Wild and continual plants growing on their own in our garden/yard

Already getting a bit discouraged, knowing yet again my beloved watermelon and tomatoes probably won´t mature or do well at all here in Norway, so I started reminding myself what does do well here, coming back on its own every year here since I´ve lived here. Some things I still haven´t figured out the names, but will try to add photos as they appear.

All the berries. Here they grow usually on single stalks, in rampantly-spreading groups of stalks, straight up and tall from the ground. Every year or so we cut them drastically down to the ground, so we get fresh, new stalks, rather than old woody pithy ones which then usually have only mostly dull, small, dry mouldy berries. Our garden (here that means yard, not necessarily "garden" in the American sense of the word. And by yard, I mean expanse of land your houses and outbuildings sit upon, not the concrete slab my Aussie and NZ friends tell me they think of when I say yard. Garden, yard, hmft! The English language is always meaning something else to someone else who speaks it, haha!). So, our expanse of land I call garden or yard, each year suddenly springs forth with a plethora of various berries, which will be everywhere later on in summer, for making jams, jellies, conserves, pies, drinks, cakes, freezing, sharing. Usually we get raspberries, blueberries (on huge short full shrubs everywhere growing wild), strawberries (tiny wild alpine strawberries are all over certain areas, plus any larger varieties I´ve planted pop up elsewhere randomly), and rarely a few black berries or white raspberries, or creamy pale yellow cloudberries here and there in the forested area edges, if one looks carefully.

In the lowest most protected part of the garden, which to me reminds me of Italian gardens as it has a few random natural rivulets of streams from underground natural springs flowing underneath the top area we walk on and see, and there are a few walled areas made from rock and stones chiseled and cut from the rock underneath. Here, many gardens, like ours, if you knew it, is like someone covered huge boulders and slabs of stone and rock with a layer of soil and grass: literally, I´ve seen the soil and grass peeled off, exposing nothing but stone "ground", in order for them to build a new house, as down the road last year. I was too slow to get photos, as it only took them a few hours from the peeling off the grass layer as I walked by to the local shops, to blasting and bulldozing the stone layer flat for building! I was gutted I´d not gotten it as I´d wanted to add it! It was so cool, almost shocking to me, as it had never occurred to me ground could be nothing but stone, as where I come from ground is soil, sand, mud, usually a combination of, maybe with some smaller rocks throw in. Here, it seems the ground often is really just a thin inches or so layer of soil with grass, then solid rock for miles! It can make even the most hearty gardener discouraged. But I do try to see the positive side--great solid foundations for building, say a raised bed; great soil when you do find it. And lovely views everywhere of solid rock mountains, with stone that seemingly changes color seasonally, from blackest black in rainy cold winter´s bitterest temperatures (which to be fair are still warm compared to say Svalbard), or to a warm, pale cocoa as is today, as I see as I type, the solid rock mountain out my window, showing the blue skies and bone dry mountain, that during rainy season has waterfalls, and during winter has frozen waterfalls. Today, only light, airy, gleaming rock, shadows, and bits of heather starting to flower usually purple, a few small shrubs, and bright green leaving trees growing out of the crevices and steep stacked breaks and natural steps. The shape overall is more like the rounded Mesas in the SW, rather than the steep sharp pointy Rockies. Mostly low here, maybe 20 or so stories high. So, not blocking out everything entirely, just letting the sky peek out from beyond overhead. During the worst rain, hail or snowstorms, I can´t even catch a glimpse of the mountain, but today, on such a perfectly glorious warm, balmy, sunshine, blue-skied day, the mountain is simply sitting there, laying there rather majestically. I can see a few groups of adults with kids walking along the top where the long trail follows its edge along the best views over this part of the island.
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The other things grow here wild or easily every year coming back without doing anything at all, good in part thanks to the microclimate near the sea, is the many berries all over the numerous fruit plants my MIL planted long ago! I smile thinking it´s her garden really, and that I share it, and thank her for what she begun so long ago. Apple trees with random antique varieties of apples, some for eating, some for pies and applesauce. Roses, a deep dark luscious pink, with a glorious scent even deeper than Gertrude Jekylls, which is one of my faves planted in other of my gardens past. These roses are quiet, they are just sticks, then suddenly they´re abundantly in bloom, wrapping round this and that, growing ever taller, bining round as much as they can access, which is great in my book! I don´t cull things much, and appreciate anything in this harsh climate that can take care of itself so well, and be gorgeous and smell so wonderful at the same time! Other roses grow in shrubs or stalks, and have large rosehips later on for making rosehip jellies, recipes from my really old cookbooks. So far I´ve not done as well making the rosehip jellies, as I seem to always get some of the scratching artichoke-like central hairs in no matter following the recipes which demand I keep the hips intake not cutting them at all before boiling. I´ll try again this year:).

