Hamburg (i)

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It was on my journey back from a conference in Spain that I stopped by Hamburg in October 2018. Seeing autumn unfold outside the train windows, I never knew so much of western Germany was covered by beech forests on rolling hills. Yellow, and grey in that unique way of beeches.

Close to the Hamburg main railway station lies the old botanic garden. Hamburg has two, and with the old one being at such an easy walking distance from the railway station, where my hostel also was located, I thought I might have time to visit both gardens on my day in Hamburg. No. Just plain no.

The light that day, and the colors on all the trees, the full palette of what leaves can have, from bright green to red so deep it was almost purple. Stillness, reflecting in the many ponds and pools of the garden and adjoining park.

I had a special day there, in the old botanic garden in Hamburg, and I didn’t make it out until dusk, wandering between sections, distinct like entering different rooms in the garden. I could have stayed longer, but the autumn chill and darkness got the best of me. I will definitely visit again, when traveling becomes a thing we can do once more.

Photo: Alter Botanischer Garten Hamburg, Germany, October 2018. Posted on Instagram November 25, 2020.

missed time

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While eating breakfast yesterday morning, I listened to the radio. They were talking about the updated Covid restrictions. How retirement homes were recommended to not allow visitors, again, like in the spring. It made me think about missed time.

And I felt sad. Again. Because, even though I don’t know anyone who lives in a retirement home, I, too, have missed time with people I care about this autumn. Three of the good friends that I have made during my years at the research center have successfully defended their PhDs. Two have already moved away, and one is just about to. And it has not been possible to really spend time with them, not to celebrate their success or to say a proper goodbye. It doesn’t look like we’ll be living in the same countries again, maybe ever. It has been an ending of sorts, but I have not been allowed to honor it, shown them with my presence how important our years together have been to me.

We all understand, of course. We’re all experiencing the same isolation. I’ve felt a shared frustration and worry with many over the past half year. But now, I feel mostly sad, for times missed, and connections lost.

The sun was shining yesterday. To lighten up the blues a little I went for my daily run already before noon. To take advantage of the blinding light painting silhouettes around the bare trunks of oak, aspen and pine. Brightness, easing, just a little. And the thought: This too shall pass. And then I can get on the trains again, travel south over the continent and visit, in Germany, Belgium and Italy. This, at least, I can hold on to..

Photos: Alter Botanischer Garten Hamburg, Germany, October 2018. Posted on Instagram November 24, 2020.

Helsinki (i)

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It was a chilly day in May, spring just arriving. I was fascinated, having just been in Glasgow where everything was in full bloom, the sun had been warm and where reading on a bench in the botanic garden, only wearing t-shirt and jeans, was perfectly comfortable. Not here. Mittens and hat were needed in the Helsinki May weather, even though it isn’t that much further north than Scotland. I guess it’s the Golf stream versus the lingering Siberian winter air masses. Really nice, though, in the Kaisaniemi botanic garden with the blooming spring flowers, wood anemones, pasque flowers, scilla and tulips. Lily buds, just like the ones in my Finnish grandmother’s garden, promising a fiery summer. Strange and exotic plants are fascinating, yes, but there’s a special kind of magic in the flowers of childhood.

Photos: Lily buds and pasque flower in Kaisaniemen kasvitieteellinen puutarha in Helsinki, Finland, May 2017. Posted on Instagram November 19, 2020.

Glasgow (ii)

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The Glasgow Botanic Garden is friendly, just like the city, and there’s an approachability. It has a familial feel. Even in the types of plants they grow. A section with ordinary garden vegetables. An unkempt corner of different wild roses. An entire wing in one of the gorgeous greenhouses dedicated to old fashioned potted plants, like begonias or geraniums, the kinds of flowers my grandma used to have on her porch. Like the enormous backyard of a hospitable older lady with very green fingers. I spent many hours there, sitting on a sunny bench, reading.

Photo: Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Scotland, May 2017. Posted on Instagram November 17, 2020.

notes from 2018

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States of emergency, since March, today restrictions were tightened even further. My mind wanders off in associations, one crisis makes me think of another.

In the notebook from 2018: “Hot summer, dry, an extreme high-pressure system stuck, looming over our parched Nordic soils. I find it tough. July, walking through the groves, seeing trees start to drop their leaves. Hearing news about the largest forest fires in Swedish recorded history, crops failing, animals sent to slaughter due to lack of fodder. That smell of dry grass, parched soils. It is subtle, easily missed. Like a light tickle. Among the savannah acacias and baobabs, that smell is lovely. In the early morning sun, like a poem. In Stockholm, the same smell makes me want to cry. It is wrong. It aches and itches in its subtlety.

Helplessness, thinking of my friend Jonas, poet, saying: ‘We need to explore what it means to live, act, feel, be in the age of humans’. But how do you do that without drowning?”

And some days later: “At the cottage. The smell of lingering dust, memories of mornings in the desert. No rain for six weeks. Reading “Grief is the thing with feathers” by Max Porter. It is short, so simple – and carries the heaviest on its shoulders. Death, sudden, to be left behind. It is a feeling in me and the words bring it out, so carefully that I barely notice. It is beautiful, the book. And funny. In the difficult moments, the perspective of a crow might be just what is needed. Thinking: The grief felt over yellow edges on birches in early August. I need a crow for that, too.

Later, sitting on grandma’s old bench, sketching flowers. The sky darkening behind the quivering aspen leaves, contrasting in shades of purple with the gray-green trunks. Wind, gathering speed in the crowns of the hill-top oaks. A drop, a flash, rumbles in the distance, and the sky opens. After, the stillness. Air heavy with earth, sweet. After-drops falling from leaf to leaf, like sighing. A rainbow behind the hazel hedge.”

