My aunt's cabin

I can't wait to visit my home town this summer. I usually spend Easter there too. This year, however, I didn't get the chance to go, so I'm really, really homesick. Even though I've lived half my life away from it, I still call my beloved stretch of North sea coast home. It's truly where my heart is. Every time I go, one of my top priorities is to spend a day at my aunt's cabin. It's at a place that, according to my vocabulary, is pretty close to paradise.

The cabin is tiny and was built right after WW2. It has wood cladding, on both the exterior and interior, and is by no means great architecture. The beauty is in the wild flowers in the windowsill, the embroidered cushions, the old pots and pans, the woven wall hangings. It's not even meant to be either "vintage" or any other kind of style, she's just gathered what she needs there. She has an orange Cathrineholm bowl there that she uses for biscuits, but she has no idea of how sought after they are....

My aunt and uncle's farm is just 5 minutes away, and my aunt mainly uses the cabin to spend a few hours walking the beach, picking some wild flowers and having some coffee while watching the weather and the gorgeous scenery. My uncle doesn't have the patience... Even though she has 6 (!!) daughters, she always makes time to spend a day there with us, because she knows I appreciate it so much. She brings along some homemade cake and coffee in a basket. There is no water, so we do the dishes by hand afterwards with hot water from a thermos.

We always go for a long walk along the beach that she has right outside her doorstep, it's one of the widest and most beautiful in the area, and the one that has the tallest sanddunes. We walk the beach on our way north, and often walk behind the ridge of dunes on our way back. On the beach we find driftwood, bottles from the North sea shipping lanes, stranded jellyfish, polished stones and beach flowers. In the sheltered area behind the dunes there's rich plantlife and you can find all kinds of strange insects. There is a lot of birdwatching, as this is the point where the migrating birds from all over the country leave our shores for warmer ones in the fall, and where the first ones are seen back in the spring.

I'll leave you with pictures from my visit there last summer, and hopefully there will be some new ones in a couple of months:-) I will try to get some decent pictures of a really beautiful piece of architecture nearby, a small museum of the area's flora and fauna, designed by a local architect who, sadly, passed away too early. He really grasped the characteristics of the landscape.