Again, continued on from the last post...now into the garden. Ours is a well-worn and loved, much used and enjoyed, started several generations before, by the one who built the house: Farfar.
Farfar is Norwegian for father´s father. The house was built by our kids farfar. Hmm not sure that sounds right in English. You get the idea--their Norwegian great grandfather built the house. The garden is lovely, with endless wild things that pop up seasonally all year by themselves no matter what, and ditto things that have been planted by all those who lived in the house all these years. Foxglove, heather, juniper, lots of things I have no idea what they are and I´m a pretty good gardener who learned in England, including latin names of most things! I will try to find old photos as now it´s nearly winter and most things are dying down.
Apple tree in autumn apples now PHOTO
As any gardener worth their flowers would know, it´s best to have a South-facing garden, and microclimates with a South-facing wall! Our garden is huge and has several of both. And a few natural springs trickling down said walls making a tiny stream sometimes across the garden, into another area where an old wreck and ruin of a stone farm animal keep has fallen down, making it look like an old castle. The stones are substantial and huge, nearly boulder size, near the edge of a huge stone mountain. The walls around the garden were all hand built from stones, rocks and boulders around the property from when the house was first built. Some are dry stone, some are dry stone with a little cement, and some are stones cemented together to form a dry stone look. Very pretty. One reminds me of an Italian stone walled garden, as it has a large space within it at the bottom with an ornate metal pipe and faucet for a metal bucket to catch running water.
PHOTO
There is a wooden balcony deck which T and E Sr built which overlooks that part of the garden and yard. That area is lower down by a few levels, hence making it several microclimates warmer, protecting it from the winds which come up. There is a natural pond area, surrounded by stones and sand for sitting, which used to have a shed atop the stones, so the shed was not touching the ground. It rotted finally and fell down. I really liked that shed--it was more a weathered looking lean-to Delta-looking type wood structure, that I liked to sit in and enjoy the views from what seemed to be a porch. I come from porch country, and I miss having a porch! the other porch areas around the house were always filled with construction and renovation stuff, so could never be used, disappointingly. So, this shed was my porch, as that is really what it looked like: a porch lean-to overlooking the entire views of the house from the deck side, and into a forested Castle area on the other, and leading to many paths through the forest. The kids and I enjoyed many fond memories there til it fell down. When the kittens were little they would play there, and the tiny river near by, and it was one of their fave places to hide! They did absolutely fully enjoy getting into the tiny river and explore too--it rains here lots, so cats here are used to rain and water!:)
Norwegians, in my minds eye from what I´ve seen, seem to garden somewhere between Colorado and England! Best of both the most wild native planting, wild grass, and beautifully blooming casual as opposed to formal gardens of the UK! Fantastic!
PHOTOS
As in rural areas in the UK where I used to live, it is aslo typical here (here as in bucolic area I specifically live in), but getting less so, that houses and roads are not always lit. Our private road has absolutely no lights, lamp posts or lighting, and neither does our house! Fine and unnoticable in spring, summer, or hardly even in autumn. But dayum in wintertime´s pitchblackness and rare daylight hours, it is extremely noticable to me! I remember when very pregnant with N having to walk slowly down the steep long private road to get to the taxi (or our car?). It was pitch black, the road was icy and covered in ice, the texture of the road is unpaved paved jaggedy uneven and rocky, etc. I was angry, scared of falling and hurting myself, and was NOT used to this! I cursed and complained the entire walk down, as I was so scared and annoyed at being so scared and having to walk down it under these conditions in dead of winter, icy, freezing, couldn´t see a damn thing, early in the morning 4am or so to get to the car for the airport! Soon as I got down, I was fine--absolutely relieved! thankful! I´d not fallen! The road is also narrow, winding a bit, edgeless on the down side, with nothing to stop you from falling off. I was so mad about that walk! Even now I only recall a bit of it, but know how scared I was. Lots of adrenalin flowing through my pregnant body, on top of hormones and typical mother worries of falling on top of my pregnant belly let alone off the edge!
T was completely nonplussed, having grown up in the house and having walked a lifetime up and down that dark wintery icy private road. It was nothing to him. Unnoticed. He could not understand WHY I was even slightly off about it,)
Maybe I´m the only one? Anyone else pregnant in that situation be upset too? I wonder, but I really think I am not alone on that!,)
hmm way off on gardening aren´t we?! Well, it was a necessary evil to explain that no not everyone does have heat (as in other post) or lights, as one might expect to have when coming from a different perspective: a newbie. Every country, even sometimes different areas within the same metro area within the same country you are actually even from, all have things which are new, unexpected, unusual, not expected to get used to!
Mostly I did love my new home, and new life, and new way of living, as it was what even from a young girl had dreamed of, and drawn (see previous posts)!
Winter "gardening" on a private road includes having to shovel the snow, salt for ice (salting makes the snow not turn to ice as much as possible), etc. If it snows right after you´ve shoveled, then you shovel again. The problem of a private road, what most Norwegians nowadays find, is in the old days people were much more apt to be used to hard graft and just do it. Nowadays no one, or not everyone, or only a few people are willing to do stuff like help pay for those new modern lights that everyone expects now, or add the railing that everyone expects now, or add a cement edge and picket fence or otherwise that everyone expects now. Or, even to simply shovel the damn road! Or atleast your helpful share of it too. That is the annoying thing about living on a private road: when everyone does not pull their full share of either salt, or money, or manpower. It´s better now, though as the main 2 who never helped, always took always expected those of the rest of us to do it...they´ve moved. yay.
If it has not been clear, the house is a house by itself (a detached) with outbuildings. All the other houses are too. We each have our own yards and land. We just share the private road, and because it is private, the city (the kommune) does not snowplow it or do anything to or with it. It´s narrow, so it´d kinda be difficult for the kommune. This is typical here of the smaller windy further out roads. Some of the larger roads are far enough out too that sometimes in winter it has snowed at odd times between snowplowing, so they have to be plowed yet again before traffic can continue at all.
In the city of Bergen, the roads are plowed, they have citylights etc just as you´d expect:). Though sometimes even they have the closed roads, when winter is really unrelenting, for here. That´s always relative to what is normally expected! A half inch of snow in Texas will shut down the city for days,) Five months of 100F weather here would, well, cause a world record at the least!:)
PHOTOS GARDEN WINTER
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