Gooseberries, both green and reddish-purple, grow wild both on shrubs and stalks which hang over edges of paths. White (green?) ones are slightly less sweet, the latter are so sweet I eat by the handfuls raw. My aunties always made endless things from their gooseberries, which I keep planning on trying here, but never get past eating them raw from the shrub:). The kids love our summer walks, foraging along the way, love finding the berries and picking and eating them. They usually share too, even with their fierce playfighting to get the most,). Have done since n was a baby, cute the middle two would pick for her, and feed her first, then themselves, and then the adults sharing with us finally too,). chuckle!

So far the kids can pick out most edible things here, from different berries in the usual style to the most obscure ones I even have to ask them about!,) Every lekeplase (public play place with play equipment found randomly throughout the city or island areas, each totally different, with different terrain) has its own foraging bits and pieces. One larger varied one which includes its own wooden covered bridge over a pond, and its own organic garden, has large cherry trees which are full of ripe, luscious cherries on double stems all summer, and we like going there anyway, let alone for the fun of picking cherries, in. the. city! Can you imagine?! Ripe, wild cherries, being picked from actual trees, in the middle of a city?! Very cool!

Back to our own garden, I do plan on adding some cherry trees, short trained onto a stone wall, at some point, but every year keep getting distracted and forget til it´s too late til trying again next season. Would be great fun to have cherries in the garden, even if only the mere fact there are cherries in the garden.

Gooseberries of various variety, the raspberries and strawberries. Rhubarbs, foxgloves (poisonous, but wild, growing everywhere randomly each year when I can´t grow them myself for anything elsewhere so I am loving that they grow wild everywhere here and in my yard!!) both pink and purple and white varieties. Lovely random flowers, and bulbs. Tall blue iris patches of irises everywhere, so pretty!!! Spikey blobs of starlight shaped flower blossoms elsewhere, surrounded with yellow flowers of some sort, both so pretty and unusual to me, typical here. Crocus, tulips, anemones, bluebells, white snowdrops, similar snowdrops with wider bells and dots of lemon-lime at the edges. English daisies rarely.

More roses, wild this time, with small, wispy, poppy-like petals. And orange poppies growing wild. Bright red-orange tulips with black centres. Tiny blue hyacinth on stalks, and delphiniums. The really tiny spring bulbs, muscari, just lovely, so delicate! Yellow daffs, double daffs. The usual spring flower bulbs here, and lots of usual things which I still can´t name, such as these large-stalks of purple red flowers with huge thick leaves, that when the flowers themselves are gone, the leaves are a huge solid structural element of the winter garden structure. Heathers of all colors, usually purple, pink, white. Junipers with berries.

Holly of different varieties, both tall stalky and short shrubby, both unfortunately in real life I abhor for the pointy prickly leaves which fall and land on my benches, or in the grass making it difficult to walk barefoot, so that I´ve cut down nearly every one of the holly plants I see, and as soon as I see them shoot up again. The berries ARE pretty in winter against the snow, I DO like the shiny leaves, and they do provide structure in winter, but I just can´t appreciate that much when I am pulling a leave out of my bleeding foot, in summer when walking randomly barefoot in the yard!,)

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I forget what all else that grows on its own every year, but more of the same or similar as above, lots I still don´t know the common names in English or the latin names for. But am most appreiciative sp of each year, when what I try to plant maybe doesn´t work, or dies, or doesn´t mature here, as I am still learning about growing things in this micro climate or that, and where we are, can be a totally different microclimate from a few miles away or across the water or at another end of the island. And, well, I do forget that here is not easy, and I am spoiled taking for granted all the places I lived where all I had to do was plant something in the ground and it thrived. Here sometimes I can find something dead or eaten by African slugs, a few hours or a day after I checked on it! so. frustrating. pout haha.

