May may

April

What´s around the corner? – Be careful!

April
April
April

Well, the crocuses are nice…

April
May

It is May now. It has been a pretty sunny week. We had some rain last weekend and after that there has been the scent of green grass in the air! The first dandelion flowers have come out as well.

May
May

Glory of the snow flowers. Aaand, but it has not snowed in May, yet. 😀

May

It was the warmest day of the year so far on Tuesday. It was 16 degrees Celsius in the daytime and it was not windy. I was sitting on the grass in our garden, by the woods. It was wonderful…

May
May

Solar power in our greenhouse as well.

May

Night owls´garden light the other night…

And yesterday I saw a hedgehog for the first time this year late in the evening. It was getting pretty dark and we came across each other by a tub/container where we collect rainwater so suddenly that I frightened him and he frightened me. 🙂

May

Full moon was coming my way, too…

May

The first thing today… I went to the greenhouse to open the windows. The greenhouse was heated up to 10 degrees Celsius at night, because it was too cold in the nighttime. It was a bit over 30 degrees Celsius inside the greenhouse with the sunlight in the morning, as seen in the pic above.

May

I had to water our cherry tomato plants, they already were all too dry…

May

Outside, garlic has been growing since March.

May

Those grapes… The first small grape hyacinths this year.

It is 13 degrees Celsius, nicely a bit warmer again today.

Leena

May

Heard the blackbird sing

It is a sign of spring! – We heard the blackbird sing for the first time this year here on Monday evening this week. It sounded like magic. 🙂

Swans, too, have been loud, by the lake, lately. We usually hear them in the evening and/or at night. Yesterday for example they were quiet in the evening, but at around 2 am then, they were very loud again.

The first five pics on Thursday:

March

Morning! It had been snowing / sleeting just a bit again…

March
March

That did not last long, it was +5 degrees Celsius again in the afternoon:

March

The little oak tree still has some of its leaves.

March

Yesterday, on Friday:

March

No snow good morning!

March

But it was windy again in the daytime.

March

Garden campfire in the evening. We have had campfires in the garden lately as we have been building the garden shed…

March

And late in the evening it suddenly started to snow when I was standing by the fire. It was Real cold winter snow, and for a while it came down like here in the pic above.

Today:

March

It´s still -1 degrees Celsius, and it´s (enough) windy again as well.

garden shed

The shed. Plank by plank… We have been building this garden shed, now there´s the roof and the walls. This has been a lot of work and fun. 🙂

March
March
March

Snow, eww… 😉

March

Little birds are singing loud everywhere…

March
  • Leena

´Snowflash´ and stuff

March came and so did snow. So let´s feast our eyes on that white for a bit again (or still?)… :p (Too many pictures in this blog post, but this is ´for the record´and spring is already in the air…)

green huntsman spider

Well, this was on Friday a week ago… The greenest guy in the house! A green huntsman spider.

February

And by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village, a week ago as well…

February

In the woods travelling away from the lake…

February

One of the campfires that we have had in our garden lately.

And then came March, the first four pictures on Sunday:

March

G`morning!

March

We still have the upper part of our Christmas tree on the terrace…

March
March

The next eight pictures on Wednesday:

March

I still found a cone in the Christmas tree. 🙂 (I found 41 cones when it was time to take the tree to pieces in January.)

March
March

Hmm… Christmas? No…..

March
March
March
March
March

It was windy, as it has been many a time this winter, no permanent snow cover here in the southernmost part of Finland, but windy Yes…

On Thursday:

March

The amount of snow varies, the snow melted a bit again…

March

The next nine pictures I took yesterday, on Friday:

March

Mooorning! It had been snowing a bit again…

March

It´s very nice that there has still been snow, because ´the spring in the air´feels more like a real spring when there´s some snow melting. 😀

March
March

Small rose flowers in our living room.

March

Sunshine & blue…

March
March

Solar power.

March

Hmm… And in the sky, the moon…

March

Garden campfire yesterday. The sky was clear at night, the moon, stars…

But this morning:

March

Well, grey morning!

March

My morning coffee ideas in the living room…

March

In the afternoon, just for the record…

March
March
  • Leena

Independence Day

Today, on 6th December, is the Independence Day in Finland. – Our Suomi is 101 years old! 🙂

December

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in my home village today in the afternoon.

After the snowfall we already had… water, again, but after that it has been snowing again, just a little bit. – Business as usual.

December

Two pictures that I took in our garden today.

December

The next four pictures I took in my boyfriend’s land in the region of Etelä-PohjanmaaSouth Ostrobothnia, about 180 kilometres north from our home, on Monday this week.

December

Ice on the pond in the forest.

December

And a bit less than an hour later… Darkness falls early this time of year. But it’s actually pretty nice. – It’s beautiful. And nice for a bit adventurous soul. 😉

And it was me who drove all the way back home, it was dark and it was snowing. Well, it’s me who needs the practice, and I love it.

December

There’s stream flowing, in a ditch, near the pond. The lovely sound in the forest!

December

What to eat around the campfire? For example Karelian pies and pesto sauce. Karelian pasties or Karelian pies are traditional pasties in Finland – rye flour and rice porridge. The pesto sauce is Italian, with basil. A delicious combo… out there in the cold! And coffee…

-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…

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

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!

An evening in April

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.

an evening in April

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!” 🙂

a garden campfire

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 last day of April

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

the last day of April

the last day of April

Christmas trees… 😮

the last day of April

the last day of April

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

the last day of April

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

Dried flowers, a campfire, one knitted owl…

It’s a sunny weekend! And now that the spring is just around the corner, it’s starting to get miscellaneous again… 😉

March

dried peonies

It was finally time to take these friends outside for a pic yesterday. My dried peonies from last summer… beauties… lovely memories…

dried flower crown

My dried flower crown from the summer of 2015 is hanging on a door window in our hall. What actually dominates this picture, however, is an unfinished door window curtain project. 🙂

campfire

Our garden campfire last night. It was warming so nicely in the beautiful but cold darkness.

knitted owl

I started knitting again. I love knitting, but I’m not always doing it. 🙂 And… I always need some practice with it. This, for example, is my first ever owl!

-Leena