garden

Winter in the garden

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

Winter is a time of the year of slowing down, contemplating the winter structure of the garden, remembering all of last season with its’ ups and downs. But if you think the garden is “dead” during winter time, it has just fooled you. Take some time to look closer, be still, watch the life there is. And be prepared with your camera/cell phone.

Structures. I usually let many of my withered plants stand in the autumn, not cutting them down for the winter. When frost and snow comes, I have wonderful structures breaking the monotony of the sleeping garden.

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Birds. Winder feeding of the garden birds is quite a joy. If you put some time on good feeding places, protection for the small birds and of course good bird food (I use organic seeds from a professional producer, http://www.slattergubben.se, I can reallly recommend him, also for his fantastic instructive videos) you will have spectacular bird watching all winter. Many different birds visit my feeding places, last week I even caught a Sparrow Hawk with my binoculars landing in our cherry tree close to the house.

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Mystical visits. Don´t forget to make a tour round the garden now and then, even in winter. You will soon be aware of small changes. Footprints in the snow … A bucket turned over … A hole in a garden bed. Often these mystical visits come by night. But if you are lucky, it is even possible to catch some of the biggest animals. Look at this photo, where a small family of mouses trotted right over our garden.

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Bench for contemplating

~ Eva the Gardener ~ 1 Comment

For my inner eye, I could see this special bench long before it was built. The 80 year old pear tree… Hexagonal bench… View towards the lake… Cup of coffee in my hand… Summer leaves trembling in the faint breeze above my head… YES, this bench was a MUST.

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And one day the opportunity was there. A friends husband do carpenter work as a hobby, and today the whole family came over to build my dream bench.

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Really, P was super professional! He started out in the gloomy noon, with the rain hanging in the air.

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One afternoon later  the sun was shining and the bench was there.

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And of course we celebrated with a  Swedish “fika”! Coffee and homemade blackcurrants pie, a taste of summer 🙂

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Now the finishing job is mine: to paint the bench. But until then, I enjoy the view of it. I have a feeling this will be a favourite place of mine! And if you are inspired and want a bench of your own, P told me he would love to go to another country and build his special bench there (“Spain would be wonderful,” said the Swedish hobby carpenter).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winterfun in the garden

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

When I was a small kid, I lived in the north of Sweden. Wintertime we kids used to compete between families on how to make the most beautiful snow lantern. Today I had a day off work, and the snow held just the right quality to make snowballs – so I decided to make a snow lantern, grown-up version.

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I used the summer bird bath that I had long ago stored away for the winter. This little round and shallow bath on a rack, will make the lantern come out of the snow, and sort of float in the air when darkness fall and the candle light inside is glowing…

So I started building a circle of tightly packed  snowballs. The weather was gloomy, grey, so some of  these photos nearly look like black-and-white ones.

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I started on the second row, on top of the first. To help them get “glued” on to the first row, I dipped the bottom of every snowball real quick in some water – that made them freeze to the snowballs beneath and beside.

The most beautiful structure is if you can build the second row a little to the left or right of the first snowball, it makes like a zig zag pattern from the outside when the lantern is lit.

When you continue building, see to that there is a slight tilt inwards, like an eskimo hut.

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Finally, after a long time of building, the lantern is ready. By the time I had come this far, the dusk had closed in, which made it a perfect timing to light the lantern.

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I used one of those memorial candles, because they are contructed to burn for 50 hours, and are not affected by wind and damp weather.

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A rather shaky photo (below), my camera is not a good one in complete darkness. But i think you can imagine the feeling. In the middle of the darkness, something is floating out, glimmering, glittering.

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Listen to your ants

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

Exactly. Listen to your ants. Have you ever realized it’s impossible to hear the sound of one single ant marching through the forest? But if you bend down over thousands of ants building and repairing their anthill in the warming sunshine of spring – then you can actually HEAR the ants. Try for yourself.

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An experiment…

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

My parsley was a gold mine last winter. I had covered it with blankets against snow and ice, and whenever I wanted some fresh parsley for cooking, I just went out and looked under the layers of blankets and could pick some. It was really amazing.

When spring came, I soon saw the parsley wanted to go blooming. Then I decided to make an experiment. What do they look like when blooming? I followed the plants developing into flowers. In the middle of the summer I had parsley flowering all over the planting place (see photo).IMG_0296

The flowers of the parsley are very, very small, and they were a gift to all the very small insects. It was sheer pleasure standing near, hearing the buzz in the air and seeing the small ones enjoying their meal 🙂

And no, I did not get any parsley to eat this season. Well, the experiment continued, and by autumn the pollinated flowers had turned into seeds. Some weeks ago I cut off the long stems and put everything to dry on the veranda.IMG_0463

IMG_0464Yesterday I saw the seeds had dried and I carefully cut off the top of the stems, with the “seed flower”. An easy way to get the seeds from the “flower” is to put the whole “seed flower” in a plastic bag. When you have filled the bag you shake, press and rub the content for a few seconds – and all the seeds fall off so you will have a nice little heap in the bottom of the bag. I learned this trick from a Norwegian writer, Annemarta Borgen, and her book “Urtehagen på knatten”.

