Garden – Page 23 – Owlnature

Some miscellaneous in owlgarden & identification ( – answer found)

These first two coffee pics are from yesterday. Some food included in the first pic. 😉

They say it will rain over the weekend. Today we still have some planting to do, and lawn mowing, too.

Our Norway Maple in flower beside the driveway. I took this pic in our front yard today.

Have some cactus, or… Bali? One of my favourite pastilles. Tasty.

Now I need some heeelp! What is this flower called? 🙂 I have a hunch that it’s actually quite common in Finland… The leaves of this plant look a bit poisonous… it’s the spots. I tried to google this flower, but couldn’t find it. This flower stands in the middle of our garden.

EDIT: I found the answer last night, on 14th May. It’s Pulmonaria officinalis, rohtoimikkä in Finnish. And common names in English: common lungwort, lungwort or Our Lady’s milk drops. It’s not poisonous, but an old herb used for medical purposes. It’s a perennial plant and cultivated, not natural, in Finland. They say that the white spots look like unhealthy lungs and the scientific name Pulmonaria officinalis comes from that. Well, I couldn’t see that in particular, but they do look dangerous to me. 🙂 They say this actually is a herbal medicine for lungs.

I already earlier had browsed through a couple of plant and flower books we have, but couldn’t find this flower in them. Last night I finally started to browse through a book that I bought from a flea market some weeks ago. And I found this plant very fast from the book. The book’s original (=English) title is The Complete Book of Herbs and it’s from the year 1988. This book is fairly big and it cost me 50 Euro cents. Sometimes it’s just the books, not the Internet, and the older the book, the better! 🙂

On the vappu weekend we planted sunflower seedlings outside. They were raised from the seed inside the house. We planted these on four different spots in our garden. Hopefully we’ll have at least one fully grown sunflower. That would be great. Last year the seeds were planted straight into soil, and nothing grew. This time we did it properly and in the right way. So, now just hoping… This one in the pic for example has already grown stronger. 🙂

-Leena

Narcissus flowers, small grape hyacinth, Norway Maple in flower…

One positively overwhelmed nature and garden blogger here again, hi! 🙂

Yesterday we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi…

And yesterday the first narcissus or daffodil flowers opened. The narcissus blooming with pure yellow flowers is lovely, but these different shades are so welcomed… The previous owners of this house have planted these next to the woods.

Deep. 🙂

I somehow find these guys a bit difficult to take pics of…

One tamed, two.

And all these guys… But they kind of form the shape of a heart, though, when you look at it. 😉

On the same spot today, yet another group photo – more narcissus flowers opened today.

The first Leopard’s Bane or doronicum flower close up…

Our big Norway Maple tree is in flower beside the driveway.

And beside the driveway, on the other side, stands a birch, too. 🙂

-Leena

Some pics five days ago and today…

Spring really has sprung. It’s been very warm, 20 degrees Celsius and even a bit warmer for so many days, the sun’s been shining every day and it hasn’t rained. OK, and I visited Turku – I still have one part of my belongings there, but not for long anymore. 🙂 So, I spent three days in a block of flats, on the second floor, and I didn’t go outside at all. Probably had some things to do inside there. 😀 Now I’m back in our country home. In this blog post I have some pics I took on Thursday before travelling to Turku, and pics I took today. They’re like five days ago and today -pics of leaves and ‘stuff’, taken from the same spot. And it’s time to start taking pics of newly emerged or opened up flowers, too.

Leaves of redcurrant five days ago.

The same spot today. OK, and today I remembered again that it’s time to accept that the light dazzles and wind blows in summer when you take pics outside… 🙂

Buds in redcurrant five days ago…

…and the same spot today. There will be berries!

Raspberry leaves five days ago…

…the same spot today.

Lilac bush five days ago…

…and the same spot today. There’s already even a flower bud! Oh, how I love lilacs! 🙂 My favourite bushes. Luckily the previous owners of this house have liked them a lot, too… more pics of lilacs later… 😉

Leopard’s Bane or doronicum has opened up some of her flowers.

Narcissus buds and small grape hyacinth that suddenly emerged again last week. The previous owners of this house have planted these. And there’s narcissus and small grape hyacinth growing on several spots in the garden. More pics of all the flowers later on… Today I found out for example that we have here also quite big flower buds on some plants that I don’t remember knowing what they are and who planted them… 🙂

So this is the time of the year that you truly feel positively overwhelmed by it all… the constantly more and more emerging colour green, grass, leaves, buds, flowers – the abundance of nature all around us, everywhere. It wouldn’t be this amazing and miraculous if we didn’t have the long wintertime… Yesterday when I was travelling in the car from Turku to our country home here in Eura, I really was dazzled and amazed by everything around – the leaves and all that had grown so much in a few days, when I had been inside on the second floor for the three whole days. – It was like the best thing to do these days… 😀 But right now I need to get outside for a bit. So, here was this blog post, and let us take more pics of everything a bit later – right now the memory card of my camera is stuffed, too, and the battery is low. 🙂

-Leena

Campfires and delicacies

So, the campfire people, too, were celebrating vappu on Saturday…

In our garden late in the evening. We had a campfire also on Sunday night. I love it how every campfire is different and the fire itself is constantly changing. Staring at fire is one of the most relaxing things I know… and the warmth at cooling night-time is nice, too.

