Bats seen here, new garden potato field, apple tree flower buds…

It’s been pretty summery now. But still no rain here where we are living – the rain that the garden and nature need now… They say that this afternoon it will rain here… *waiting*. 🙂 It’s now light green around out there everywhere as everything is growing, and in many places some bushes and trees are loaded with white flowers, for example bird cherry trees are in flower now, lovely scent…

making potato field

This was my project on Thursday and Friday evenings last week; I made a new potato field in our garden. I dug it through the lawn, so to speak, using that garden hoe in the picture. The hoe is my favourite gardening tool, it’s so useful and comfortable to use! And I also used a shovel and, naturally, my bare hands – my bare hands are my other favourite gardening tools – I never use gardening gloves, they are only in the way, a disturbance, and I want to and need to feel the earth in my hands – I’ve gone crazy in that way… 😉 It’s earthing… Body, mind, spirit…

So I dug the new potato field all by myself, one part of the field was already ready; it was our strawberry field before – luckily, because it was hard work that digging. I also had some… theoretical help… ‘someman‘ was helping me to measure the size of the field and telling me where to put the seed potatoes. And when I was taking a short break, drinking some water inside the house, someone who had just gone outside offered me some practical help – this is what I found when I came back outside and to the potato field:

"No, you should do it like this!"

“No, you should do it like this!” – ‘somemeow‘ had moved some seed potatoes that were already placed on the soil, evenly spaced… 🙂

When the potato field was ready on Friday, late in the evening, it was time to go to sauna, with the first fresh birch leaves for this spring or summer… some more earthing… I wrote about sauna earthing already last year, here.
This year the birch leaves are still tiny, because the spring was so slow, but they are so wonderfully fresh and sticky, and naturally, the scent is heavenly. I took again a real bath with the birch leaves: I rubbed the leaves against my skin, buried my face into the leaves, hit myself with the twigs… Stay closer to nature, feel closer to nature, be a bit witchy! 😉

narcissus, daffodil

This year we seem to have only four narcissus or daffodil flowers – leaves of this plant we have in all the spots that we have narcissus plants in the garden, but only four flowers, two in one spot and two in another spot. They, too, are late, but they are here…

We’ve heard the calls of cuckoo bird somewhere near here every day now.

On Sunday, after 23.30 PM, when we were having a campfire in our garden, we had some visitors – bats! Three bats! It was a big surprise. We’ve seen bats before, but not here in our garden and not so close. It was the first warmer night with more mosquitoes here this year. All of a sudden the bats dashed and flapped into the woods beside our garden and into our garden as well, they flew all around here; into our garden, back into the woods, back into our garden… This continued for some time. And they flew also close above our heads every time they flapped into our garden. So close, and they were so cute! 🙂 I thought that bats avoid people, but no, they don’t… It was amazing! – I’ve hoped that we would see bats here in our land, and now we now that it can happen…

apple tree flower buds

The apple trees have small flower buds now. They are late as well. A year ago the flowering had already ended!

-Leena

And the summer began…

And all of a sudden… it’s summer! The summer began on Friday: it was 17 degrees Celsius in the shade already at 9.00 AM and at around 10.15 AM it was already 20 degrees in the shade, and 24 in the shade at 13.30 PM. Yes, I wrote down everything. 😀 It was also the warmest day that we’ve had this year.

We haven’t had any rain now, and all the rain before this was hail and sleet… So a good rain is what the garden and nature need now!

The first four pictures I took on Saturday, first some of the fern in our garden. Aww, those rolls…

fern

I heart…

fern

What did you say?

rapids

And we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids again in the evening. On the bridge again, we didn’t go down there by the rapids at all this time, but… look! Over there, inside the ruins of the mill, there’s somebody sitting there!

Can you see her?

Can you see her?

Norway maple

The Norway maple in flower beside our driveway, yesterday morning I took this pic. The tree’s been buzzing with bees in some mornings…

leopard's bane, doronicum

Leopard’s bane or doronicum today, flowers…

narcissus, daffodil

The first two narcissus or daffodil flowers opened yesterday. The other one here in the evening light…

The rest of the pictures I took today.

small grape hyacinth, muscari

Small grape hyacinth or muscari flowering…

small grape hyacinth, muscari

fern

The garden fern growing…

fern

Fern still so small in the woods…

peony

Oh, my peonies! 🙂

peas please

Our peas growing…

Everything is growing now, but we really would need the rain to help us out a bit… But we did already start the lawn mowing. 🙂

-Leena

Dandelions, cuckoo bird, bug hotels… spring advancing

Yesterday I noticed that the spring was at the same point here where we are living than it was in Turku already last Wednesday ( – my previous blog post here). Now it’s greener here, too, and we have many dandelion flowers as well. We had the first few dandelion flowers here on Saturday – I saw them after I had written that blog post of mine, when we went for a car ride.

lake Köyliönjärvi

And on that car ride, we visited the lake Köyliönjärvi near our home village. The bench over there was calling… 😀

lake Köyliönjärvi

It was lovely to sit there on the bench… Truly, once again, after the wintertime (and all the hailing lately), it really did feel like I was in a fairytale! 🙂

lake Köyliönjärvi

hepatica

Hepatica flowers… these we’ve seen already a lot earlier here as well! But on Sunday I took a couple of pics of these as we were collecting some material for bug hotels. This was by a forest dirt road here in our home village. The forest was loaded with hepatica flowers beside the road, from one end of the road to the other end. Marvellous!

hepatica

dandelion

The first dandelion flower in our garden on Monday… or, actually, after this pic I noticed another one, too, and yesterday there was even more. It was high time to start eating them! 😉

We heard the calls of cuckoo bird already last week. From afar. Last night then we heard the bird coming near our garden. We heard a “Cuck-koo!” – only one “Cuck-koo!”. – It was funny, but I said that we want more!

bug hotel, insect hotel...

