Miscellaneous – to one’s heart’s content – Page 8

Finland 100 years old tomorrow, a few December pictures…

Tomorrow, on the 6th of December, is the Independence Day and our Finland, our Suomi is 100 years old. Congratulations Finland and thank you! – Onnea Suomi ja kiitos! 🙂

The December full moon, the supermoon on Sunday. Not a perfect picture, but kind of fascinating. The moon was so bright, magical. It lit up our garden. It was so nice that the sky wasn’t all clouds.

The second part of November was a bit more grey, rainy, dark… the fifth season… But we had a bit of sunshine as well. And some snow, too, for the second time this season, but the snow, of course, melted away again after two days.

Sunshine, viola and her pearls, frozen water droplets, in the garden yesterday. This is a strong plant! It still has several flowers like this one in the picture. Never before have we had fresh flowers in the garden in December…

Today again, some snow on viola… It started to snow a bit last night and it has snowed a bit today, they say that it will snow some more tonight and they say that tomorrow we should have some sunshine again, too, but after that… water again, as one might guess… But the most important thing is that we have snow now. 🙂

Hawthorn berries.

And our strawberry patch.

-Leena

Growing tomatoes this year & some bird related things

The story about growing tomatoes this year… It is a short story, very short… so short, that I already wrote it on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) a while ago.

My precious… The summer this year was not very good for growing tomatoes outside in the garden here in Finland. But some tomatoes did grow! We can still, in November, eat tomatoes that have grown in our garden. So… it’s not that bad after all. 🙂

We had only few bigger tomatoes, but many smaller ones. And again, they had to be taken inside the house for ripening. They were ripening on a plate in the kitchen, for weeks. Home-grown tomatoes always taste so incredibly sweet! They are just perfect.

And some bird related things… I found something that is over 20 years old, something that I missed – something that I thought I had lost forever…

My pendant, my bird! 🙂 I did not believe that this still was somewhere, somewhere safe… but yes, I found this at my childhood home, (where else!). A bronze pendant necklace called Tintti, made in Finland by Kalevala Jewelry. The stone is hand-painted ceramic.

Okay, I found these; my Tintti with its original box and another bronze pendant necklace by Kalevala Jewelry as well. Another bird! A bird called Tampereen seudun lintu, as old as my Tintti, but I didn’t remember that I even had it.

So, I had these in my childhood. I am so happy to have found them! My treasures… I think that these, too, will be in my pictures every once in a while. 🙂 I love jewelry and it can be seen in my blog…

And something I made over the weekend… I was knitting a bit, testing this rainbow yarn that I have. 🙂 At this point in time, another owl. My design – my problems – more fun in the end. I think he needs some fur around his beak…

-Leena

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…

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!” – ‘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! 😉

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…

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

-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:

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.

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…

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! 🙂

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

We need more days like this!

But:

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! 🙂

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

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! 😀

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

Snow & Vappu – the last day of April in Finland

It’s the last day of April and we are celebrating Vappu here in Finland. Vappu, May Day, First of May, May 1st… the main thing is to celebrate spring!

I wrote about Vappu already a year ago, here. 🙂 And this is just one example how the Vappu weather, actually the whole spring weather can vary here – the spring has been slow this year, as I wrote already in my previous blog post – we’ve been, like, at a standstill a bit, already for some time now. It truly can be seen in the garden and in nature…

I took the picture above and the next two pictures at around 21.30 PM yesterday. It was snowing again, and we had a garden campfire, too.

Despite the weather a robin bird was chirping beautifully, but only for a while – on previous nights it has been singing much longer. And a woodcock was on its regular flight as well: “orr, orr, orr, pist!” 🙂

The garden campfire… but what about the traditional homemade Vappu delicacies this year – I wrote about them last year, here. We do have sima fermenting, but those munkkis I bought at a grocery store, with a bit of discount. And, by the way, we have no balloons this year.

The picture above and the next five pictures I took this morning.

Christmas trees… 😮

What is that? – That’s the sky clearing up a bit.

And it should be clearing up… :p This in the picture above is the first part of our vegetable garden – there ought to be growing for example some early carrots, early peas and garlic in the summer…

It has been snowing again as I’ve been writing this blog post, but the sun has tried to shine as well, and it is 2 degrees Celsius at the moment…

Leena

At a standstill…?

The weather has been cold all the time for some time now here in Finland. Today they said that the spring has come to a standstill now… Yeah, we’ve noticed that… We’ve had some snowing, sleeting or hailing, cold winds, or even a bit crazy winds, or something like that… every day now, but the sun has been shining for a while, and right after almost every time that it has snowed, sleeted or hailed.

And I’ve seen that in some parts of Europe it has been even worse; so much snow, frost, severe frost, frost damages, frost protection with fire buckets in the vineyards for example. Oh no, sometimes it’s more about survival…

This was the first coltsfoot of the spring for me this year! 🙂 By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region, on Friday. ‘By the lake’ means really close, this close:

The lake is free of ice! And the waves are there as well! 😀 The wind was pretty strong on that day, too…
But yes, when I first saw, a bit over a week ago, from the car window, the blue lake again after the winter, on a sunny day, it really looked like out of a fairytale… and magic! 🙂

After a few steps I found more coltsfoot flowers, here’s just two of them…

I haven’t seen coltsfoot flowers anywhere else yet…

After hailing yesterday. It hailed and sleeted many times yesterday… I also went outside to see the dancing of the tiny snow balls when they hit the ground and the huge, but a bit wet, snowflakes – how could they be so big…

Don’t go chasing waterfalls…? 😉

My peonies today. Hmm… they are a bit smaller than exactly a year ago…

And my first ever yellow hyacinth… it’s outside now, and oh, the scent! – The scent is a bit different than the scent of the hyacinths at Christmas time. The scent of this yellow hyacinth is… yellow, a bit green… like spring!

And the viola (no pics now) has been outside now, too. It has a bit damaged flowers now, but some flower buds as well.

-Leena