tisdag 13 maj 2014

Spirea × cinerea 'Grefsheim'

Having an orange house requires some white flowers that tone down and contrast the house colour. We had seen these pretty beautiful plants flourishing around town and decided it would be the best of choices. Don't you agree? This plant is called in Swedish "Norsk brudspirera 'Grefsheim'".
1st May 2014, Spirea x cinerea 'Grefsheim'

From the beginning we believed that we did not want a real hedge so we just decided to go for some plants sparsely distributed in the corner area of the garden. The result looked little phony to be really honest. I remember a night some years after after we had put up a wall and planted the same kind of plant around the whole corner area and they had started to grow bigger and bigger. We then looked back at the pictures from the first plants we had and nearly cried from laughing.

Anyway, what we learnt from that is that it is a good thing to have a wall or similar to make sure that the "weeds" cannot attack the poor hedge from multiple sides.
Actually, after we planted the hedge, the ground sank and the plants landed far too low. Again, learning from your own mistakes, remember to use existing ground, too, when planting an hedge and also make sure that you plant way above where you want them to be. Taking the plants out and putting them back in was both costly and very time consuming and the plants took a big hit from it the same year.
Fertilizing did help recovery a lot.
1st May 2014, the hedge these days
Quite a few years later, 7 years I would say, this is the result. And it seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

I actually wonder how much bigger it will get.










If you look at how this plant looks like, you will see that there are very long branches covered with flowers all along.











The small flowers are really cute.
1st May 2014
They are not much larger than a 0,5 cm or so. Mh... Little unsure. Probably I should have put my fingers next to it for comparison. But now unfortunately I didn't so you will have to live with the lack of proportions to compare with it. :)
The plant flowers during a short period of time, maybe 1-2-3 weeks. Little unsure. The photos are taken a few days after the blooming came up.




Today, 13th of May, the blooming is going away. Still it is rather ok. So let us say 2 weeks minimum. But during that period, it is really wonderful.
Furthermore, thereafter, the leaves are also impressive and even though it turns into green, it is still very beautiful and flourishing. Will try to remember to take some picture this weekend and also further down the summer, just to let you see how this really looks like in late summer.

Healthy granola bars

I normally sit too late at work and then get hungry. I also often have evening activities such as dancing. And even, like today, I come home hungry from a free diving training starving. I often crave for some quick energy. Normally, I find it in some huge amount of food. Huge amounts of food make your stomach far too big, which implies that you can eat even more next time you eat. You become insatiable.

Now I got the idea of doing some healthy granola bars Not sure of what is really healthy, but I guess that fruits and nuts are healthy and if topped with some olive oil and honey, they still should be healthy.

So let us give it a try. This is my first granola bar test.

Ingredients

500gr raspberries (actually, mine were frozen, but it should not be a big difference)
270gr oat flakes
200gr peanuts (rinced of salt with water)
100gr sesame seeds
50gr peanuts as they come (with salt and fat) to give the mixture a somewhat salty touch
100gr sunflower seeds
50gr flax seeds
75gr hazelnuts + 50gr walnuts (actually, I tried to use the Christmas nuts I still had and cracked what I had. Actually in the amount of hazelnuts, a few peanuts were used, too)
gr apples
gr pears
130gr honey (this is what I had, but I highly recommend you double the amount as the thing became quite tasteless with this amount)
2dl water

Instructions

Turn on the oven at 225 degrees Celsius. When the oven is heated, I sank the temperature to 150 degrees Celcius and baked the apples and pears for about 35 minutes.
 In the meantime I mixed the rest of things apart from the water and the honey, which I actually melted together first and then into the mixture. The apples and pears were also mixed up all together into the oat mixture.

I put the dough into 2 pans, one little and one large. I tried to have the mixture to 1cm thick.

Then I put the pans in the oven at 150 degrees Celsius with fan.

Hydrangea petiolaris

One day I walked through the little part of the town I live in with my whole family. It was winter time and the snow had fallen in great amounts and the cold had really taken over.
And at some point, I simply saw the most beautiful of flower. It had a wonderful form. It was frozen and had taken a brownish colour. But still you could see the whole beauty of it. I could not take my eyes off it. After some further investigation, I came to the conclusion it needs to be hydrangea petiolaris.
2nd May 2014, Hydrangea petiolaris

And I also came to the conclusion that I also needed to  buy such a flower for my garden.

Unfortunately, after further investigation, it turned out that that flower had the tendency to spread out a lot and I have never found a suitable place for it. So the dreams went on for years.

And one day, it just happened. I went to Bauhaus and they had it. Well, everyone actually has it... But this time, logical thinking did not stop me. So I hit the cash register with a pot of hydrangea petiolaris.

I placed in a regular flower bed. No peat. I have the feeling it would need peat. But well... Now, it's too late. I had the feeling it required something to cling onto and I only had one such a place. 

So now the next step will be to find a plant that covers its lower parts as, according to the instructions, the first 35cm from ground should be protected from sunlight so that the plant does not get burned by sunlight.

It is also interesting to find out whether it will grow well there or not.