever importent busy bees:

http://www.saveourbees.org.uk/bee-facts.asp

And here you can read what gardners can do to save the bees;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/25/save-bees-gardeners

Fresh from the berry bush!

I said I was going to write about the vegetables we grow, and I will. However, the berries are ripe now and so tempting to ..write about. And eat!
When we got this garden two years ago it had all the fruits and berries we could wish for, except cherries. We soon discovered that the plum tree didn't really produce much. The first year we had one plum, and it fell down in July.

As for berries we have raspberries, red currants and black currants and strawberries. We did as well buy a cherry tree. This year it gave some cherries, but the magpies we so much faster than us in getting them! A lesson learnt for next year.
In the spring we replanted the raspberries. They had been left to them self for very long, and weed was as plenty as raspberries. We had red and yellow berries last year. After replanting they all turn out to be yellow. I can't believe that we by accident just picked the yellow bushes. But it seems to be a funny fact.
Red currants grow on an old strong bush. This is the third year in a row that it is loaded with berries. The first year we were here we cut out some old branches and many new ones. We had no idea of what we did, we just wanted to stop the red currants bush from taking over the garden. We must have done something right!

We did a tidy-up in the strawberries as well, and they gave us treats for some weeks. It was very hot for the weeks they matured,

so they all did ripe at the same time. The most exciting fruit for us this season is the grapes. We bought a stock two years ago and now it shows signs of grapes! And oh! I nearly forgot to mention the blueberries! They are the American type and moved into our garden this spring. They seem happy here with lots of berries that are not yet ripe. Berries are very rewarding I think. I do very little to them and they give a lot back!

Allotments - an urban gardener's Paradise!

It is said that the Romans where the first once to have allotment gardening, as a consequence of the city being over populated and people started to grow vegetables on the outskirt of Rome. Today many big cities like London, Berlin, Stockholm have allotments.

The characteristics of an allotment is that the ground is owned and managed amongst the gardeners. It is expected to take a turn in keeping the common areas nice and well kept. It’s also expected that each owner of an allotment is actively keeping her plot tidy and nice. This might sound strict, but for anyone with green fingers it is a great social place to live a garden dream in a crowded city.

Our allotment garden was built in the late 1920s. It is called Solvang Kolonihager. The whole area has 545 cottages and gardens like mine. It’s a little garden world with small roads, low hedges, cute cottages and many pretty gardens. There are no cars on the roads and a paradise for children and parents alike.

We grow some vegetables and fruits. I’ll write about that soon, so look in again!

A place in the sun.

Two years ago we bought an allotment on the outskirt of Oslo. As they are not sold on the open market we had been waiting for more than six years to get one. What we got was a 40 m2 cottage and a 400 m2 garden 30 minutes on a push bike from the centre of Oslo, and 5 minutes to the woods and lakes beyond the city!

The closeness to the city is due to the fact that the area was developed into allotments in the 1920s. It was built as a place for the working class to be able to grow food and their children to get fresh air and escape from the small dark crowded apartments in the city.

At that time it was not allowed to grow flowers, or even to have a lawn! Today it's different. I will write more about the history of the allotment we are in soon. Meanwhile you can look at pictures of our cottage and garden, and read about allotment gardening on Wikipedia;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)

Peonies - "flower of riches and honour".

It's hard not to love peonies. The size of the flower, the plentitude of petals and the fragrance makes them irresistable. The name peonycomes from the Greek Paeon or Paean. Apperently he was a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. Asclepius became jealous of his pupil; Zeus saved Paeon from the wrath of Asclepius by turning him into the peony flower.

I have three different kinds of peonies in my garden. They have all been here a long time, befor I came here, so I don't know their names. But I do enjoy them every year when they do appear in early summer. Here are some of the peonies in my garden for you to enjoy! No wonder the Chinese call them the "flower of riches and honour".

In the shade under a tree.

A perfect summer day is spent under a tree in the shade in my own garden. A cup of tea and a good book at hand will make the day perfect. I have allways wanted a tree seat, and so far it is in a shop in the UK, and not in my garden. You can have a closer look at it here; http://www.gardeniron.co.uk/product.asp?ref=4542

I did get myself a bench this year though, and I am very happy with it. It's solid granit and will last til the end of days! Here I can sit under the old apple tree in the afternoon sun! The summer cottage looks good in the low sun.