#watch this turn out like the marching wellies (rip)

[bittysfoodbaby]

i'm just realizing i haven't posted any original content since the spring 😭 maybe i'll post that radio station au soon but there's no fics just lore dump 😭

[gorillazgal86]

English Country Garden -- Good Omens Ficlet

Read on AO3

The mature gardens was amongst the primary selling points for Crowley, when it came to purchasing the South Down's cottage. The garden consisted of two good sized flower beds, blooming with blue and pink hydrangeas, soft purple heathers, maple red acers, leafy yellow and green evergreens and a veritable rainbow of roses. In the first year, Crowley watched the garden carefully, studying it. He noted everything carefully, the butter yellow daffodils that emerged from their bulbs, marking the first sign of spring, the rich blousy blooms of English roses in the damp heat of summer the soft white flowers of the cotoneaster that would become small apple-red berries in the autumn.

Having only kept house plants previously, he delighted in the changing landscape of his country garden. The previous owner had carefully selected the plants to ensure year-round beauty and by the end of the first year in the cottage, he had carefully catalogued each plant, when it bloomed, when it needed pruned and he developed a strict regime to mirror that which he subjected his house plants to.

Crowley learned, however, in year two, that plan wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

House plants, on the whole, live a plush and comfortable life. They benefit from regular watering, central heating and due to being indoors, would be kissed gently by the sun through a window. As such, they were sheltered and impressionable things that bent themselves to Crowley's will. They simply didn't know any better.

The outdoor plants, on the other hand, spent their existence exposed to the sun's harsh rays, enduring bitter frosts and snow and days without rain to quench their roots. The outdoor plants knew a force more terrifying then Crowley and bent to her will alone and that was Mother Nature.

Crowley could influence the small annuals he planted out easily enough, but the perennials had no fear in a sharp-tongued demon. He shouted and swore and they would simply ignore him. If he had forgot to water them or deadhead the blooms, they would wait patiently, dropping the browned petals wherever they felt like it. This, naturally, infuriated Crowley.

"This is wholly unacceptable!! You are my plants and this is my garden! I will not tolerate this insolence, I will rip the lot of you out and start all over again!" He marched into his greenhouse, grabbed a hacksaw and held it threateningly at a particularly overgrown laurel.

"I swear to Satan I'll do it," He growled.

The laurel shrugged. It's roots were 20 years deep, good chance it would just grow back and spoil whatever he planted in its stead. Mature gardens know how lovely they are when well-kept and how challenging it can be to recreate the splendour they provide. He could shout and scream all he wanted; they weren't going anywhere.

"Arrrrrrgh!" he shouted in frustration and threw the hacksaw aside.

Crowley had learned by year three, he was just going to have to manage this the human way. With gloves, a wheelbarrow and old-fashioned hard work.

For his part, Aziraphale enjoyed watching Crowley tend to the garden. He settled comfortable in the porch swing they had installed and read while Crowley worked. He could offer to help, but he preferred to watch the show.

He watched from behind his book as Crowley, dressed in dirt-stained shorts, a vest top and welly boots, headphones perched on his ears (if he couldn't shout at this plants, he figured he may as well enjoy some music to pass the time). He pulled on the rubber gardening gloves and grabbed his ever-sharp secateurs and got to work.

He mumbled to himself unintelligibly and hummed tunelessly as he worked, clipping back overly tall offshoots, plaiting spent daffodils, stepping back occasionally to check size and shape before diving back in. Crowley paid particular care to the roses, highly scented, voluptuous David Austin types. He dutifully pulled the suckers, snipped the spent blooms and from time to time, would bury his nose in deep, taking in the rich scent.

Aziraphale chuckled as he watched Crowley twist himself to try and reach around the roses to reach another plant, only to be caught by one of the many thorns.

"Damnit, ouch," he carefully removed the thorn and rubbed the scratch left behind. "If you weren't so fucking pretty, I'd burn the lot of you."

Out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale watched as something flew from the flower bed, high into the sky and out into the lane. He sipped his lemon barley water thoughtfully and then said, "Dear, don't throw Sister Slug out into the lane."

"Don't give me that Brother Francis bullshit. They're rotten pests and you know it," Crowley pulled his headphones down and glared at Aziraphale.

"Even still, you don't need to throw them like that."

Crowley mocked him, "Don't need to throw them like that . . . "

Aziraphale hid his smile behind his book.

Summer days passed like this, in the near silence that one could only hear in the countryside. The soft rustle of a warm breeze on the grass, plants fluttering in contentment, a windmill turning lazily, the odd tracker rumbling past, to which both Aziraphale and Crowley would raise an absent-minded hand in a polite, wordless hello. Barley water would turn into gin and tonics and after the gardening tools were secured back into the greenhouse, Crowley would settle into the swing next to Aziraphale and they would just quietly admire their home.

Aziraphale wound his fingers into Crowley's as the sun turned the sky orange and pink, the long summer day only just slipping away. Crowley squeezed Aziraphale's hand in return.

The angel and the demon both agreed that it was perhaps not the most exciting existence, but it was peaceful, idyllic and just want to supernatural entities needed in their retirement.

[travel200899]

Sitting in our cozy accommodation back in Nordagota which seems more and more like home, I am going over the gazillion of pictures I have taken of this beautiful, by far the least touched by tourists, vacation destination of our choice. The view from the window is that of the towering green hill, where the farmer limps over with his bucket of feed to entice the sheep to come close to him. His border collie isn’t allowed in, so he circles around the thin metal wire fence till he gets gestured over to either come in, or go around the fence, to round up the stubborn set of sheep. I will miss waking up to this but the memories have all been recorded in the tiny sandisk.

