summer holiday winding down

just a day and a half left of my three week summer holiday. it's been a rainy, rather cold summer and it would have been nice to go somewhere with sunshine, but it's also been really nice and relaxing to be at home and really great to have sabin at home. we worked on the outdoor terrace, i sewed and i worked with sabin on a cactus mural wall in our bedroom. 

i'm sad my holiday is ending and i've got low grade dread going back to all the work i have to do in the next couple of weeks. and i'm sad that sabin will head back to school at the end of the week. i'll miss having her here. we've been watching real housewives of orange county and relaxing. it's been good and hopefully all the rest and relaxation will carry me through the busy autumn. 

vikings and bunkers and dinos, oh my!

hmm, it seems they can help out if it's for their own end-of-the-school-year party. 

a dino spotting in the pathetically small corn across the way.

it's been so cold, the corn wasn't happy.

but a few days of sunshine and it's already double this size.

husband and my cousin try out a viking game.

i swear i don't remember that many bunkers at søndervig strand.

i wonder if some of them have risen up out of the sand.

and a raptor chomps a flower in the golden hour.

and we wished upon paper balloons instead of 4th of july fireworks.

gorgeous naturally-dyed yarn and fabrics at the viking market.
it was too hot for me to be tempted to buy any.

summer has come at last and around here it's been filled with an end-of-the-school year party, a visit from family that ended up rather viking-themed, a stroll on the west coast, lots of ice cream, playing cards, doing puzzles and drinking wine until the wee hours. oh, and a few dinosaurs, just for good measure.  and boy, have the strawberries started to come on! they were clearly happy to have some sunshine and warm temperatures as well. i've been juicing and freezing and quite literally spent hours today picking. luckily, i had a helper - molly the garden cat.

tho' things tend to slow down during the danish summer, the week ahead promises good things. and even more strawberries.

50 things about right now (mostly awesome)

i totally copycatted was inspired by molly's 50 things about right now post.

1.  in a word, kittens. two of them, tho' we thought she had 6 in there, her belly was so big.
2.  sunshine breaking through.
3.  working at home.
4.  sitting for too long in one spot when i work at home.
5.  building excitement over our coming holiday in london.

7.  flowers in bloom all over the place.

8. did i mention the two perfect, tiny kittens?

9. awesome projects at work.

10. great people to work with on awesome projects at work.

11.  a trip on the (rather distant) horizon to seattle and then new york.

12. yes, me, in new york.

13. for the first time ever.

14. cold white wine in the garden.

15. and the odd gin & tonic.

16. the coolest business cards ever. and i have some.
17. long, light summer nights.
18. being invited to a party this weekend.
19. horses with fly fringe attached to their halters.
20. the antics of our pigs.
21. the child hanging out with her good friends.
22. the awesomeness being submitted to the turtle competition we're running on eurobricks.
23. these are the ultra-creative people i get to work with. all. the. time.

24. pinterest.

25. looking forward to molly's kittens.

26. yes, that's more kittens.

27. awesome neighbors.

28. summer visits from friends.

29. rewatching friends from the beginning on netflix.

30. shark burgers for dinner.

31. salmon burgers for dinner.

32. burger burgers for dinner.

33. berries to pick.

34. the strawberries are done.

35. the child buying a nikon D7100 with her confirmation money.

36. arranging lunch dates with friends in london.

37. and tours of oxford with other friends.

38. packing up the "dining" room so it can become sabin's room.

39. reluctantly. because packing all those books away again feels wrong.

40. our independent, awesome feral hen keeping her babies safe up a tree every night.

41. overusing the word awesome.
42. but it's because everything is pretty much awesome.
43. looking at the calendar to find the best time for a weekend in rome.
44. and maybe one in berlin.
45. did i mention we're going to london?

46. getting to write at work too.

47. mowing the lawn.

48. strawberry shrubs.

49. staying up late.

