garden – Page 18 – Owlnature

Growing tomatoes

This is what’s been happening this year: we have grown tomatoes for the first time, we started the pre-growing too late, but we’ve got some delicious red tomatoes to eat. The pre-growing should have started already in March or at the beginning of April. I don’t remember when exactly our tomato seeds were planted, but it was like May already… 🙂

The pre-growing happened in small containers inside our house and the pre-grown tiny plants, seedlings, were then planted outside, in buckets with drainage holes in the bottom. The buckets were placed to our vegetable garden – the all day sunny spot between our house and the woods. The wall of our home was sheltering the plants a bit. When it was sometimes raining too much, we carried the plant buckets inside our house. Everything went fine – the plants or their soil didn’t get any mold. – One just has to carefully keep an eye on the plants – when to water them, and how much. And tomatoes like fertilizing, we always use organic fertilizers.

And oh yes, I just love the scent of tomato plants! 🙂

I took this pic on October 3rd. This was the last day our tomatoes were outside – the upper parts of the plants had finally been frozen at night (and the plants were like all gone, the next day, October 4th). We noticed that our tomatoes actually did like a bit cooler air – they were ripening so well in autumn – they started ripening with the combination of cool air and warm sunlight. And it really was so wonderful that we had so summery September for our tomatoes… because we were so late with the planting. 😀 But oh yes, these home-grown ripe tomatoes that we now have had – they’ve tasted so delicious, sweet… they are miraculous! 🙂

Tomatoes do turn red and fully ripen without the main body of the plant, inside the house (and tomatoes do ripen without apples, and so on… 😉 ). The already red tomatoes, that are ripening to be eaten, we have kept on a table in kitchen.

But the first ripening of our tomatoes – the green tomatoes turning red, happens in the cool and dark sauna in our home. And when the sauna is heated, we take the tomatoes to kitchen.

Our biggest tomato for this year, I took it outside for pics… 🙂

So, now we know what to do in March next year!

-Leena

More October

Just some more October pics, from last weekend and past few days, in our garden…

In the backyard again…

October strawberry… In a pot. We thought this plant already died in the summer, but it started to grow again… but still ripe strawberries for this year…? – Not gonna happen. 🙂

One tough cornflower. I’ve been visiting this flower regularly during this autumn – and it’s just always there! It’s been facing downwards already for a while. But it’s still there. 🙂

Backyard trees again – more pine trees, two apple trees, a birch tree, a bigger rowan and one other yellow Norway Maple…

And one sturdy annual mallow! This flower hasn’t fully opened up, and it, too, has already been facing downwards, but it’s been there for ages. 😀

Some lovely yellow tiny flowers spotted in our carrot field…

Under our bigger oak tree…

Our smaller oak tree. 🙂

Dill, too, was still growing nicely in the ground, despite the cold at nights. Now I’ve picked most of them, some we ate, the rest are drying.

Still some tiny single viola flowers in the pots… Two of them in the pics here, symbols of boldness and strength – in the beginning, these plants were here and here. – Oh dear… 🙂

Some October fern…

My next blog post will be about growing tomatoes. 🙂

-Leena

October, October, October

I was eagerly waiting for October already at the beginning of September this autumn. – I was just so ready for everything autumnal; for colourful leaves, and… no leaves at all, dark evenings, campfires, cold nights, (campfires), the cool, crisp air on a sunny autumn day, raking, steaming hot coffee, tea, hot chocolate, glögi… outside in the crisp air, gloves, scarves and knit hats or pipos as we call knit hats in Finnish, I love the Finnish word pipo – it’s just perfect for the item. 🙂 And I was ready to start creating our dream home, here, in our home. – About this project more later, and some pics, too, when anything is ready… ;D

October 1st. I tried to make a flower crown with the natural spring and summer flowers that still were blooming in our garden, there were not that many of them anymore… 🙂 After taking this pic 12 swans flew over me, honking as they went.

October 2nd, pic above and pic below. A foggy morning. In the pic above our big Norway Maple.

This was at around 10 AM and after a moment it started to clear up… and all of a sudden the sun was shining in the clear blue sky!

Oh my… Oh, my new rubber boots! And the old ones, too! 😀 I took this pic as I was wearing my new rubber boots for the first time on Thursday last week. I just finally had to buy new rubber boots as my old ones had been leaking, both of them, already for over a year, now they are almost completely cracked – I’ve been storing them with care, but I’ve been wearing them A LOT here in countryside, even in sunny weather, because they are so comfortable. 🙂

The next eight pics are from Friday last week.