I had started by penning down all the places we were visiting and what to see there, but then what are books for? Internet has all the available information at our fingertips, leaving little for us to actually discover. We walk around with Lonely Planet in our hands making sure that we don’t miss out on anything but in reality all we are doing is re-living someone else’s research and taking pictures of the same pictures we find in these books. I am guilty of doing the same. Of taking pictures but not really reading too much related to useful information, that would make me very smart. Let’s be real here!

Meeting the family hosting us and interacting with them and their 3 kids has been the highlight of my trip. Jon is a musician by trade and his lovely wife Elisabeth works as quality control in a fishing plant. Both Jon and Elisabeth are extremely knowledgeable in their respective trades and provided us with unforgettable conversations. This island still has that innocence which is non existent elsewhere on this planet. The trust is alive here. I hope it stays this way. Change is inevitable but this remote group of Islands have preserved it and am positive will continue to do so in the years to come. Fire Pro and his youtube channel will keep us informed regarding the happenings in this part of the world.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VylZ9jpOcIQ)

Flovin, the name of the creator of the youtube channel, is only 10 years of age but a gifted musician, like his dad. He can simply on hearing an instrument play tell what note it’s playing. He has two sisters ( twins) Sunneva and Elna. One of his sisters is a gifted fisherwoman like their mother. She is only 8 and  can scoop up a fish with her bare hands right from the stream. Impressive! She also knows how to give a real good funeral to the departing souls.

Featuring – RIP Trout

There seems to  be a job available for every kid here. They know the meaning of work and don’t shy away from the challenge. For eg,  The Old School Cafe in Hvannasund.

This is a community run cafe and they are proud of it, as they should be. The cafe is actually the old school where a lot of locals and their parents studied. It goes back to 1932. A challenge was put forth to the community to come up with an idea for the now redundant school. All ideas were put through and the best idea won. That idea was to turn the school into a functioning cafe. There isn’t any formal advertisement except for an active facebook page, but you would need to know of this place to be able to stumble upon their facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/oldschoolhvannasund/ Address: 31 Sundsvegur, Hvannasund 740, Faroe Islands

The day we visited, a young girl, probably around 11, max 12, was taking care of the register and ringing in the orders. I got talking to Myrna, a working professional and also a volunteer at the cafe, who studied at this school, just like her mother.  The kids during their summer holidays pitch in and are paid for their time. The Old school cafe hosts the same old blackboard from the years past, along with the map of the world, as old as the school. People from the village have their knit-ware displayed for sale. A great interest is shown in knowing how the visitors get to hear of the cafe.. in our case, since we like to probe into every remote bit we stumbled upon it simply by chance.  Whoever their baker is, I have to say I have never tasted such delicious chocolate cake in my life, made perfect with the combination of Vanilla ice-cream. They had me raving!

Immigrating to the Faroes is easy for the people of the Nordic countries but more and more Asians are finding their way over to this remote part of the world which one would wonder, how it is possible? We met May in Torshavn. She runs the Matstovan Seven restaurant, on the road leading to Skansin. She has been living in the Faroe Islands for the last 10 years and is married to a Faroese man.

https://www.facebook.com/MatstovanSeven Address: 21 Yviri við Strond, Tórshavn 100, Faroe Islands

May is from the little town of Haikou. The food served her is delicious but besides that the welcome you get from May is warm, caring and friendly. She has not only adopted the Faroese way of life, language but her own sweet mannerism has probably been amplified 10 times over thanks to the place she calls home. She spoke of her grandmother who is known in her hometown of Haikou to make tea and food for the weary passerby’s. She had me at that. I need to go to China now.

We will call him PJ. The Mccafe, in Saltangará is run by a Bangladeshi gentleman who, like May is married to a Faroese national. PJ met his wife in the UK while studying there. He has been living in the Faroe Islands for the past 17 years and agrees that it is a very beautiful place to live in, people are very nice and humble and there is trust amongst them. His sister lives in Canada and so he had been to the city we live in. Like May, his mannerism was quite similar to how the Faroese people are. Extremely polite, hate saying no, you literally say no for them, and very very friendly.

https://www.facebook.com/saltangara/posts_to_page/ Address :  44 Heiðavegur, Saltangará 600, Faroe Islands

It’s amusing how this blog is supposed to be about the Faroe Islands, but people make a place memorable with the experience they leave you with. On the same token, we will never forget the encounter with the famous Angry Farmer of Saksun. Jon had warmed me of the angry farmer but we never thought we would get the chance to be on the receiving end of his wrath. He is infamous for it, and basks in that negative attention he gets for fighting for his ” lost” cause. In his defence, we were completely in the wrong by being on his land, but then how else could we have met him, spying from his bedroom window- that was at least 2 kms away, sneaking up on us in his battered red van, marching down in his bottle green wellies, with a purpose in mind?

Perfect depiction of the Angry farmer and US—-> the sheep 

Faroe Islands you have shown us beauty in its real form, you have proven that heaven is a place on earth, the place as pure and rich in natural beauty and human beings as kind as you only ever hope for. All this is true. All this is real.

Visit Faroe Islands.

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Nothing like it : Faroe Islands Sitting in our cozy accommodation back in Nordagota which seems more and more like home, I am going over the gazillion of pictures I have taken of this beautiful, by far the least touched by tourists, vacation destination of our choice.