This was the footpath on Sunday. After Saturday’s miserable weather it would have been problematic going for a walk without wellingtons; I always wear them at this time of year…but I was not alone.
Sundays are a big deal around here during the autumn. Many families spend July and the following weekends at their cabins by the sea and winter breaks at their cabins in the mountains. But after school starts and before there’s snow, they stay home in Oslo. Then on Sunday afternoon they take the twenty minute drive out here, park the stationwagon, and tramp around the lake with their children and dogs trying to tire them out before Sunday evening.
And this Sunday was a perfect day for it. I think I took the same picture in the previous post and you can compare them to see the difference a little bit of sunshine and blue sky makes.
Someone even had a campfire:
Every so often I’ll see these white balls on bushes. Does anyone know what they are? They seem Christmassy and I’m sure they must be deadly poison otherwise they’d be all gone.
The people walk all the way around. There’s no stopping them. If this were England, they’d have found a place for tea by now.
Actually, there is a place about half way that sells waffles and brown cheese and coffee. Standing outside is my favourite horse; an Irish tinker: huge, with big furry feet that wouldn’t fit in the picture, unfortunately.
Here’s a patch of moss I saw on a tree trunk. It’s rained so much that moss is becoming a cash crop.
I spent years trying to avoid getting tree branches my pictures. Now that the leaves have fallen I’m making up for lost time, there’s nothing wrong with the odd twig.
A Bad Guide 
Nice stuff. Are those snowberries? They were common in my childhood.
Thanks. Did you eat them?
This article seems to say that you should not eat them, but could also be interpreted as suggesting that you might consider using them to sedate your children if the walk around the lake did not tire them out sufficiently.
Norway is a beautiful country on Sundays.
No: poisonous.
Somebody I know once recited to me a Girl Scout mnemonic rhyme I had somehow missed which began “Never eat a white berry” and went on to have advice about how to evaluate red, orange, black and blue berries. But a quick google search (for the rhyme OR the friend) failed…
Scouts/Guides? anybody?
My neighbour has such a bush. It seems the birds don’t eat those berries much, either.
I think in childhood we ate only berries we knew: raspberries and brambles and rose hips from the hedges; blaeberries from open ground. And from gardens goosegogs and strawberries. What have I missed?
Blackcurrants. And what about the things they have in Norway: cloudberries and the other thing, tyttebær…”Vaccinium vitis-idaea (lingonberry or cowberry)” .
Ø, do they have those white things, snowberries, in Mass. & R.I.?
I suppose it’s true that we don’t eat white berries. I expect they’re lacking in something: antioxidants perhaps, to stop us rusting.
I don’t think I ever ate a blackcurrant as a child. But my memory has always been pretty poor …
Redcurrants and whitecurrants – I’d forgotten them.
I remember seeing berries like that, but only in gardens. I don’t think they are indegenous to Norway.
Dearie: Are those snowberries?
Ah, Symphoricarpos. Native to North America. Your berry trees are probably runaway garden plants, then. Now that you mention it, I may remember calling them snøbær and knowing them to be poisonous,
Catanea: Scouts/Guides? anybody?
Aye! Your poem doesn’t ring any bells. But then, I’ve never done my scouting in English.
I have a snowberry bush in my backyard (I hesitate to call it a garden). The white berries (called in French symphorines) are very nice-looking against the dark green leaves but are not edible.
In general, only very dark berries can be eaten safely. With red ones you have to know which ones you can eat. I also have bittersweet, a low-level vine which makes small violet flowers with yellow, cone-shape centers, which turn into small red berries similar to red currants in appearance but poisonous.
I don’t think that red or black currants are eaten raw, they need some sugar to make them into jam or jelly, or liqueur.
A snowberry bush needs to be pruned drastically every year, otherwise it grows tall but the leaves and berries only grow towards the top, while the bottom half is an unattractive mass of thin dried sticks. I discovered by chance that cutting the whole thing down in the fall causes vigorous growth in the spring.
That’s all very good to know. I hope I can remember.
m-l, you can eat red- and blackcurrants off the bush, especially black. Red are a bit much without sugar but black are very good (we have lots of both in our garden). m-l, you cast aspersions on your garden but always the things you mention make it sound lovely and just a bit unkempt (possibly).
Trond, the berries are all out now. I’ve been seeing them all over the place.
do they have those white things, snowberries, in Mass. & R.I.?
