🌷 Rose hunting over mountains and fjords 🏔

There was no choice but to set off on another journey. Straight from North Cyprus to Sogn, where 20 rose bushes had arrived for me, which had to be picked up quickly to get into good soil at Vossabiagarden 🪴🐝💗

By Renate LundeMay 6, 2024

👩‍🌾 In a hurry, I now have to choose a location in one of my gardens, design a rose garden that will be both beautiful and practical. Practicality is important, because this is a fantastic ingredient for the incredibly popular facial scrub Rose and red clover scrub . It is so popular that I have to secure more roses on my own land. So far I have mostly harvested roses in wild nature and unsprayed edges, as well as wild roses from our organic meadows. But, it is not enough 😅 and it is going really well that I am now starting to plant a rose garden here.

Imagine how perfect it is to get both strong sensory experiences, physical work and important raw materials for a product all at once! 💓 Yes, for roses for skin and body and mind, oh my goodness, this is an intensely good plant family, just check further down for all the super benefits of roses 👇 and even a recipe for those who can bear to read the whole thing! Yes, for roses are just so amazing, and have a huge amount of exciting things about them, both in terms of fragrance, medicine, history, for food and drink and of course for well-being for the mind and for beautiful skin 🌹🌷 Roses bring out the goddesses in us!

My rose trip yesterday was also beautiful, everything that has to do with roses has a tendency to be just that 🥰 Jonatan went with his mom over the snowy expanses of Vikafjellet, then down to Vik with the most amazing transition from mountain to fjord. In Vik I had of course planned a delicious breakfast with a sandwich with old cheese that they produce only there in the whole country, with cranberries and sour cream. ⛴ Then there was a ferry ride on the breathtakingly quiet fjord, before we drove through beautiful villages where fruit trees and beautiful gardens are starting to show spring with budding and even some yellow blossoms 🤩 Åberge Plant School was the goal, and this family business is one of my favorites when it comes to buying plants. Independent of chains, and run by enthusiastic siblings who really know their stuff. They have a wonderful garden center on the edge of the Sognefjord just before Sogndal. 👩‍👦 Both Jonatan and I had a blast, and it wasn't just the roses that we took home!

👆 Jonatan and mom at the beautiful Åberge nursery to pick up rose bushes.

One of my early experiences with roses was through my mother's rose garden, and her love for these beautiful and varied flowers 💘 I took my mother to Queen Mary's Rose Garden in London, a beautiful garden, to share the rose experience with her, and we sniffed and sniffed and felt our way through an enormous number of roses of all varieties and were both completely euphoric 😍 The scent of roses is often so intense and so seductive, and makes you land and be present here and now with one breath. Peace comes, stress disappears 💆‍♀️ And the moment you then land in is a truly wonderful place to be 💕 What a wonderful memory this is to have in the memory book of my mother who passed away at about the same age I am now. Far too soon.

🥺 In grief and sadness, roses are good healers too. In an herbal podcast, herbalist Liz Knight said exactly that: that roses open us up to talk about loss and grief, and soften us to share our experiences that can be painful and sad ❤️‍🩹 Roses in particular, but also lemon balm are important plants that can be healing for, among other things, feelings of sadness. Plants are so incomprehensibly interesting, in that they not only give us something delicious to drink, eat, see and smell, but also in the way they can affect our mind. Plants give and give, on so many levels 🌱💚 It is truly enormously exciting and empowering to recognize ✨

🌸 So roses for grief, the deep feeling of loss. Roses when you feel boundaries, for beauty, for humanity. We really need roses now, the way the world looks, to heal and strengthen us when humanity in the world is in decline… ❤️‍🩹 yes, I feel this here, before I go out and dig and plant roses in abundance. But, what else is there with roses then? I made a little question/answer under here, and if you hold on to the end, there lies a jewel of a rose recipe to you there 💎😉

🌷 So, from someone who scrubs roses into her skin and lets them cleanse and strengthen themselves. From someone who steeps roses in alcohol, makes tea, uses them in food and spice blends. Who looks and sniffs roses, plays with them and enjoys them, and visits botanical gardens everywhere I go to enjoy the roses. Who turns her head away from the road when I drive past wild roses and cultivated roses. Here are some nice facts about roses:

Yes, and so much more can be said about the queen of flowers! 🌹💕 Historically important, used in medicine and beauty for thousands of years, and just a completely sensual charm bomb that there is now even more of here on the farm! 🤩

👉 Before I run out and dig holes for the rose bushes, I want to share this delicious recipe that the aforementioned herbalist Liz shared in the first place:

Rose spice and nut mixture DUKKAH

Rose, saffron, vanilla, cardamom and nuts. All sweet and delicious on their own, and together they become an irresistible mixture that you can use for an endless number of things: natural sweetener on food, sprinkle on yogurt, put on top of carrot cake frosting, put on top of oatmeal with honey or maple syrup, over a fruit platter, roll chocolate-dipped cookies in the mixture, put on ice cream, and even in coffee or tea.

Ingredients:
· 4 dl dried rose petals
· 100 g hazelnuts
· 100 g unsalted pistachios without shells
· 1 teaspoon cardamom
· Seeds from 1 vanilla pod
· A pinch of saffron

👉 Here's how you do it:

Toast the hazelnuts in a pan or oven. If they have skins, roll them in a kitchen towel and peel off the skins. Then put the nuts in a food processor, run it a little until they are in small pieces. Add the roses, cardamom and vanilla seeds and run the machine a little more. Finally, add the saffron and mix again. Let everything cool down and put in airtight jars. Use and enjoy!

💕 I hope you were inspired by roses too, and maybe you learned something useful and fun? Let's put roses to even more use! 🌹 Here are other Vossabia products and package offers that include delicious roses:

Warm regards,
Queen bee 🐝 in Vossabia