Finland – Page 20

Holistic wellness from nature, me -10 kg (!), annual mallow flowers…

It’s getting miscellaneous again. And I’m visiting Turku again, clarifications about my Turku here. 🙂

Morning coffee pic this morning, on my second floor here…

These two pics I took on Thursday at 23.30 PM (still lightly light in Finland) in the garden of our country home, after we had come back from Nordic walking and eating blueberries in the raven forest. 🙂 And after these pics, when I went inside the house, something bizarre happened…

I hadn’t weighed myself for a long time, but after taking the pics above, I DID, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… I have lost 10 kilograms without trying! – I have only moved from the block of flats to a country home. 😀 Yes, I’ve noticed that my face, for example, looks thinner now, compared to pics of me a bit over two years ago, but still, my focus has been my mental health – I mean, really, my peace of mind and all… And I know that 10 kilos in two years may not be that much to some people, but for me, that’s a huge accomplishment! In my case, an accomplishment without even trying – just happening naturally – literally. OK, so, no wonder I’ve been feeling that light, the light and the bright at times. 😉

It was just that living in a city and in a block of flats… it just wasn’t for me, I didn’t know what to do with myself there in the end. I started to feel uneasy and even crazy at times, in a bad way, and I know what panic attacks are. In a way, I lost myself, but yes, I gained WEIGHT. 🙂 But I felt at home spending some time in the bushes of northern and eastern Finland. And yes, I’m not alone in this, my boyfriend had the same problems and he has already lost 20 kilos – he already took everything as a physical project since almost a year ago. And we’ve been eating normal (Finnish) food. But my boyfriend hasn’t eaten any wheat for almost a year now. So, we have never been obese, just easy to see.

But enough of this for now, I must just say that one has to give the good time to grow… So, this whole blog of mine is an ode to nature, I share pics and thoughts and the LOVE here, and I’m witnessing the holistic benefits of living close to nature every day in reality, in my own life, and this does not mean I would not love to visit cities, too, and cities, too, have some nature in them. This is just becoming myself, finding my place…

So, let’s continue the holistic struggle! – This I really mean, and this I say with love. 🙂

And with mallow flowers:

More annual mallow flowers in our garden. I took these pics, too, on Thursday.

-Leena

Blueberry gold, the next peony poppy, the very last peony flower

We’ve been doing quite a lot of Nordic walking, but I don’t always take pics of it… On Thursday I took a pic – I tried to demonstrate what we’ve been doing quite a lot lately; Nordic walking and during that activity picking and eating blueberries, too (isn’t that a healthy and pleasant combination 😉 ) in the forest where one of our favourite walking trails goes.

The starting and ending point of the trail is by the lake Pyhäjärvi, I took this pic after our walk – trying to get some of my blueberry fingers, too, in the pic. 😀 This previous blog post about Nordic walking was from the same forest, our raven forest near our home. We just love it! – There’s always a raven or many ravens croaking. Once we heard, and saw, many many ravens. We tried to count them; there was at least 15 if not over 20 ravens dashing, flying and croaking. Amazing it was. Ravens are both funny and noble birds. 🙂

A muffin again yesterday evening… We’re lucky enough to have a lot of wild blueberries in our back garden, too. Yesterday evening we made some blueberry muffins. Muffins of gluten free flour; whole grain oat flour. Oat is the best! 🙂 So delicious and healthy. And traditionally Finnish!

Two pics of the next peony poppy flower today. This, too, is one of my ‘wild poppies’. This was hit with rain – yesterday, heavily…

And the very last peony flower – just had to take pics today… Yesterday I was hoping that this would survive the rain and grow bigger…

…so that I could cut it for drying today. And that was what I already did, because I thought the flower is big enough to cut, to save, now. The other peonies that I cut for drying earlier, are still doing (drying) just fine. 🙂

-Leena

Tea, flowers, Medieval Market, birch sap, coffee…

Some miscellaneous yesterday and today again. I’m visiting Turku now. – I’m on the second floor in a block of flats. I wrote a “story so far” in the sidebar of my blog the other day, telling that I studied in a city, and so on. So, clearly, I’ve lived again in the countryside for two years now, but I’ve had one part of my belongings still here in Turku. But, that’s about to change soon – I’m moving out of here completely now…

…like this – having some tea with no hurry whatsoever, trying to figure out my place in the solar system… 😀
OK, there’s a lot of coffee here in my blog, but… I do drink tea, too! Coffee is coffee and caffeine for me, but my tea I prefer without caffeine. Tea is an evening or a night drink for me. My favourites are chamomile tea and rooibos tea. Yesterday evening (in the pic above) I had chamomile, honey & vanilla tea. Sweet. 🙂

And again flower pics I took in the garden of our country home earlier yesterday. Again phacelia.