Other neighbors have so beautiful gardens, as in English cottage gardens or sweepingly vast gardens swathing colors and texture across the entire area of their yard; ie not in the American sense that I mean they have grass that grows well, but that I mean they have gorgeous flowers as in an Italian, or French or English cottage or formal garden, or as in a tiny courtyard garden you might find in Savannah or New Orleans, or desert gardens even, such as the lush gardens found in downtown Southwestern cities....I mean GARDENS with FLOWERS and such not just grass everywhere and hardcore this and that.

Though, in our garden/yard here, though out, I appreciate all the hardcore solid structural elements my FIL and his father also built, such as the huge stone walled raised beds topped off with a further height of walled stone and boulder surround filled in with soil, topped off with grass and flowerbeds and lovely plants and shrubs which come up every year on their own. A lovely seating area (s) which had been planned to house a huge gazebo, to overlook the lush views of sea, sky and forested mountain. One day maybe we will put a gazebo there, but for now the area is a huge picnic area and play area, with various stuffs blooming throughout the year, such as heathers, those huge stalky purple bulbs I wrote of earlier, huge swaths of bluebells and white spring flowers, blue irises, yellow daffs and other bulbs, wild roses, miniature beds along the side of short growing ponderosa like pines and bulbs,  a few red burberry, wild ferns, yellow broom, jasmine and honeysuckle, more stalks of raspberries. Wild pink roses, lavenders, rosemary and other herbs, lots of wild mints, and lots and lots of pretty tiny frail columbines growing wild in various colors and varieties.

The stone wall garden area has raised beds along the edges, with walkways surrounding that, leading up to a large outbuilding divided into rooms. Used for storage now, they are heated, with lighting, windows and insulated, and used to be used as work sheds areas of my FIL. Before that the space over there was bare, just land with an old-fashioned outhouse, hence why the plants thrive there even now without help! In the main "refuse" area, which is below and to the back of what used to be the original outhouse, but is now about a person´s height below and to the side of the new outbuilding, I´ve planted vines of blooming things such as honeysuckles, rhubarbs, a few short bamboos (yes, but our yard is huge and I wanted some bamboo as I like it blowing in the wind, anyway they´d´´nó´t taken off here as the weather is cold in winter so that culls them lots), and roses and other flowers. To the back of this outbuilding along the sides are stone and cement stairs rounded down to the back spiralling around to a mound of rock covered with a shallow amount of soil and grass, so that wild raspberries thrive and cover this mound and one across from it, all summer long. Vines and strawberries like it here too. Not so much blackberries for some reason though, as my efforts to grow blackberries have not gone down well with the blackberries!

Nearby is a huge Japanese maple, burning bushes that look more like trees, a few trees with what resemble tulips as flowers, other trees which have flowers which resemble white cherry blossoms and white popcorn when in bloom. A huge really pretty blood red aubergine leaved tree, with similar color of bark. More of the similar color berberries sp. Lots of wild Norwegian trees, from pines of various sorts (Norwegian and not, but typical of what grows here), with paper bark which peels off prettily, and huge trees, hazelnuts and such, oaks of some type; birch of different types.