I don’t need to write my feelings today. My feelings from that summer of fire and dust translate into this dark, sun-less November day. The crisis might be different, but the sentiment. Same.

Photos: (1) Rose after rain in the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Oregon, USA, June 2012. (2) Yellow lime tree canopy in July, Bergianska Trädgården in Stockholm, 2018. (3) Gathering storm clouds over the aspen trees in Hundby, Gnesta, Sweden, August 2018. (4) Cottage desk still life, August 2018.. Posted on Instagram November 16, 2020.

home office

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I engaged in some amateur carpentry this weekend. A cupboard had to be removed when I bought a new fridge in August. On Saturday, I finally got around to repurposing it. I sawed it in half, and put one of the halves on top of my desk. Covered the imperfections of my carpentry skills with fabrics from Ghana, and voilà: I can stand and work by the desk in my home office corner. Hopefully that will help with the tension headaches I’ve been getting in the evenings with increasing frequency since October.

Unfortunately, the repurposed cupboard desk ended up a tiny bit too high. So, I dug out my yellow high heeled clogs from the closet. They are really comfortable and I actually used to have them in the office before everything was turned upside down. I like to change shoes when I come to the office, and when temperatures allowed barefoot sandal-wearing I would change into these clogs. And it was strange. Something happened when I put them on this morning. If it was the shoes, or the new desk set-up, I don’t know, but suddenly my little home office corner felt so much more professional. And that, in turn, boosted my focus. The magic of a pair of shoes, hey?

I like how my little home office corner has evolved, from a barely used corner in my bedroom into this. With the colorful fabrics and whiteboard and the plants in the window. I even have a succulent there that grew out of a clipping I “stole” from the office a long time ago. Everything to create a friendly environment to work in.

Although, I would very much prefer to have an off-site office like the benches in the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. A bench covered in colorful yarn, under a magnificent tree. I think it might be a copper beech. I sat many hours reading papers and novels on one of those benches during my visit in May 2017. Trees and yarn and sunshine are the friendliest mood-setters. I would very much prefer to go back to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.

Oh, well. Some day. In the meantime: Suit up with the yellow high heeled clogs in the home office corner!

Photo: Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Scotland, in May 2017 & My home office corner. Posted on Instagram November 16, 2020.

Pagoeta / Iturraran

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In the municipality of Aia, about 25 km from San Sebastian, lies the Pagoeta Nature Reserve and the Iturraran Botanical Garden. I visited the park as part of an afternoon fieldtrip during a conference I attended in San Sebastian in October 2018.

The park has an old farmhouse on the mountain-side and an old foundry down by a small river. This is what the guided tour focused on, and that was fine, learning about old farming and iron-work practices was interesting in a region where these activities historically have been important for the local economy. What I really enjoyed, though, was the botanic garden that surrounded the farmhouse on the hillside. I didn’t get a proper chance to wander around in it, because the guided tour only focused on the farmhouse and foundry (which was a bit odd, considering it was a fieldtrip with researchers attending an environmental research conference, I was probably not the only one who was curious to hear more about the local ecosystems and the species in the garden). But what I saw, from walking between the historical sites, looked gorgeous.

From what I understand, the botanic garden was basically the sole endeavor of a man who love oaks and who planted an arboretum with different sections for different species, both of oaks and of other types of trees. It felt very organic, like walking in a forest, and then suddenly you’re in a completely different type of wood – which is what makes you realize that it’s actually a very well planned garden. And growing like it did on the hillside, with green mountains all around, it was so beautiful!

Photo: Jardín Botánico de Iturraran / Iturrarango Lorategi Botanikoa in Parque Natural de Pagoeta, in Aia close to San Sebastian, Spain, October 2018. Posted on Instagram November 13, 2020.

Kew (i)

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Kew Royal Botanic Gardens is, according to their own website, the finest botanic garden in the world, old, huge and in 2003 added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The garden was first created in 1759 and now covers 121 hectares of land. The greenhouses are magnificent to look at. So classy, these old greenhouses felt worth seeing more for the architecture, than for the plants growing in them. I could really see the 19th century high society ladies walking around on the wide paths in the greenhouse with their lacey gloves and long silk skirts trailing after them.

Photo: Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, London, June 2013. Posted on Instagram November 11, 2020.

Edinburgh (ii)

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I bring books to botanic gardens. Sitting on a bench under the hanging branches of this tree, reading “Ancillary Justice” by Ann Leckie, breathing in the fragrant, humid air of the greenhouse – for a moment fooling myself that I could be in an exotic place about to go on an adventure. Escapism, I guess, in a way – but what is wrong with that when it makes your heart beat slower and your breathing suddenly feel lighter. I believe in the calm of a leaf. And the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh has leaves in plenty.

Photo: In a greenhouse, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, May 2017. Posted on Instagram November 10, 2020.

Belem

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The botanic tropical garden in Belem is rather large (for being located so centrally), but felt somehow disjointed when I visited in September 2015. It had it’s places, like this small pond with a pavilion being reflected in the water’s calm surface. But the open design didn’t allow for the kind of immersion in green, protection from the bustle and heat of the outside world that I like with the old, compact botanic gardens that are found in the historic centers of European cities. Belem in Portugal has many other beautiful buildings and museums to attract visitors, but the botanic garden is not as spectacular.

Photo: Jardim Botânico Tropical in Belem, Portugal, September 2015. Posted on Instagram November 9, 2020.