I got so much parsley seed that I can give it away as gifts, in addition to planting parsley next season. See to that the seeds are dry, when you put them away for the winter. A nice way to store them is to fold your own “envelopes”. That is also a nice package if you want to give away seeds as gifts. Here is how to make the envelopes:

IMG_0475Choose a nice piece of paper, it should be square in size. Fold it in the middle.

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Fold the right and left corner into the middle, so that they overlap. IMG_0469Then insert one corner into the other, this makes the envelope hold together.

IMG_0472Open up the top angle (which consists of two layers of paper). Now you have an envelope to put the seeds in. Then fold the top angle into a lid. Fold it so that a little part of the top reaches below the bottom of the envelope. IMG_0471There you tuck it into the bottom to close the envelope.

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And here is your envelope, ready to give away as a gift or to store the seeds for future planting.

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Over and under the rainbow

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

“Somewhere over the rainbowIMG_0287 Way up high And the dreams that you dreamed of Once in a lullaby” Isn´t this awesome! Dinner on the veranda started with a magnificent thunderstorm followed by a sunset complete with a rainbow extending all over the sky above us. Unbelievable! Almost automatically we started humming on the tune above. And yes, under the rainbow is the treasure, as in the fairy tale – and for us the treasure consists of our dream house, of course! IMG_0288

Some garden …!

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

There are gardens, and there are GARDENS. Recently I visited Wij Trädgårdar (Wij Gardens) in the town of Ockelbo, about 2 hours car drive north of StockIMG_0238holm. Every time I go there, it is like entering some kind of paradise. Have a coffee outside the old mIMG_0237ansion, stroll by the vegetable gardens made by the IMG_0239gardener school situated there, enjoy the elaborate rose garden, be astonished by the artisan works in and around the gardens, be inspired by the examples of different garden settings. Lake, fields, plantings, old buildings, bridges, garden shop – everything has this air of peacefulness. Wij Gardens is wellknown over Scandinavia, I IMG_0246wish I could spread the word in the world about this beautiful place. If you go there, perhaps you will even get a glimpse of the crown prinsess family, since prince Daniel is born in Ockelbo.

The art of scything

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

IMG_0228Few people today know the art of scything, but old Swedish traditions are coming back and it is nowadays possible to see this old way of cutting the grass at special landscape events, or you could sign up for a course  in using the scythe.

The scythe is a tool that was used for cutting crops such as grass or wheat, with a long curved blade at the end of a long pole attached to which are one or two short handles.

My scythe is very old. The pole I got from a friend, the blade and the beautiful fastening parts were a present from a neighbor. The pole is in fact too short for me, so I am searching for a longer one, but on the other hand I am very fond of this old one.

Important is thIMG_0222e knife-grinder, and recently I was able to buy a perfect little grinder tool. When the scythe is sharp, it is sheer pleasure to cut the lawn. Yes, in fact we have saved the grass on our lawn to create a good environment for bees and other insects, but also to discover a whole world of different species of flowers that have been popping up in our field/lawn – which happens when you let the grass grow. Well, in a week or so we are going to scythe everything, and then my husband will be happy to run his garden tractor over the grass to transform it into a perfect lawn again.

The dessert is ready

~ Eva the Gardener ~ Leave a comment

IMG_0231IMG_0230I am having some friends for lunch today. So what could the countryside offer them? Got the idea to take a look out in the woods behind our house. Spring was rainy, just what  blueberry plants need, perhaps I could find some berries for dessert? Guess what! The woods are full of blueberries. I even found some wild strawberries, made a nice mixture. So my guests will be treated with morning picked berries and icecream for dessert – the perfect summer treat, isn’t it?

Mushrooms!!!

~ Eva the Gardener ~ 1 Comment

When I found one single chanterelle near one of the apple trees, I was so surprised. A chanterelle is a delicious edible mushroom. But what to do with one single one? Suddenly I remembered a neighbour talking of having seen chanterelles in our garden long before we moved in. Of course! If there is one, there are more of them. With rain pants on and boots – there are a lot of nasty bugs! –  I walked into the high grass tree area of the garden and started looking. One chanterIMG_0202IMG_0201elle suddenly turned into one litre( a quarter of a gallon)!! It’s amazing what gifts this garden give us. Butterfried chanterelles on a toast made a nice starter before dinner that evening 🙂