Christmas potpourri

So many wonderful fragrances and colors at Christmas time, starting with the wonderful evergreen fragrance that emanates from the Christmas tree. Every time you walk through the front door, the first smell you smell is the Christmas tree. This year there were several new ornaments that joined the ornament fold, and they were a welcome sight on the tree.

And then there are the Christmas flowers--amaryllises and poinsettias--so beautiful to look at as they grow and flower during December. This year our three amaryllises had three different colors, white, red, and white with red stripes.

My indoor orange tree produced over sixty small oranges this year; the tree 'casts' the oranges to the floor when they are ripe, quite funny to witness and to listen to when sitting in our living room, as you can hear them rolling along the floor before they hit a piece of furniture. These small fragrant oranges find their way into the smoothies we make each morning.

And as far as fragrances go, I have to mention the Christmas food--especially the smell of boneless pork ribs rolled in and roasted together with garlic, fennel seed, rosemary, sage and thyme that we ate for dinner on Christmas Day, served together with a potpourri of vegetables (eggplant, squash cherry tomatoes, and potatoes). The pork tasted as good as it smelled while roasting in the oven.

Also made duck with orange sauce for Christmas Eve, served together with asparagus, broccoli and orange pieces; it too was very good and very colorful.

Other dinners have included boiled cod one evening, and elk steak another evening, and we're not done yet--my husband will be making salted sheep ribs for New Year's Eve. We've eaten some good cakes and desserts as well--Italian panettone, homemade gingerbread cookies, and orange mousse, among others.

Always a special time of year--Christmas with its food, desserts, trees, ornaments, decorations and flowers. We prepare for it, we enjoy its coming, and we accept its passing, because it moves us into a new year with fresh expectations and challenges. The Christmas season is about honoring our individual traditions (in our home, both American and Norwegian), our family heritage, home and family, our faith, as well as about visits with friends, and having the time to enjoy and to truly appreciate them all.

City Gardeners

During the last ten years or so, my husband and I became city gardeners, despite the fact that we live in a co-op apartment building without a balcony or terrace on which to set out plants and flowers. Of course we wish we had one, because we love to experiment with growing different plants from seeds as well as buying new plants at the local plant store or at Plantasjen, the larger garden center. Our kitchen, living room and dining room window sills are filled with different kinds of plants. My husband loves to nurture his orchids, and has about six orchid plants at home and about as many in his office at work. He is the only person I know who manages to get orchids to bloom more than once, and he has his weekly routines for spritzing them with water and keeping them happy. I prefer nurturing food plants; that is to say, plants that produce fruit or vegetables. I have grown tomato, pepper, orange and fig trees in our apartment, with some success. Right now I am the proud parent of an orange tree that is very fruitful, as well as a fig tree that manages to produce about three to four figs per season. My husband brought home a small cherry tomato plant at the beginning of the summer, and it has grown to some height and has produced (so far) about five cherry tomatoes. We also have a small coffee plant in the kitchen; the leaves smell good but we don’t expect to find coffee beans on the stems one day. But it looks nice in the window and one can of course dream.

The first vegetable plant I ever purchased was a small pepper plant; the peppers looked like small chili peppers but I don’t remember if we ever got more than the five or so peppers that hung on the plant when I bought it. In the summer of 2005 I grew tomato plants from seeds; only one seedling plant really took off though and I did my best to keep it happy. It even joined us on vacation that year; we rented a cottage on the sea, not so far from where we live, and I took it with us in the car and let it stand out on the large terrace that overlooked the ocean. It was there in the morning that it got a lot of sunshine. I think we may have gotten several tomatoes that year; the problem is that the plants don’t always get enough sun, or get it long enough. Summers are short in Oslo and it amazes me that my orange tree produces the numbers of oranges it produces. We got about twenty-three oranges off the tree the first year we had it; the second year saw only a yield of about four oranges, whereas the third and fourth years have been very fruitful—with yields of about twenty-five and thirty-five oranges (this year) respectively. The oranges are not large and sweet, they are small and sour, but they are beautiful to look at and during the flowering season before the oranges begin to grow, the smell in the room is wonderful. The white flowers that will produce the oranges produce an intense sweet smell that dominates the room. I use the oranges in the smoothies that we make from fresh or fresh-frozen fruit each morning, and I have used them in marmalades to add a kind of ‘bite’ to the sweetness. Last year I made pear/ginger/pineapple marmalade and added a few small oranges to the mix—it was a heavenly result and the marmalade disappeared rather quickly. I’ll probably do the same thing this year.

We often debate the advantages and disadvantages of moving into our own home; one of the advantages would be that we could have our own garden. We know for sure that we would fill the backyard with fruit trees and plant a garden, both flower and vegetable. So why haven’t we moved by now? That’s a good question. Part of the answer lies in the fact that we don’t have the time we would need to tend a large garden, at least not in the way that would be required. Also, we would like to live in Oslo and not commute into the city each morning; traffic is horrendous and we would like to avoid that. But to buy a house in Oslo is not really a viable option—houses cost a fortune; we’re talking upwards of 800,000 USD for a decent-sized house (two bedrooms, two baths, kitchen, living room). It seems a tad unrealistic to want a house in order to have a garden. There are so many hidden costs attached to owning a home. The garden has to supersede all the problems of owning a home in the city. Time will tell. In the meantime, we have our gardens in the different rooms of our apartment. I’m waiting for the day when there won’t be room for any more plants or any more room for us. I believe that day is coming soon.

Ripe oranges

My orange tree

Our tomato plant

My husband's orchid plant