50. sitting in the golden hour light with husband in the garden, sipping a cocktail and talking about our days, the future, living abroad, the angle of the roof, and what to do with all these cats.

* * *

seriously awesome reflection photos by kiripi katembo siku

they are stunning and so full of subtext and depth.

a big thank you to molly for sharing them with me.

gorgeous summer days are upon us

i'd say summer is here about a month earlier than it was last year. although we've had some rainy days, largely, they are filled with sunshine. and that means meals eaten in the garden.

i don't know if our mild winter and actual summer for what looks like two years running are products of climate change, but if they are, it's definitely working in our favor.

most meals have included fresh asparagus, plucked from the garden. asparagus is such an exercise in patience, you have to wait several years before you can begin to eat it, especially when you plant it from seed. this is the first year we've been able to really pick it. and we've definitely been enjoying it. mostly lightly steamed with a bit of butter or shavings of fresh parmesan.

even the child has been inspired by the good weather (and i suspect by instagram). she made this stack of homemade blueberry pancakes all on her own when she got home from school the other day. she's also taken to making iced lattes. most importantly, of course, is that you must photograph it all before you enjoy it. i think instagram is a good influence on her.

long, golden evenings stretch out in the garden. the child is constantly in motion and never far from her trampoline for long. she's trying to perfect handstands before her grandmother gets here.

but she can also do all kinds of flips. this is why she's signed up for a gymnastics-focused boarding school for the ninth grade.

the elderflowers are already in bloom. i looked through my photo library and it's a good three weeks earlier than usual. that means we'll have fresh elderflower syrup to make drinks for our upcoming party.

there are flowers popping up all over the garden, it seems like in bigger abundance than ever before. those who lived here before us were into gardening and i'm grateful for the flowers they left behind (even if i'm not grateful to them for much else).

there's less than a month to go before the solstice and the light begins to turn away from us again, but with this much of its golden glory, i think i can bear the thought of that.

at least someone's floating on air

after a horrendous european parliamentary election yesterday, where an actual convicted racist from denmark's xenophobic party (the so-called danish people's party) won the most personal votes of anyone ever, the part of the country with functioning brain cells is reeling. i guess tho', that an awful lot of the country cannot be said to be sensible, but instead insular, protectionist, fearful, racist, xenophobic and easily fooled by a smooth talker. hmm, sounds familiar somehow...

but in the garden, the sun was shining and sabin was levitating and somehow that made it seem like everything would probably be all right in the end.

the weekend in pictures - or how we actually had an endless summer in denmark at last

possibly our coming papa kitty. we need some orange around here.

a case of chicken envy at the neighbor's house.

cool is a charmer.

do not call husband a social democrat.

summer drinks.

gorgeous vegetarian food at drink & draw

heavenly fennel dish - we might have to rename drink & draw to drink & eat (& laugh)

yum. bacon-wrapped asparagus with a touch of miso.

a spontaneous trip to the beach.

the water and the waves were glorious.

our gorgeous molly.

curious about samba.

a first tree-climbing adventure.

hope your weekend was glorious too.

glorious summer days

these gorgeous summer days don't really get any more relaxed. frieda (aka paws mcgraw) demonstrates.

sabin braided a clover flower crown. we all tried it on. husband said i looked swedish in it. i'm choosing to see that as a good thing. oddly enough, no one took my picture.

why is it again that they say not to photograph against the light? sabin spent last week with a friend and her family at a summer house up north. we were very glad to have her home again.

sabin took this gorgeous shot of our dear, elderly lila belle. she's been loving the warm summer days as well and has even been seen playing, despite her 14+ years.

even husband tried on the clover crown. he's very secure in his masculinity that way. we had to have a photo of that. maybe there's no photos of me because i'm mostly behind the camera.

