Author: annefloa

Mushrooms

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September is here and it is mushroom season. Hunting mushrooms is fun, but I think I may like better to shoot them with my camera than pick and prepare them for a meal. This year there have been too little rain so now there are quite few mushrooms in the forest, but I did get a few shots and I even got to pick some for a delicious soup of chanterelle and porcini.

The mushrooms in the photos below is rough-stem bolete (Leccinum scabrum) and white birch bolete (Leccinum niveum or L. holopus). Edible but not especially tasty in my opinion.

Calluna vulgaris

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Ling or Calluna vulgaris is a beautiful late summer flower growing in Norwegian pine forests and in the mountains. The evergreen shrub can be over 50 years old and sometimes it cover large areas. When it is in full bloom it is just like a pink carpet covering the ground.

Orchids in Norway

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I always thought of orchids as an exotic flower, so I think it is fantastic that there is wild orchids to be found in Norway too. They may not be quite as beautiful as the ones you find in more tropic areas, but they are beautiful in their own way.

In the forest close to were I live you can find one of the most common orchids growing in Norway, Dactylorhiza maculata also known as heath spotted or moorland spotted orchid.

Moorland spotted orchid
Spider on a visit.

Blueberry

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Walking in the forest is like walking in a very large art gallery except you have to find your own beautiful treasures amongst thousands of displayed items.

It is fun to follow the development of the forest plants throughout the year. I always get excited when I find the blueberry plants (Vaccinium myrtillus) displaying their light pink flowers in May. The shape of the flower is very beautiful and reminds me of a greek ancient vase.

The photos show the blueberry plant in three stages.

Blueberry flower

Green, unripe blueberry

Tasty blueberry

Marsh violet

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The latin name of this little wild flower is Violeta palustris. It is very small, but I think the pale lilac color of the petals is very delicate and make the little flower stand out from the green grass it is surrounded with.

Trollius europaeus

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Walking in the forest in early summer you can find a lot of beautiful flowers and one of them is the yellow Trollius europaeus. In Norway it is called “flower ball”. It mostly grows next to a water source like a little creek, a swamp or nearby a pond.

When I went for a walk looking for this yellow flower ball I found it just beside a little creek and on some of the flowers there was a little visitor, a spider. I think the spider is a raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus), probably a young one due to the green color of the legs.

Star of the forest

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Arctic starflower or Lysimacia europaea is a common wild flower in Norway. The Norwegian name is “star of the forest”. This beautiful flower grows all over Norway in both the forest and highlands.

I think it is a very beautiful flower and every year I take new macro-shots of it and I never get fully satisfied with the results. Below is the two best shots from this summer.

Star of the forest

woodland dressed in green moss
silent
just the sound of light wind through the trees

little white flowers on the forest floor
shines
like stars in the night

-annef-

Spring

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Strange times theses days with covid-19 ruling our lives. Working remote and not seing any of our friends as often as we used to makes our life quite different from a normal everyday life. Luckily nature goes on with normal procedures like spring. This year I think I have enjoyed spring more than ever due to the situation with the earlier mentioned virus. In nature I can relax and do some of the things I love the most, like photography and walk my dog, Charlie Brown. My earlier mentioned trip to China was cancelled due to the corona-situation, så there will be no post from China. Maybe later, I am not sure because so much has changed since February.

It has been a long time since I posted and a long time since I posted macro-shots, but todays post I have a few macro shots to share together with my beloved sheltie; Charlie Brown 🙂

Blue anemone hepatica – blue
…..and pink

The first spring flower in Norway is often Anemone hepatica, it normally is blue or white but sometimes you can find pink versions too.

Wood anemone
Charlie Brown looking for squirrels

Anemone nemorosa comes a few weeks later than Anemone hepatica but is just as beautiful. My sheltie, Charlie, always look after squirrels when we go for forest walks.

Happy new year

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Bye bye 2019 and hello 2020. What will 2020 be like? Hopefully a lot of new memories will be created. The best memories from 2019 was definitely from our journey to Vietnam. I hope to go back some day.

Stranda
The beach in Nha Trang

Luong Son tempelet 1
Sunset in Nha Trang

This autumn I also visited York in England (a work trip) which is a wonderful and exciting city. I didn’t get so much time to see any of the tourist attractions as I was attending to a training course (business trip), but I did get time to take some morning walks in the streets of York. Some good memories from this trip too.

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Shambles

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In the middle of February I will be going on a business trip to China,  I hope to get to use my camera a little bit. I will spend two weeks in Shanghai and Suzhou and I know that both places has a lot of photogenic sites as I visited Shanghai a few years ago too.

Photo challenge – Architecture

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The photo challenge for last month was Architecture. I have a special interest in architecture not especially from a photographic perspective, but more because I have always been very interested in the different time periods through history of art. It is exciting to see how the architecture changes through the different time periods.

My plan was to focus on modern architecture and maybe do some shots in an abstract kind of way…….. Well, it turned out different. My daughter wanted to take a Sunday trip to Norsk Folkemuseum (The Norwegian museum of Cultural History). So, in stead of modern architecture my answer to the photo challenge was historic architecture.

The museum has a large collection of building through Norwegian history. There are houses from old farms from the period of 1500 to present time and houses and appartement buildings from the old town of Oslo (Christiania). The main attraction is Gol Stavkirke (Gol Stave Church) which is built approximately during the 11th to 12th century.

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Gol Stave Church

Arkitektur 3
Detail from Gol Stave Church