I don’t know. They look vaguely familiar.
Around here (the southern coast of Massachusetts), bittersweet is not a “low-level vine” but a ubiquitous thug that climbs all over the poor trees and chokes them to death. True, its berries are pleasant to look at. If tomorrow is like most Thanksgiving days, my mother-in-law will cut some of the stuff to decorate the table and then afterwards we will be very careful to dispose of it without letting any seeds fall in the wrong places.
Dearieme: What have I missed?
Watooks perhaps? (Or “watouk” if you prefer.)
Marie-lucie, you have shocked me a little – it is in France that so often grilled meat is garnished with groseilles rouges – and when I buy them in the supermarket (they look the same) they are marked “airelles” sometimes. Although Wikipedia says they are different animals – perhaps they get called different things regionally?
“I don’t think that red .. currants are eaten raw”: they are in our house. Redcurrants, raspberries and bread = summer pudding. No sugar added. Bliss.
Apparently, les enfants aiment beaucoup manger les Watouks.
I eat redcurrants by the handful right off the bush.
The canonical redcurrant topping around here is probably vaniljesaus. Or eggedosis. But Dearie’s right, they’re good with raspberries.
Summer pudding is really good, Trond. It’s an English thing, they don’t seem to serve it elsewhere, but perhaps dearie will say they have it in Scotland.
I think there’s way too much vanilla around. It’s added to desserts and cakes (ones with apple, for instance) where it’s just not needed. But I do like vanilla, and I like the name vaniljesaus for what we call custard. I’d never thought of it as a vanilla sauce until I heard the Norwegian name.
Summer pudding, is that like rødgrøt, only with breadcrumbs?
I’ve never quite understood what falls under the concept of custard. It seems to me that it incorporates edibles of vaguely similar colour and substance but vastly different flavour.
They have it in Scotland.
Catanea, you surprise me too: I never heard of using groseilles in any form as an accompaniment for meat! Perhaps it is a regional custom, or an enterprising chef’s novelty.
As for groseilles (red currants) and airelles: they are not the same type of berries, but it is possible that the word airelle is used instead of groseille in some areas. I used to think that airelles were probably the same berries as myrtilles (wild blueberries), but Wiki says that they are a more general term for berries of the Vaccinium family, which includes blueberries and huckleberries. Groseilles and cassis (black currants) are a different family from Vaccinium. Groseilles are transparent, but airelles are not.
About my comment on the edibility of black currants: I confess I have not tried to eat them raw, I only know them in jam and liqueur. In my family we observe my father’s grandparents’ tradition of having liqueur de cassis on New Year’s Day (those people did not celebrate Christmas in any way but feasted on New Year). At this rate, a bottle lasts a very long time.
(1) “I never heard of using groseilles in any form as an accompaniment for meat!” It’s a British custom to enjoy redcurrant jelly with lamb. Yum, yum.
(2) Well I never.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9698490/Photo-series-of-the-bond-between-a-grandmother-and-her-odd-eyed-white-cat.html?frame=2407644
dearieme: (1) I meant in France. No reflection on other countries’ weird food combinations.
Haha. Take that, dearie!
we observe my father’s grandparents’ tradition of having liqueur de cassis on New Year’s Day (those people did not celebrate Christmas in any way but feasted on New Year).
Why not, m-l, if you don’t mind my asking?
Dearie, I love those Japanese cat pictures. That’s cheered me up no end.
Me too. So much that I e-mailed them to a friend in Belgium.
AJP: those great-grandparents did not celebrate Christmas for the same reason that they did not go to church. My father’s grandparents on both sides were raised in an era of strong anticlericalism, which continued for two more generations. Those people all started work early in life, mostly in skilled trades, a class which included many talented people who had little formal education but often read a lot and could think for themselves. Even if as children they went to clerical schools (before the 1883 law establishing compulsory public education), those schools did not always succeed in turning them into religious adults. So on that side of my family, there was no Christmas, no Père Noël, but a festive New Year’s Day with a Père Janvier bringing toys to the children.
strong anticlericalism, which continued for two more generations
Until when? Post WW1? Very interesting. Were they left-leaning politically too? France is more rational – I think there were quite a lot of agnostics in my family in England at that time, but they were all politically right-of-centre until my generation.
Sig, I emailed it to my mother in England.