With a little help from the ice in the birds’ frozen water bowl and a bunch of small candles, I wish all of you a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Month: December 2015
A Swedish “Tomte” is a must
Whenever I visit The Old Town in Stockholm, especially at Christmas times, there is a shop I cannot avoid – the one with all the unique and very personal “Tomte” figures. They come in different sizes and are handmade in every detail, and you just have to have one in your home. They look a bit like Santa Claus, but the “Tomte” is, according to nordic folklore, a sweet little figure who was supposed to guard your home and spread a good feeling in your home all year round. But he could also be quite mean, if you neglected your home or the atmosphere was bad.
The new one I bought for this year is standing in the window, right now overlooking the living room. In the old days it was said that if you were kind to each other, tended to your home and gave the “Tomte” a plate of porridge at Christmas – then he would thank you by guarding your home.
Of course, we also have the “Jultomte”, and that is Santa Claus, coming on Christmas Eve – but that is another story.
What nature is offering
Two months ago, we took down a huge fir tree, it was bending dangerously towards the house. A winter storm, and it could have fallen into the roof. When I saw the long, beautiful upper branches, with its magnificent cones, I decided to save them for later. I did not know right then what to use them for, I just had the intuition it would be handy somewhere.
And one day the solution was right there! The upper part of the railing on
our veranda is of whitepainted wood. What if I put the fir branches on top of that, tied onto it with some roughlooking string from the garden store.
With a helping hand from my husband, to hold the branches into place while I tied them, a fairy tale landscape took form. The irregularity of the branches hanging from the rail accentuated the feeling of fairy tale.
To finish off, I tied silvery Christmas tree balls all along the front side of the railing. For a little while I considered brightening up the whole with electric Christmas lights, but decided not to. The sharp lights would have taken away the mysterious fairy tale feeling. Enjoy 🙂
Another ice sculpture
The second bird bath was smaller, but nontheless impressing when turned into an ice sculpture. On the table of the veranda, I started the building of an ice house. But, alas, the weather was against me and the ice house was never finished. You just wait until next time the weather goes into freezing temperatures. Nontheless, with the winter sun reflecting in the ice – isn´t it beautiful?
Decorating for Christmas
With less than one week to Christmas, I am full of decorating inspiration. Everyone coming near me will experience that. Even the guys digging in our area for water and sewer cannot escape it 🙂 Every week I serve them a cake for their morning break – just for the fun of it – and today they got a Christmas cake decorated with delicate fir branches sprayed with the finest sugar to make it look like snow. And dotted here and there among the branches were small bulbs of marzipan colored with red eatible cooking color. And I am so sorry, but I did not take a photo of it, before bringing it down to them, you will have to use your imagination 🙂
For the rest of December I will bring in some decorating inspiration on my blog.
By us here in Stockholm, there have been some cold days. Every morning I feed the birds, and give them new lukewarm water. That means I take away the icy cake that has formed during the night.
I carefully remove it and place it on the veranda. After four cold nights there are now four beautiful round ice sculptures leaning towards the glass wall of the veranda. In the day, the sun reflects in it, and in the night the light from the lamps inside the living room give them a very special glow. A pity there will soon be warm weather again and they will melt. But that is life with ice sculptures … isn´t that the essence of mindfulness: to live in the moment?
Crazy Swedish Gardener 