Updating

Ok, wow it has nearly been a year since my last post - amazing what happens when I start writing so much for work and forget about doing so as a hobby!

Time is flying - this year restarting the garden has been a blur because the Spring has been so warm. All the plants went in early and we will soon be harvesting - well before Autumn anyways. We've expanded this year, particularly to include potatoes, squash and several trials with other veggies.

A couple photos from the garden last week (everything has grown even more in the meantime since now we are finally getting some rain).

 Here is an overview of a bit more than half of our garden, behind us are just beets, lettuce and some herbs. Potatoes at the forefront here.

 Rolf build planter boxes around the existing bed of strawberries then made several new for different veggies. The rhubarb plant in this pic travelled in hand luggage on a plane from Rolf's mom's garden in Rossvøll (thanks for sending it down Randi!).

Last week the potatoes began flowering and they are just continuing to thrive. I read recently that if you sow 8 potatoes you harvest around 90, well we sowed around 30 - so we may need some help eating the harvest! (by the way, these potatoes were a complete experiment, I had accidentally bought a bag from the grocery store not knowing we had a full one at home, tossed it into the pantry and forgot - a month later they had grown sprouts of several inches, so we put them in the soil, and voila!).

We also got a pet in the garden - this frog plus family live under the walking plants we put down.

This weekend we took our brand new electric car out to the garden. We bought it last week in anticipation of Rolf's commute after the summer. It is a Citroen C-zero, fully electric and super fun to drive.

Finally, here is a link to a little video clip from Rolf's phone-self-documentary series "Rolf and Melissa explore the world" - showing us in our new boat out on a lake just outside Oslo a few weeks ago while the weather was so warm. (Sorry it is in Norwegian, but the gist is just showing our new boat, all the baggage room, then the scenery of the lake and some islands to be explored and the place we will eat a picnic with homemade rhubarb jam later in the day).

Video - Rolf and Melissa in Østmarka