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…

coltsfoot

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:

lake Pyhäjärvi

lake Pyhäjärvi

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! 🙂

coltsfoot

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

lake Pyhäjärvi

I haven’t seen coltsfoot flowers anywhere else yet…

April

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…

water falls down

Don’t go chasing waterfalls…? 😉

Don't go chasing waterfalls...?

Peonies in April

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

yellow hyacinth

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!

yellow hyacinth

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

By the lake yesterday evening

We visited the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region yesterday evening.

lake Pyhäjärvi

I was eating an ice cream, but that didn’t prevent me from taking pictures at the same time. 🙂 And I took these pictures just before 19.00 PM.

lake Pyhäjärvi

lake Pyhäjärvi

The ice on the lake has melted a lot, but there was still that thin layer of ice on the lake. Only the water near the shore was entirely free of ice.

lake Pyhäjärvi

lake Pyhäjärvi

I must admit that I already miss the completely free water and the sound of waves there. 🙂

-Leena

Whiteout, grey on

Today: snow and fog, thick fog. With the temperature around 0 degrees Celsius. I took these pics by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region.

A curious white wall there was…

February

February

On the ice.

February

One saw that one didn’t see…

February

The shoreline disappeared…

February

February

They disappeared…

-Leena

Frozen lake, winter lights, …

All these pictures are from yesterday. The first three pics I took as we were taking our regular walk.

November walk

I came from there… just turning around to take a pic… I don’t have much time for taking pics on our regular walks – trying to keep up with my boyfriend’s pace… he is taller and faster, and perhaps in a bit better shape than me… my personal trainer…? 😀 Oh dear, oh dear…

frozen lake Pyhäjärvi

By the frozen lake Pyhäjärvi. It has been so cold that the lake froze fast. But it is not yet safe to walk too far on the ice…

frozen lake Pyhäjärvi

On the ice anyway, have to try it a bit…

winter lights

Later in the evening I had the inspiration to put up the first Christmas lights, or winter lights, outside. Outside our kitchen window – it’s nice to see the lights when sitting at the kitchen table and the lights also shine in a pleasant way to the kitchen, when it’s dark in there. 🙂

winter lights

One part of the lights are on our bikes, for practical reasons. My bike is the right one, I’ve had it since the year 1998. 🙂

“Okay, this is all very interesting, but…”:

kitty catty cat

-Leena

The last pictures from August

Now the ones from August I talked about yesterday…

Pyhäjärvi

The first two pics I took at the lake Pyhäjärvi, on a dock, 8th August. At the end of the dock.

Pyhäjärvi

The next five pics are peony poppies, 9th August. I thought I already had seen all my peony poppies this year, but all of a sudden there were two more – with colours totally different from my previous poppies this year. 🙂

poppy

Two pics of the first one…

poppy

And three of the other:

poppy

poppy

Nice surprises they were… 🙂

poppy

On August 21st we visited for the first time a bird watching tower quite near our home. It’s called Kauklaisten lintutorni in Finnish, Kauklainen bird watching tower in English. 🙂 It’s located in Rauma.

at bird watching tower

A beautiful, soft, quite harmonious view it was from the tower…

at bird watching tower

There’s also a walking trail there, but we visited only the tower – have to go back someday.

So, this was the last from August here in Owlnature. From now on it’s all about September, mushroom hunting, and so on… 🙂

-Leena

By the home rapids, a couple of peony buds & a petunia flower

I took some pics again by our home rapids, the Kauttuankoski rapids, yesterday evening when we visited it. Here is my previous blog post about the rapids.

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The Kauttuankoski rapids and so many faces… In the previous blog post I was mostly on the other side of the rapids, in this post I’m on the opposite side, and a bit further, too.

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Some evening light already in these pics, but the nights are so light now, too, this time of the year in Finland – in southern Finland as well, but it’s a whole different story in northern Finland these days – it’s so much lighter there at night, and in the northernmost point of the country, the sun doesn’t set at all… Magicall… 😉

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The ruins of an old mill on the right.

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Water flows under the ruins, too

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There are some very old trees. I tried to take pics of the massive trunks, but these pics can’t exactly tell how big these lovely trees really are. And they are mossy from the other side. Like in a fairytale. 🙂

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From the bridge.

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The wind is still blowing like crazy, but I managed to take a pic of our petunia. I love this colour combination! (More pics of this later, hopefully.)

I tried to take pics of our mountain cornflowers, too, for this blog post, but the wind was too much. 😀

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And a couple of peony buds. On our front yard in the pic above and on the back yard in the pic below.

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-Leena

By the home river… rapids

I took some pics when we visited our home river, the river Eurajoki and its rapids, the Kauttuankoski rapids in the municipality of Eura today. The best thing is that this spectacular rapids area is our home rapids. 🙂

The Kauttuankoski rapids has so many faces. I could only capture some of them during the moments we were there…

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There’s an old stone bridge.

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The source of the river Eurajoki is the lake Pyhäjärvi and it ends into the Bothnian Sea.

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The sound of the wide rapids is very powerful. And the air is nicely fresh rapids air there. 🙂

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There are ruins of an old mill. You can actually go inside the ruins – we didn’t know that before. I have one pic from there at the end of this blog post.

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There are many rocks you can climb to, I took this pic on the top of one.

And mossy stones are always so lovely… fairy-tale like. 🙂

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A couple of pics I took on the bridge.

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Inside the ruins of the mill, it doesn’t have any roof.

The rapids area is a nice and charming place to visit in all the four seasons…

-Leena