Travelling nuts

We got a walnut tree. Well nothing special, so many farms have a walnut tree here. But ours has a special history. It travelled a long way.
A good friend from Holland brought this little tree with him when he visited us last september.
But.... it is not Dutch.
Our friend comes from Kashmir, and when he travelled to Europe, many years ago, his old aunt thought he needed something special for his journey. The best thing she could think of, were nuts, from their own walnut grove. She took some old cloth, sewed a bag, and put in some nuts.
Our friend was not all too happy to carry this bag along, but thought this was so sweet, so he brought the bag with him to Holland. Some nuts were eaten, and some ended up in his Dutch garden.
One of these nuts grew into a big walnut tree, and gave a lot of nuts.

It is from one of these nuts, our little tree grew. A grandchild of of Kashmiri walnut tree from Kulgam.

Our designer
Our designer, Joris van Grinsven, is Dutch, like we are, but he lives in the Perigord in France, where he is working under the name of 'Seigneurs de Clérans'. With his team, he is working on projects designing and/or decorating private homes, hotels, restaurants and businesses throughout Europa. For furnishings and accessories he works exclusively with the 'Pigeon d'Or" collection.
Joris studied at the Academy of Arts in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and worked as a sculptor, teacher and manager of several institutes of education. From 1995 he works as an interior designer/decorator with projects in Holland, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Danmark and France.
In France f.e. the famous Golf Hotel Les Merles and the Chartreuse le Cariol, our B&B colleague.
Joris is also our life long friend and the godfather of our children, we met many years ago through our mutual hobby at that time: riding and breeding Icelandic horses.
While buying our Danish farm, I already hoped he would do the design, and he did. He travelled all the way to Danmark with his team, and created this beautiful place. For us, and for our guests of course.
You can find more of his projects at: www.seigneursdeclerans.com

 Joris in his house and in his garden in France. ( photos: Michael Paul)

Spring
Spring finally came to Danmark, as did the swallows. They are busy rebuilding last year's nests.
With the birds and all the lovely spring flowers, the guests came as well, and our B&B is very busy right now.

May 4th we celebrated the renewed Bøjden Nor bird reserve, more than a hundred people showed up to see the changes. The weather was splendid and our kitchen provided them with some 600 sandwiches and cakes, and due to sponsor gifts, we could also serve ecological beer.
During this picknick, a local farmer brought out the hereford cows that will graze in the reserve this summer, with some delay though, as his trailer got a flat tire on its way into the reserve.

And last week we had a special guest, not in the B&B, but in the water down the beach at Horne Næs.

I had heard the rumour that it was there, and while walking in the woods with some of our guests, to show them the lovely spring flowers, we saw it: a seal, sunbathing on a rock near the shore.
So lovely. The guests were thrilled, one of them had never seen a seal before.
And you can imagine how they felt when they ended their day at our B&B with a sunset like this: