Finland – Page 23

At the Botanic Garden II

The second blog post about my visit to the Botanic Garden in Turku. The first one: here.

More photos… 🙂

Mandarin. It’s nice to take pics of the fruits at the botanic garden…

A banana plant.

Under the banana leaves…

Grapefruit.

Oh lovely… 🙂

A lime fruit. The scent of the flowers was so strong and stunning – loved it!

A casuarina tree.

Some other lovely citrus fruit… I can’t remember the name right now. 🙂

The Ruissalo island, on which the botanic garden is located, is an island of oak trees – a very special island in whole Finland.

In the outside garden of the botanic garden there were lots of blooming crocuses. I took just a couple of pics of them – but had to take the pics, because we don’t have crocuses in our garden here at home – yet! 🙂

A marvelous springtime…

-Leena

At the Botanic Garden

Today it was mostly sunny, but it was a bit cold and even hailing a bit – the perfect spring weather to visit a botanic garden. My favourite place in the city of Turku: The Botanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island. It’s lovely to visit the botanic garden in wintertime or when it’s not an actual summertime in Finland. A tropic near us! 🙂 I have photos for two blog posts, here’s the first one.

Welcome to the jungle!

Epipremnum aureum, golden pothos, devil’s ivy… We have many of these – the house plants, at home… I should count our house plants, I don’t know how many we have… 😉

I’m gonna need some more coffee…

A bird of paradise.

A taro leaf.

A trunk with attitude. A kapok tree.

Beauties… an orchid…? 🙂

A red-eared slider, and she came to pose to her name tag! She has a beautiful name: Alma, and she is as old as I am…

Aaand… in the second post will be different kinds of citrus fruits and some other things, too. 🙂

-Leena

Some things to one’s heart’s content

I visited the city of Turku last week, and visited the garden store Plantagen in the town of Raisio on Friday, too. I met this wonderful plant there… just had to take a couple of pics of it. I like very much going to Plantagen – there are so many flowers, plants, bushes, trees… everywhere around there. It’s actually one of my favourite places in the Turku region. 🙂

A garden croton or variegated croton are the names I could find in English, in Finnish this plant is literally a wonder bush – ihmepensas. 🙂

Just for the colours…

On Saturday here in the region of Satakunta, my home region.

In the evening we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi, the lake that is our great pride and joy here in Satakunta. A lake large in size, a bit sealike. It was windy and the sound of the waves was so powerful and lovely. I like very much visiting the lake in any kind of weather.

On Saturday, a bit later, a campfire in our garden. We, me and my boyfriend, are real campfire people. 🙂 We build campfires here and there, all year round, and in our garden, too. I love the scent, the sound, the atmosphere…

The food… We have a wok pan for the campfire. We like campfire cooking very much, too – on a wok pan, on a grill grate, on a stick… all year round.

The first fully opened flower of the narcissus in our garden yesterday. It was a rainy day again. But this beauty dazzles!

And yesterday in our garden, nettles – food! Nettles have started to grow nicely, let us eat nettles and speak of them later on. 🙂

-Leena

For the sun of today

Today it’s like spring and summer at once. 😉 It’s been warm and sunny this spring already before, but now it’s beginning to be like the real deal…

…I can take my coffee pic with green grass in it.

So warm and nice to sit on the warm bench. And the sky is blue…

But what’s up with growing wine grapes in Finland? 🙂

Dazzled by the sun beside the flower bed waiting for summer flowers…

-Leena

Some sun internally and a few delights in the garden right now

Today it was again time to get some sun… internally. 😉

Egypt meets Finland… Navel Oranges are so juicy and delicious, and cheap at this time of the year, even in Finland. 😀 After some heavy rain today I was sitting on the wet garden bench again, devouring my orange and after that I took a short tour with my camera around our garden.

Leopard’s Bane or doronicum has started to grow. Waiting for the yellow flowers, last spring there were so many…

Yesterday I noticed that one part of our chives has started to grow, too. I tasted a bit of one of them – the taste was so good and fresh!

The first yellow bud of the narcissus that was in my previous blog post.

This I’ve been watching the whole winter and even now; the blackberry bush in our garden has a few very strong leaves – they have endured there on the twigs the whole time. All the other bushes and trees have lost all their leaves many months ago. 🙂

-Leena

Early springtime

It sounds better than it looks, the early springtime – it’s all still very brownish, nature and garden both, but oh, the sound of the so many birds chirping, tweeting, chirruping, a woodpecker knocking… everywhere around you, even when the sun is not shining. It’s like some jungle… or just the springtime here in Finland! 🙂

One part of our vegetable garden. Our growing field will be expanded a bit this spring…

I was sitting on a bench, having my coffee and taking some pics.

I love these evergreen pine trees… I like to think them as palm trees here in the north… 😉

What’s your favourite colour?

Narcissus, Tête-à-Tête. Waiting for the yellow delights to spring up…

-Leena

Birch twigs – for the promise of spring and vitamin C

Today it was time to get a couple of birch twigs to put into a vase. I think it can be said that this is a very Finnish tradition to get birch twigs inside the house when it’s still snow on the ground in nature and the spring hasn’t come quite yet.

The thing is to make the leaves grow on the twigs inside the house – beside a window in the light and sunlight that so nicely increase all the time in March. It’s all for the promise of the spring and the rejoice of the waiting when it’s so close. 🙂 And yes, some of us also eat those leaves. The young leaves are full of vitamin c.

I went to the other side of the hill in our home woods to fetch the twigs. There are numerous birch trees there. – The place you get your twigs should be far enough from roads and traffic and in some place where there is enough wild birch trees so that you are not harming yourself, anyone’s property or nature itself that much.

I guess it’s more about the feeling than the amount at this point in time. 😉

-Leena