And the bug hotel or insect hotel… Even though we have many heaps of dry leaves and dry twigs and forest land for bugs and insects here, we are building some bug hotels – it’s just fun and helpful, and the bug hotels always look nice as well. 🙂

bug hotel, insect hotel...

Here’s the first two of them in the picture. And we’ll build even more bug hotels, different types of them, too. More pics then as well.

garlic growing

The night-time and ‘hailing time’ frost protection fabric has worked its magic in our vegetable garden. The peas, carrots and garlic have started to grow under it. This is the biggest sprout there, garlic, today.

-Leena

A visit at the botanic garden & the crocus flower in the home garden

We visited The Botanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island, in the city of Turku, on Wednesday. I didn’t take many pictures this time. But I did write two blog posts about the place already last year; here and here. 🙂

And yes, the weather still had the same pattern on that day, too; hailing, hailing and sunshine at the same time, sunshine, hailing, hailing and sunshine at the same time, sunshine, hailing… It continued the whole day. And we noticed that the spring had advanced a bit more in Turku than here where we are living – about 90 kilometres north of Turku. In Turku there was a bit greener there everywhere, more flowers in the gardens and dandelion flowers in nature – we haven’t even seen any dandelion flowers here “in the north” yet. 🙂

But here it was very warm…

“Hello!” – Koi carps there, too.

Howea forsteriana or kentia palm.

Aloe vera. I’d love to have an aloe vera plant at home! 🙂

Bougainvillea up there. Okay, I want to go back to Spain now…

And I’m still gonna need some more coffee… Coffea arabica is this plant.

Epipremnum aureum, golden pothos, devil’s ivy… One of my favourite houseplants. A bit bigger leaves at the botanic garden.

This echeveria succulent plant was at the garden store Plantagen. It caught my eye from the distance, had to take a pic. 🙂

And this pic I took as we were travelling back home from Turku. One of those moments when it was hailing…

And in the home garden… The crocus flower – the one and only in our garden. 🙂 I thought that we wouldn’t see this marvel this spring, but all of a sudden… here it blooms again!

The first fresh flower in our garden this year.

-Leena

If not cooler, then hotter…

…or the other way round. So the first half of the last day of April was snowy, here is my blog post about it. But the sky did start to clear up and the snow started to melt. In the evening we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids:

on the last day of April

I ate my ice cream down there somewhere (=the spot where I was can’t actually be seen in this pic), but by the rapids I was first, and then I came up here. And from here, from the bridge, I took this pic… no snow, not anymore.

on the first day of May

And the first day of May, the second day of the Finnish Vappu celebration, the May Day itself, was lovely, sunny and warm. I enjoyed sitting here, on the ground, between our vegetable garden and the woods. 🙂

The next four pictures I took by the lake Pyhäjärvi on Saturday. Oh, the colour blue…

lake Pyhäjärvi

Friday and Saturday were sunny and warm days, too. On Friday I saw the first butterfly of this spring for me this year! It was a peacock butterfly. And I heard and saw the first bees buzzing as well! On Saturday then we visited the lake Pyhäjärvi, and on our way there, we saw a deer. I was actually driving the car at that moment, the deer didn’t jump to the road – it stopped by the ditch. And it was so beautiful! 🙂

alder tree, catkins

Under an alder tree and its catkins, by the lake.

lake Pyhäjärvi

We need more days like this!

lake Pyhäjärvi

But:

Ibiza lizard and hail

The Ibiza lizard and hail in our garden yesterday. It’s been hailing and snowing on many days – last week between Tuesday and Thursday, and this week, it’s been cooler… But the sun has been shining, again, right after almost every time that it has hailed or snowed.

The rest of the pictures I took today. And yes, especially today it has hailed and snowed many times, but the sun’s been shining a bit as well. And today I saw black woodpeckers! Two of them. I hadn’t seen those birds before, in nature. Now they were in ‘our’ woods! And their calls sound so… interesting, too! 🙂

May vegetable garden

In our vegetable garden. Some frost protection fabric now. We moved some of our strawberry plants here, too.

May narcissus, daffodil

I thought that there wouldn’t be any narcissus or daffodil plants in our garden this spring, but on Friday I found them, on two spots in the garden, here’s one of them. They had started to grow there again, like, overnight! Literally… I mean, I had been watching those spots! 😀

May leopard's bane, doronicum

Leopard’s bane or doronicum. It already has some flower buds, too!

And some green grass has grown everywhere now as well, during May. – The spring has been slow this year, but now it seems that everything has started to grow a bit better, despite the occasional hailing and snowing. And indeed, I already started eating some nettles! 🙂

-Leena