Olive

We've received this cute little olive plant from my sister-in-law and family a few weeks ago.
Look! It is growing small olives now. WOW! Incredible!

Project gardening - Salad - 3 days later

They are growing like wild fire... holycow!
With this speed, I think I can enjoy a bowl of home grown salad pretty soon. :)

Ruccola and mache salad (I guess)

Project gardening - Salad

Time flies and I've forgotten to sow the seeds in February.
I hope I still get to taste some salad by the end of spring. *fingers crossed*

Frosty new year eve

-4 degrees Celcius.... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Should have used a macro lens here...

Edible fungi?

Höst/Vinterkrans (Autumn/Winter wreath)

Spiky

Surreal soft focus effect

I've learnt a quick and easy way to create a surreal and soft focus effect by simply applying the Gaussian blur filter and set the layer mode to “Overlay”in Photoshop.
Here's my mushroom picture from yesterday.

Open original picture.  Press Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer.

Click on the duplicated layer if it is not currently active,
go to Filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur and enter an amount of 5%.

Set the layer mode to “Overlay”. Here you go!
To merge these two layers, select both layers and press Ctrl-E.
You can now save your file.
Note: This is just an immediate result... you can do extra editing to make this looks better

Trattkantareller/Funnel chanterelle

It is peak season for mushroom picking now and everyone in the family has been picking up 10s of kilos of mushrooms wherever they go. However, I'm the lazy one and have totally no knowledge of mushrooms haven't been that active compared to the others. 

These are some funnel chanterelle I found in the woods behind my backyard and I will confirm with my mother-in-law this weekend if I've plucked the edible ones before we eat it. :)

Mini mushroom colony

Beautiful autumn leaves

Flugsvamp/Fly agaric

Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly Amanita, is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus. Although generally considered poisonous, deaths are extremely rare.
I just find it so fascinated to take pictures of this beautiful mushroom. :) 

Who ate my strawberry?

I've been waiting to taste these few last strawberries but...

Who did this?!?!

24 hours ago

Found my culprit!

Aroniabär/Black Chokeberry

The aronia berry (also known as the choke berry or the Black Chokeberry (Aronia melancarpa/Aronia melanocarpa)), a close cousin of the blueberry, is known for its powerful antioxidant properties and benefits of those properties. They are dark pigmented berries that are extremely high in antioxidants. Higher than blueberries, higher than cranberries, higher, even, than pomegranates. Although native to the Americas, it is far more popular in Eastern Europe where its juice has been known to help people with heart conditions.
It has high levels of proanthocyanins and quinic acid (ten times more than cranberries). Quinic acid prevents urinary infection.

I've decided to harvest the berries and make some aronia berry juice before the birds finish eating them from my tree. I love antioxidant berries! Nice!

Hur nyttigt Aroniabäret är?

Smultron/Wild strawberry

Can't believe that I can still find a few of them in my garden... WOW!
Guess summer is not quite over yet. :)

Buah Salak

Buah Salak a.k.a. snake fruit (originally from Indonesia) is not a fruit I get to taste often.
It has a sweet and very mild bitter taste but a very unique taste. Love it!

Pulasan

A spiky rambutan ? A hybrid plant between rambutan (Rambutan means hairy fruit in Malay) and lychee?
Pulasan is a tropical fruit that looks like a rambutan. To me is a wild rambutan (which is not true) because of its look. It tastes much sweeter than the normal rambutan. It also has a thicker shell/skin... spiky but not hairy. Very interesting looking fruit.

The name pulasan comes from the Malay word pulas (twist). The fruit is opened through the act of twisting the fruit with both hands, thus the name pulasan.