Home Improvement

Couple of seasons of amateur handymaning in the cottage has made us adventurous. For a while we have been planning to redo our bathroom. This autumn we started the project and decided to do a tiny bit of the work ourselves.

Plumbers, carpenters and electricians did the important bits. Our task was small, paint half a wall and the ceiling. As the project progressed, our bit grew a bit and now include the doors. Our bathroom is now easily the most modern and up to date we have. But it looks almost like a 1930's bathroom.

Finding the bits and pieces for our perfect bathroom was not easy, but we are very happy with the result. The bath tub with labrador feet is from Gustavsberg. The basin is Imperial Bathrooms Astoria cloak basin with pedestal. The bath and basin mixers are from Damixa's Tradition series. The wall hung toilet is from Duravit 1930's series and the flusher Grohe Skate. We have a heated towel rail from Hafa and Eline found the shelf thingy with candle stand and champagne holder in the tub in Berlin, Germany. The mirror is from Skeidar and the mirror lifghts from Lampemagasinet.

The bathroom is rather small (1.5 x 2.5 meter) getting good overview pictures was not easy. Borrowing a full format digital SLR with 17mm lens did the trick.

End of season

Winter is here. The cottage is closed down for the season. The garden is ready for winter. We tried staying in the cottage for a while this autumn while our apartment was being decorated. Nice and quiet, but you really feel how it is to live in a house without insulation. Our little bedrom is insulated and would keep around 15C. But the main room would be just 2-3 degrees warmer than outside. Breakfast in 10C is rather cold. As a final project, I have changed the countertops in the cottage kitchen. Available space is doubled and it looks really nice. Of course the new kitchen sink is bigger so I have to move the hot water tank. Something to do for spring!

This years failures and lessons learnt

Of course I want all things in the garden to thrive and give oodles of berries or fruits or whatever. But this year has had its share of failures.

First of all the tomatoes. They sprouted well. Grew into nice tomato plants, some flowered and one started to bear tomatoes sort of early. The problem is that even our best bush still has only green tomatoes. And the summer is rapidly coming to an end here, followed by a rather chilly autumn. There may still be a couple of weeks of sunshine and ok temperature. Keeping my fingers crossed. Lesson learnt: Do not expect seeds taken from tomatoes from the supermarket to thrive in Norway!

Next is the chillies. Started out promising. But now (after two months!) they look puny. No flowers, not much going on. Again: Norway may not be the best place for this.

Same goes for paprikas. Seeds from vegetables from the store. No big success.

Not sure why the cucumbers are looking gloomy. They have a nice, sunny, fertile, sheltered spot... but are so far really really small.

Perhaps the biggest failure is the raspberries. We cleaned up the patch thorougly, creating nice ordered rows of plants. Since we had plenty of plants to start with, we picked the healthies to keep. For some strange reason, we managed to only keep yellow berry ones. Not a read raspberry in sight this year. The biggest mistake, however, may have been putting a protective sheat over the patch.

First of all, the sheet prevents many of next years stems to grow. We should have thought of that. Secondly, the sheet helps the soil retain moisture, preventing the patch from drying. Big big mistake this year. With this years rain, it may have helped drown many of the plants. Luckily, we have a bunch of extremely healthy plants leftover by the compost bins.

Another type of failure affected the cherries. The tree is still young, but this year it produced a fair number of cherries. I eagerly watched them grow, waiting impatiently for them to turn red. It almost never happened. Before I got around to putting a net over the little tree, most of the berries were eaten by magpies. The two berries I managed to save tasted lovely, though.

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

This summer has had a common theme. Rain. Lots of it, long periodes of it, plenty of days. Most of the time I don't mind, but after a week of rain everything feels a little soggy.

But the rain and the heat has some advantages. Everything is extremely lush and green. My sweet peas are 2,5m talls (and growing), the sunflowers are huge. Tomatoes and grapes seem to be lacking heat, though.

Sitting inside one day, I spottet this friendly leaf gently waving in the rain outside.

Harvest dinner

A fantastic perk of having a garden is the ability to grow things. This summer we have enjoyed a host of berries. Strawberries ripened first, closely followed by raspberries. The cherry harvest was small but good for such a young tree. Next year will be even better. The blueberries are just ripening and red and blackcurrants are ready to enjoy. Soon we can start picking apples and there may even be plums.

An absolute favourite for me is harvesting things for dinner. Today we harvested the first potatoes for a lovely dinner with wild lamb from the west coast. It was really just a test to see how they turned out. They tasted lovely and bodes well for the rest of the patch.

This year we planted seeds for colorful carrots. And today was the first harvest. One yellow, one red and the usual carroty orange. They tasted great and I was rather surprised that the dark red carrot was actually orange insde!