Lots of hidden things in the forest, such as what I call The Castle, which is really the remains of a huge old stone boulder farm building, and lots of rivulettes of springs popping up here and there then disappearing again. A small river, stream really, from presumably somewhere further up the mountain, and various springs that come from all the rain that collects somewhere hidden and ends up as the stream/river, depending on time of year. Our cats, when kittens, loved to explore this area, and swim in the water...not so much swimming now, as drinking hautily, then sunning themselves on The Castle top for the top views surrounding (being able to see mostly everything from such a high position over everyone and everything). Our cats are sweet really, but some of the other cats around are not, which annoys me when they are mean to our cat on our property. But fences are not really necessary here, markers are usually 99% adequate, barring the 1 or 2 who disregard the cultural norm of respecting boundary markings without fencing. It´s nice to have the sea, the mountains, the woods etc all so close, and not have to have fences which enclose, just have it open. The walk up the back of the yard in another area goes over an actual mountain, with various diverse routes where ever you like, to enjoy views from the top of the mountain overlooking the entire mountain, surrounding island and fjord immediately in the area over to the mainland; or various other views depending which route you choose. The paths are not marked, but staying straight on towards one side will end you up along a road going perpendicular and thru the bottom of the mountain land area, along more lower mountains and paths, past farms and country homes (homes in the country, not Country Homes as such), horses in fields, open fields of grass and flowers, berries, fruit for foraging, and more hidden paths and marked paths to more areas to enjoy, with lovely views. Several of my yoga hikes, both in winter and warm weather are along here. Yoga outdoors is very rewarding, soothing. Just dress warmer, and be ok with modifying poses to the terrain, paying attention if you are near the edge to not fall off! One of these yoga areas I like, down the road, thru a huge field near horses, thru some further fields used by locals for soccer, walking, walking dogs, hiking, yoga, sport, exercise, sunning, picnicing....goes again back and out a forest, coming out onto solid rocks slanting off along the mountain, growing with heathers, wild berries and mosses...and simply overlooks everything, for another view over the fjords and to the mainland. It´s relaxing, and if you sit and watch, you can see submarines, huge ships, tiny kayaks, wood boats, large wood sailing vessels, iron ships...cruise ships, fishing boats, ferries....all go past. We get lots of seagulls here, really huge seagulls compared to some, but I like them, and their rampant squawking and noisiness:). I like being able to hear I am living on an island, not just see that I am, and often the mountains and forests block the views to the sea, so I like the seagulls reminding me, if I can´t see it, that the sea is still there.

This is  our second or so really hot day. Yesterday the trees were barely showing new blooms. Today are in full greenery! It smells fresh out, slightly damp, you can smell the sea in the air. I LOVE that about here, living anywhere near or on the sea--being able to smell the sea.

I can literally smell here when it might rain, or can tell by the change in clouds, every so slight, when snow is coming. It´s hard to explain, and I think I get it from my father and grandfather, as they were both able to do that too. Smells so lovely today, now I must get back to studying. Tomorrow, as I´ve been a bit ill with norvo or such, is my first day out, into town, and am looking forward to it! Stuck in the house with such lovely weather is not so nice. If it is nice tomorrow, will take some photos of the Tourism Season, as by now all or most of the seasonal tourist trade kiosks will be in full bloom in the city, off the sea, along the wharf:).

Maybe I´ll take some photos of the locally-caught fish at the sea market too, but only if I feel ok about it---it´s rude to just take photos at the fish market, not buy something too. And mostly I don´t eat fish for overfishing the seas/not environmentally friendly, and don´t like eating fish much anymore unless I catch it myself. The kids picked mussels last year, and other bits and pieces from our local beach and sea, including pink sea urchins. We used a hammer to crack the crab shells, which were extremely dense and thick, and steamed them like I steam Southern crawfish in a homemade crabboil....but we didn´t really like it after all that work. The best bit was foraging the food, beach combing for items, digging into the wet mud, etc,) haha! A fab day out, otherwise, but next time we´ll just throw it back in. They like seeing the cockles and welks open and shut, like they´re talking, and the water and such makes squelshing "talking" noises, which the kids find funny and sweet---like they get to have a conversation with the sealife! We like going to the aquariums and open tanks at the fish market to see various sea life too, or find fish under the long wooden docks near the old wood Viking ships, etc around town. Other times we do actually eat the fish and such....

A local recipe I like, really simple. Half a pink salmon, bones/skin on for flavor, roasted with fresh herbs in oven or over  fire til done, not dry or overcooked. Top with fresh full fat rømme, a traditional sour cream here. Serve with either parsleyed and buttered new potatoes, or long wide strips of pasta such as spinach fettuccine. I do fix this maybe once a month or so. It´s good with the local potato salad made with herbs, and creme fraiche not mayo. Enjoy:)