And more pics of maiden pink, too. It’s difficult to capture with camera the striking neon red colour the flower has, it dazzles the camera… 😀

One peony bud, three pics…

Yesterday we visited the annual event, the Medieval Market of Turku. The Medieval Market is one of my favourite places in Turku. It’s a place for old, traditional and genuine things, scents, sounds, atmosphere… And I had my traditional cup of nice super drink, ice cold birch sap there. 🙂 Nature’s renewable and healthy magic potion that I’d love to have a little more often.

And morning coffee today. Here’s to us, I guess… 😉

-Leena

A tar kiln, a muffin, flowers… miscellaneous yesterday and today

It all starts with a couple of pics of peony flowers. 🙂 (Peonies earlier here and here.)

Yesterday evening and a summer tradition in the village of Sydänmaa in the municipality of Säkylä, here in Satakunta region: a tar kiln – the real making of tar in a traditional method. The tradition of making tar has its roots in the 1600s in Säkylä. This annual four day (& night) event has been created by skillful local volunteers for 20 years. Yesterday the tar kiln was set on fire, I took these pics right after the blaze started.

Such a nice event and nice memories again! And the fire from the big tar kiln is so hot, I already started sweating as I was taking these pics. 😀

And from the tar kiln we came back home to make some muffins. These are made of gluten free flour; a mix of buckwheat, potato flakes, ground linseed and psyllium. And dark chocolate and banana. We have made different kinds of good gluten free muffins before, this was again something different. 🙂

And again flowers in our garden. This is some sort of phacelia, I don’t know how to say it better in English. In Finnish this is called kellohunajakukka. Lovely flowers and so charming the colour blue! Fairy-tale like. The seeds of these flowers were, by the way, planted by a man. 🙂

Maiden pink. I planted the seeds. 🙂 It’s said that this is one of the most red wild flowers in Finland, if not the reddest. Actually it looks very striking with the colour partly being screaming neon red. Maybe I try to take more pics of this, too, later… This flower can be planted or wild in Finland, but it is, unfortunately, near threatened in the wild.

And today we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi…

-Leena

Mountain cornflowers, petunia and their friends

Yesterday’s flower pics.

Centaurea montana or mountain cornflower or perennial cornflower or mountain bluet. These, too, are flowers that we have on many different spots in our garden, thank you, the previous owners of this house! I like these. 🙂

The tiny yellow flowers on the background are meadow buttercups, very wild in our garden… 🙂

More petunia pics. Now the lovely colour combination can be seen a bit better…

In the same pot with the petunia is another flower, too. It was there when we got this, and I don’t know what this flower is, haven’t found the answer. I call it the white crown flower…

…or the white flower crown…

EDIT: The answer came to me in a garden store, I saw these flowers there with a name tag. 🙂 This is verbena, rautayrtti in Finnish.

Red campion or red catchfly. A bit wild in our garden as well. And a bit everywhere, for example around the rapids.

On Friday by the lake Pyhäjärvi. It was raining a bit as I took this pic.

-Leena

Coffee, starflowers, forget-me-nots

Coffee along with some charming tiny flowers today…

…and another one of our many Ibiza lizards… 😀 This one left with us from the Hippy Market Punta Arabí in May 2014.

Stars in the woods beside our garden. Arctic starflower or chickweed wintergreen. There really was a starry ground in the woods, now many of the flowers have already started to fade away… There are also lingonberry flowers in the pic above.

Such a beautiful forest flower the starflower…

And another one of my favourites, wood forget-me-not. We have a bed of forget-me-nots at the back of our garden. Precious. 🙂 I hope they still bloom for some time…

-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.

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.

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… 😉

The ruins of an old mill on the right.

Water flows under the ruins, too

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. 🙂

From the bridge.

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. 😀

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

-Leena