And the food… Just a pic of campfire marshmallows I had.

Some more delicacies… this is the second chili pepper that we have eaten now, this was yesterday night just before dinner – I was so hungry that I wasn’t able to take a better pic… just needed to have my potatoes… 🙂

Our chili peppers are a bit burning, but delicious. Eating just half the pepper is enough, which is quite good – one pepper for two people… and our chilies are not even that hot types of chili peppers. But they burn nicely. 🙂

And… today I took pics of the real traditional homemade vappu delicacies; this is munkki – like a doughnut ball, simply a ball (mine is a kind of a ball 🙂 ) of wheat flour spiced with ground cardamom and deep-fried in oil and then rolled in sugar. A sin. 😉

And here’s some traditional homemade sima. Sima is a Finnish slightly fermented lemon drink, sweet and sparkling. There’s water, white sugar, brown sugar, the flesh of a lemon, the rind of a lemon, a very tiny piece of yeast and raisins.
To be honest, our sima is still kind of fermenting, but this already tastes like the real deal. And sima is a fresh and good drink for the whole summer as well. And it’s not supposed to be an alcoholic beverage, sima is suitable for children, too. 🙂

-Leena

Celebrating spring

This weekend is something like the sun kind of in the coffee glass…

It’s Vappu in Finland. 🙂 – Vappu, May Day, First of May, May 1st…

The main thing with the Vappu celebration for many people, including myself, is celebrating spring. But how we celebrate tends to vary. We here at our home we’re just at home taking it easy. Maybe going for a car ride as well. And having some traditional homemade Vappu delicacies – a couple of pics here in my blog later on, hopefully. 🙂

A narcissus flower is kind of in the coffee glass, too. 😀

This year the weather is quite OK as well…

Some more violas…

There can’t be too much of the colour yellow in spring. 🙂

This was yesterday evening when we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi.

-Leena

The crocus flower today

Now. This made me want to run… 😉 (Why? Answer here. 🙂 ) There’s also another crocus, but it doesn’t have a flower at all – just the green parts…

Only one flower and a pic overflow… it couldn’t be any other way.

So subtle…

Grateful for this! 🙂

So, did I miss something a year ago…?

-Leena

Hailing, snowing, grounding…

It started to snow last night. Some very big snowflakes – snowflakes weren’t that big in the winter… and today there was snow on the ground:

But now it has already started to melt and the sun’s been shining, too, buuut… some more snow is falling right now again, too. Anyway. 🙂

Well, this was on Saturday, it hailed one more time on that day. The tiny snow balls were quite beautiful on the growing field in our garden. It’s actually nice to stand in the hail fall – the bouncing tiny snow balls are fun.

Yesterday ended with snowfall, but earlier it was sunny and warm. As I took this pic, I was sitting on the ground, half in our garden, half in the woods. 🙂 I had to put a cap on my head because the sun felt so hot on my head, and after coffee I felt the need to get some fresh tap water with cucumber. I like very much making these kind of tasty waters; with veggies, herbs, berries, fruits…

Just wait for it… Is it going to hail or sleet or…? – A bit later I was sitting on the ground on an other spot in our garden, watching the clouds approaching…

This was actually the first time I took my slippers off outdoors this spring. And the sunshine was dazzling. It felt so nice!

A person in Finland takes off the slippers and feels some dry earth beneath the woolen socks… feels heavenly. 😉 I love sitting on the ground and getting some good energy from the earth. 🙂

Did I say we don’t have crocuses in our garden…? Well, the thing is, last spring, which was our first spring in this house, we had this one in the pic. 😀 The previous owners of this house have planted something… It wasn’t and it’s not like a whole crocus flower, it’s just… half the crocus flower. I was so sure this won’t spring up anymore, but what do you know… all of a sudden it’s just there. The funny thing is that I’ve been watching this spot, checking it almost every day for this flower, but haven’t been able to see anything, but just suddenly – there it is again! 😀 Well, if this now opens up to be a whole flower…

And yesterday I dug up the remains of the summer flowers from last year and worked the soil barehanded – I love it! Black-tipped fingernails are in again. 😉 The previous owners of this house have made this flower bed. And I am grateful for it! This has a beautiful shape and the mossy edges are lovely.

Ok, being outside in the garden and in nature is wonderful, but sometimes you just need to be an inseparable part of the couch… and that’s completely fine, too! You don’t always have to be outdoors… 🙂

-Leena