a question of time

i measure time these lazy summer days in terms of kitten growth. little frieda has come quite a long way since she was born may 22. it makes time seem to pass very quickly when you think of it like that. but at the same time, these long, light days stretch out and it feels like there's time for everything you want to do. it's ok that it takes an hour and a half to pick strawberries, because it's ok to eat at 8 p.m. when it's so light. if it takes another hour or more to hull them and get them into the steamer, that's ok too. time feels like it's enough.

at the same time, i'm acutely aware that time is rushing forward. sabin is growing up and i don't know if i've properly enjoyed her as a non teenager. and now it's fast becoming too late for that. she'll be in the 7th grade in a few short weeks. did we do enough together? should i have kept her home, to spend time with her, instead of letting her go to a summer house with a friend this week? on the other hand, she needs that essential danish summer house experience and she's not going to get it from us.

the older i get, the more time seems to rush headlong forward. my daily photos serve as a memory for me and i am sometimes amazed when i look back and a particular photo was that long ago. often it seems like just yesterday. time gets warped somehow, bent in memory. can i really be this old? have i really lived here that long? was it really so long ago we went to morocco? or spain? or that we met? it was a lifetime ago and it feels like i only just blinked and all that time passed.

so i'm grateful for the summer slowdown of time. for it stretching out and becoming all i need right here and now. and for the golden light that stretches well into the evening. i'll take that for now and try to save it up for those long winter nights.

* * *

more on how we experience time.

* * *

i like this essay on the treyvon martin case.
it helped me understand.
and anyone who calls himself a digital humanist is cool in my book.

* * *

russian intelligence goes old school - with typewriters!

the color sneaks back into my world

i suppose it's just these sunny, summer days we've been treated to, but it feels somehow like color is returning to my world. it's been a tough time recently with molly's mastitis, our chickens disappearing (it turns out it wasn't a fox, they were stolen!), my borrelia diagnosis and then losing frankie. a lot of things happening in quick succession that have sapped my energy and robbed me of my inspiration and, you probably noticed, my words.

despite losing frankie on monday, it was on the whole a good week. i took the last of my antibiotics and i feel myself returning to more or less feeling normal health-wise, tho' i do occasionally run a low-grade fever for most of a day (i hope that stops now), which zaps my energy again. but spending time with sabin in the sunshine, doing creative projects helped greatly.

it's hard to be down in the dumps when your old favorite converse have been turned into bright, cheery rainbows.

the garden, especially the fruit bushes and those strawberries, are in full swing and picking and processing all that fruit makes me feel industrious and satisfied. i know how much we'll enjoy the fruits of all my labors come autumn and winter. that has raised my spirits as well.

the perfect afternoon i spent painting in the garden with sabin on friday also went a long way towards reawakening what has been a dormant sense of creativity. i have a tendency to go through a low-level depression at times without even really realizing it myself, except in odd ways (i think the bits of blue in my hair were an attempt to pull myself out of it that i wasn't even really aware of on a conscious level). it's only when it begins to lift that i realize it was there.

but it is beginning to lift. like a fog clearing away. one that i had become so accustomed to, that i wasn't even really aware of it myself. it likely started with our prolonged winter and ever-protracted spring. then molly got sick and i spent a couple of weeks of sleepless nights, worrying over and feeding kittens in the night. i've also been reading some douglas kennedy novels, which are wonderful, but full of tragic stories that feel like they're happening to friends of mine, so well-drawn are the characters. and i realize now that it has all fed an underlying feeling of blue (and not the good blue room kind).

but today, as i pulled fabric for several baby quilts (suddenly, my friends are all having babies), it hit me that the blue of my world was turning more colorful once again. and it seems at least some of my words have returned. molly is well (and begging to go outside to rendezvous with the papa kitty again (don't worry, she's not allowed)) and the kittens are at at the very height of playful perfection and tho' i miss frankie very much, i now get to keep little frieda, my kitten who smiles in her sleep.

it also helps that dinner came from the garden - fresh kale, shallots and new potatoes. there is little that feels more satisfying than that, unless it's a kitten who smiles in her sleep.

here's hoping that summer is treating you all very well.