Mens vi venter på våren

It's still cold and bleak here, despite some intense sunshine. I don't understand how the sky could be so brilliant but the air so cold and the ground so barren. It's like Afghanistan or something. KE has been doing his best to perk up the yard. He sowed grass seed on the part of our yard that we cleared and graded last fall:

How unfortunate that we have the manhole covers right there in the middle. Not sure what to do about those. We're also hoping (eventually) to fill in some kind of hedge along the road for privacy and to reduce the amount of dust we get in the yard. Then he planted one of the two rhododendrons:

The good news is that all the soil he used to fill in the hole is from his compost pile, and it looks really rich. Yay compost. He dug out two huge rocks, which meant that he had to back fill with a whole lot of compost. I love rhododendrons because they're evergreen. We have tons of flowering shrubs in our yard, but most of them are deciduous, which is part of the reason everything looks so bleak right now. The one corner that isn't bleak is our little volunteer Christmas tree farm:

Unfortunately, this is more of a problem than an asset. They're on the slope between the upper yard and the lower yard. KE is hoping eventually to clear that slope and reduce the grade so that we have one big open lawn.

Sigh. I don't even want to see or hear about gardens in Oregon, Washington, and England right now. Spring (or what passes as "spring" here in Norway) is definitely the hardest time of the year for me. I can deal with winter because I take it for what it is here, but every spring I am programmed with a set of expectations based on having grown up in a mild climate. Those expectations are invariably dashed here. So disheartening. But I did find one small encouraging sign yesterday:

Hvitveis, or (as Hans E. Kinck would say) hvitsymre, Anemone nemorosa. I think it's called Wood Anemone in English. Lovely, and the first time I've noticed clumps of it on our property. The picture's terrible since gusts of wind kept blowing these tender little flowers. I hope they continue to spread!

Knitting: Finished the back of the Silky Wool pullover yesterday, and got most of the ribbing for the front done yesterday.

ETA: found this Aftenposten article about a little wooden house in the center of Oslo. If you click on the link under the title you can see 15 pictures of the interior. Very cute.