I almost forgot to mention that we had tiramisu for dessert. No local ingredients involved.

My kind of triathlon

The sun had not left for good after all! To celebrate, I rushed home from work on my bike (5km), went for a jog around Sognsvann (around 5km) and a quick dip in Sognsvann (to short to measure). My kind of triathlon!

The storm

Our little village of cottages is on the hills overlooking Oslo. It is the perfect spot for watching the rather changeable weather roll inn over the city. Today we have a storm coming, sort of unusual for summer.

The day started out with rain. Soft, quiet rain. Then the rain stopped for a few hours befor this rather black cloud rolled in.

Now, the rain is pouring down, with the occasional lightning and thunder. It is not windy yet, but they predict a storm tonight. Maybe I have to brave the weather and go out to see!

Peas

Peas are one of my all time favourite vegetables. I have childhood memories of stealing peas from our neighbors patch (sorry!). Small wonder, peas was the first crop I planted for myself in the garden.

This year, I've planted two different varieties. One was supposed to be about 150cm high (now measuring around 250cm!) while the other should stop around 75cm.

The tall ones was planted first and has for about two weeks provided us with large pods with delicious peas. The second batch has just started flowering and I hope they will bear fruit before winter sets upon us (which is in about two-three months, so there is hope).

A pleasant side effect is that the plants, leaves, pods and peas are great photo subjects. If the wind doesn't blow too much...

Growing things to eat

When we took over the garden, it was well established with strawberries, raspberries, plums, apples and red and blackcurrants. There was plenty of flowers as well, but it turns out they are not my department (Eline takes care of that). Everything was a bit overgrown.

Our two apple trees was first out in the general cleanup. Some really serious pruning has done the main tree very well. Not to sure about the front tree yet.

The raspberries was our first project. We had an eclectic collection of red and yellow berries in a jungleish configuration. A lot of digging revaled a bunch of healthy plants, several large and magnificent stone slabs and a nice, rectangular bed for a new raspberry regime. We covered the soil with fibre cloth and bark and planted nice rows of raspberries. The cloth may have been a mistake since only some of the plants have produced shoots for next years crop.

For some mysterious reason, all the raspberries we replanted have turned out to be yellow. Whatever happened to all the red ones are a bit mysterious.

Last summer I made jam from the yellow raspberries. It look very much like korma sauce. Especially since I put in a glass that used to contain korma sauce!

The first autumn I planted a grape vine called Frank since he is a Frankenthaler. Frank is doing well. He was striken to the ground by heavy rain and winds, but with a new brace he is still thriving. This year, we even have the beginnings of a bunch of grapes!

Another pet project is growing sugar snap peas. This years crop has been huge! Now we are eagerly waiting for the garden blueberries to actually turn blue! They are looking good so far.

Country Amateurs

Our alltoment garden was established in 1929, 80 years ago. The house was originally built by amateurs with materials from old shipping crates for cars etc. Since then, the house has been extended, refurbished and maintained mostly by amateurs.

I myself am a complete amateur. We have fixed up the main room (paint, wallpaper, changed cabinet doors, installed hot water tank) and the bedroom (paint, wallpaper and built beds). I am actually impressed with the work.

This summer has been pure joy. Long spells of warm sunny weather. Lots of fun in the garden. And then the rain started...

The small house does not feel any larger after a few days of rain. And one night going to bed, we discovered that the rain seeped in through the roof into the shed on the back wall... Lovely...

Up onto the roof. Into the dark. And rain...

I did not really know what to look for. But even a complete amateur could not miss it: some of the corner coverings had started to crumble. Up onto the roof with everything waterproof we could find. A small sheet of plastic, a couple of plastic table cloths and a couple of loose roof gutters. Luckily the quick fix helped!

Our local hardware store had the necessary tools and after a dry day or so the roof was ready for some fixing. It was almost dissapointingly quick! Since then the weather has been quite nice. Still, I am sort of hoping for a real bout of rain during the summer. I do not want to wait until autumn to test if the roof is yet again waterproof!

Country life inside city limits

I am a computer scientist. In live in Oslo, Norway. Downtown, within five minutes walk of everything. Nicely urban.

In August 2007 I got a an allotment garden with a small house (cottage, really). This is my first country house. This is my first garden. This is the first summer spent in my house in my garden.

The garden is about 400 square meters. When we took over, the house and garden had been empty for almost two years. It looked and felt like a secret garden!

2007 was spent fixing the inside and getting some control over the garden. 2008 was the first garden season. I got a grape vine (Frankenthauler) and planted a lot of sweet peas, a childhood favourite of mine. The summer of 2008 was already planned, so we missed most of the summer last year.

Now I am experiencing country life for the first time, staying in the garden throught the summer. A great experience with some unexpected side effects.