Berries, berries everywhere!

Norway in summer is green like no place else I've seen except maybe Ireland. The days are long and sunny, and the climate is pleasant and very productive. Strawberries are just one example. Strawberries get sweeter the more light they get during the growing season, so how do you imagine they taste when they ripen here under the midnight sun? However, the cornucopia this climate provides isn't just limited to planted crops. There are wild berries and edible plants everywhere, and if you're out in nature with Norwegians you can watch them graze occasionally like sheep (which also roam free here) on the bounty of nature: red currants, black currants, blueberries, raspberries, dandelions and all sorts of other edible plants, as well as many more. They're everywhere: on Friday our hike with Christine and Ingrid was constantly interrupted by her three-year-old Leah's hunger for all the ripe blueberries along the way.
Add to this the fact that Andor gardens like a man possessed and you will realize that we have yummy edibles all around us all summer. I'll try to give you an idea of his enthusiasm for plants. In San Diego he was happy as a clam to spend hours in the arboretum and gardens in Balboa Park. As we went into a post office in Santa Barbara, he popped across the street to a home and garden store, telling us not to bother hurrying back. When we ran across a ten-foot-tall yucca plant flowering and thriving out in the middle of an arid LA canyon, he observed that he must be watering his own too much at home. When Inki's sister Signe got sunburned he went to his living room for a cutting of his live aloe vera. Don't forget when we talk about his yucca plants and aloe -- he lives in Norway. With the greenhouse he built himself backed up into the side of the mountain behind the garden.
So as we were sitting in Andor's garden yesterday having our traditional Sunday dinner (marinated cutlets and sausages from the grill, various salads, and a dessert of rhubarb compote -- cut just that morning, of course -- and vanilla ice cream) we were thinking of what to do with all the berries. Preserves, of course, as well as wine. Andor had enough red and black currants for us to make 10 bottles of port from them four years ago and still had enough left for a half-dozen jars of jam. There is always the potential for juices and all sorts of desserts we could make as well. We discussed going up to Andor's ancestral home in Vigra to get even more (there's enough there that Inki remembers a half-dozen people having to pick berries all day long to get them all) but decided against it because the little time we would have would be taken up by social obligations. Also, it's not as if we're not busy right now with the move and the house purchase and everything else, so those berries will have to wait a year.
Andor's blueberries are ripe now, though, so we're going to spend the morning picking them until our agent calls. His red and black currants should wait a week. The only question that remains is what we're going to do with them all.