Our Norway Maple in sunshine.

Whatever happened to our sunflowers? Well, our biggest sunflower for this year is in the pic above… and I love it! 😀 And the tiny spider was feeling the same way! Okay, this year we know that the pre-growing of sunflowers has to be started earlier. 🙂

And these… I still don’t remember what these flowers are called. They are summer flowers grown from seed in summer. Very tough flowers – they are still there in our garden today – cosmos flowers already got frostbitten, badly. EDIT: This flower is clarkia or godetia, silkkikukka in Finnish. Thanks for the answer, A! 🙂

Pot marigolds or calendulas are sturdy autumn flowers as well. Still there.

In our backyard, a smaller Norway Maple and its friends: three pine trees, a rowan and two junipers.

On a bridge above the Kauttuankoski rapids, going for a walk, at around 7 PM, it was about to get dark soon.

The bridge down there, in the pic above. The lamp posts were already lit. And the lovely scent of dry leaves around everywhere…

In our front yard today. Who’s raking? – Me! When the time is right. 😉

And the strawflowers are still standing there with their rustling petals today!

-Leena

Summery September

Still all summery, warm. I’m actually already ready for everything autumnal, but… it will happen soon enough… again… 🙂 So now some flower power! Again! 😀 I took these pics yesterday and today. Some of the flowers are old friends – flowers that have been in my blog already in summer, but here’s also some new flowers, a bit late blooming, and I took pics of them only just today – flowers with a bit more autumnal colours…

First the strawflowers and tiny marigolds. The tall strawflowers are very sturdy flowers! I wouldn’t have believed they are still standing. 🙂 And the rustling petals have been very tough, too!

Marigold, gold…

A runaway marigold growing wildly beside our porch. With a birch tree. 🙂

A bit of cosmos…

Evening light…

Above some late blooming flower of summer flower seed mix, I presume. Autumnal colour…

And the rest of the flowers today are bigger marigolds, pot marigolds or calendulas, grown from seed in summer.

Late blooming autumnal beauties…

And yesterday by the lake Pyhäjärvi. Eating ice cream and taking pics at once… 🙂

A summery, calm lake…

-Leena

Coffee, pink flowers, blackberries

Today’s morning coffee pic along with some more pics of pink flowers, taken lately and today, and a couple of pics with blackberries in them. – Pics in the still very warm September here in Finland. 🙂

Other one of my upper eyelids is a bit red, very swollen and somewhat sore today, it started already yesterday. My boyfriend had the same thing a while ago. But my eyelid is a lot more swollen than his was. Nice. Just taking it easy today…

These two flowers I met amongst the shaggy ink caps. We haven’t planted these. I’m not even sure what these actually are – they look a bit like tiny, and somewhat dark-coloured annual mallows, though… 🙂

Blackberries! And I’ve missed almost everyone of them, when it comes to taking pics. 😀 – I’ve just been eating… We planted the blackberry bush in our garden last year. This year we’ve gotten many berries, so juicy and delicious.

Dasiphora fruticosa or shrubby cinquefoil, ‘pink paradise‘. We planted the bush a couple of weeks ago.

A tiny bush to fill the empty space ( a bit too big, and not to be seen wholly in the pic) in the middle of our garden. – This is a start… 🙂 Very flowery shrubs are shrubby cinquefoils in autumn…

And these old friends today:

Annual mallow, one more pic…

And a bit of cosmos…

-Leena

Cosmos flowers & annual mallow flowers

There are still many cosmos flowers and annual mallow flowers in our garden. And still so many buds of them, too! 🙂 I took these pics of some of the flowers yesterday and today.

Cosmos flowers.

One of the cosmos flowers has this different, interesting colour combination. One petal missing? Charming. 🙂

Annual mallow. Other names for this flower: rose mallow, royal mallow, regal mallow.

I have now started using Owlnature’s Instagram account a bit, too. Our, mine and Owlnature’s, username in Instagram is owlnatureleena. 😉

-Leena

The last pictures from August

Now the ones from August I talked about yesterday…

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

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. 🙂

Two pics of the first one…

And three of the other:

Nice surprises they were… 🙂

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.

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