garden – Page 4 – Owlnature

“Marco!” – “Polo!”

The summer is moving on… This summer hasn’t been as hot as last summer here in Finland, but we’ve had a few fairly short hot periods this year, too. This week it was hotter than ever in many places in Europe and in a few places in Finland as well. Here where I’m living it was 32 degrees Celsius on Sunday. Yesterday it was only 23 degrees Celsius and today 16 degrees, in the daytime – last night it was around 11 degrees Celsius. That was fast.

This summer, thus far, I have been enjoying nature and gardening, naturally. 🙂 And I have been using my Instagram (owlnatureleena) a bit. I have been reading a lot. During June and July I have read 14 books and finished reading two books (I had read half of both of them earlier) and I’m about to finish reading yet another book, so this has definitely been a lot for me. And, naturally, I have a Goodreads account (leenannih) to keep track of books. 😀

Now some summer snapshots:

A young hare in the forest. I love hares and rabbits. I had a rabbit when I was a child.

Sheep here in our home village. They were baaing so much, they were just funny and adorable.

We found some cloudberries in a forest we had never been before, about 20 kilometres from our home. The berries were so delicious. And we can’t remember finding this gold here in the southern part of Finland before!

And there were quite many small blue butterflies flying in the forest, pretty magical… These two were on a rock by a small lake there.

A spider on our terrace. There were a few of these guys there one evening. They, too, are just lovely.

I’ve tried to take pics of our summer flower bed. Last year we didn’t plant any seeds here, so there was only weed here a year ago. And this year we finally had the possibility to add a lot of compost to the soil thanks to the year-round composter we have.

The last three pics I took today:

The summer hasn’t ended yet…

And now just one picture that I took in our greenhouse today as well:

Leena

Greenhouse, hot, light, bright…

It’s officially summer! And lately… First it was very freaking windy for many days, and a bit cold, too. Now it has been very warm again, even hot (too warm 😀 ) for a few days. For example here where I’m living it was 31 degrees Celsius in the shade in the daytime on Thursday, and not much cooler on Friday, and yesterday it was around 29 degrees as well. Today it’s 21 degrees Celsius – oh, normality… 😀

Our greenhouse is ready, yay! It has been fully ready for a few days now. First pictures that I took when it was still possible to ‘see through’ the greenhouse a bit:

And these are what we put into the ground, going round and round… hmm…

There it is, one of them…

The greenhouse is almost, but not quite, under the monster, our biggest pine tree.

Two pictures from the inside.

A few pictures I took today, the first ‘ready pictures’:

It was a lot of work and everything, but “Phew!” now finally… 😀

There are for example watermelon and sweet peppers growing. We carried 1000 litres of garden soil in bags into/outside the greenhouse.

Fuchsia flowers.

And viola flowers today:

Love the scent in the air…

Sage, too…

stars on the ground — Stars on the ground…

The stars are on the ground again this time of year in Finland. 🙂 – Arctic starflower or chickweed wintergreen in the woods next to our garden, I took this picture at around 11.55 pm on Wednesday. (And I was attacked by mosquitoes, there are plenty of them evenings these days.)

So the days are long now, light and bright. And they are still getting a bit lighter. Today for example, here where I’m living, the sun rose at 03.58 am and the sun sets at 23.03 pm – the length of the day is 19 h 5 min.

Leena

Very warm & more flowers

It has been warm and it was very warm for a few days; it was between 25 and 27 degrees Celsius between Sunday and Tuesday. Today it’s 18 degrees Celsius and they say that we will get back to more normal – to around 15 degrees Celsius now…

The first seven pictures I took in our garden on Tuesday, yesterday and today:

Our second cherry tree survived its first winter. – Our first cherry tree didn’t survive winter and we had to plant a new tree a year ago. This new tree had 11 flowers this week.

Here’s our cherry bush today. We planted this bush cherry in September 2017 and it had many flowers already a year ago.

Our oak tree in the back of the garden. I love these small oak tree leaves… Oak tree is one of the last ones to grow leaves in the spring in Finland.

Our old apple tree is flowering. Oh, love…

And our little bird cherry tree is flowering, too, in the back of the garden.

A nice tulip in the back of the garden as well. – We have a few ‘surprise tulips’ there. 🙂

By the lake Pyhäjärvi yesterday.

Me feeling summery… ;D

Leena

Flowers flow

There’s a wonderful scent in the air everywhere outside. It’s a combination, a mixture of everything; earth, grass, flowers… Trees are blooming, too. Our plum tree is blooming and our pear tree is blooming, bird cherry trees are blooming outside our yard…

And yesterday evening I finally heard the “cuck-koo” – I think I heard the call of the cuckoo bird already before, but yesterday I heard it clearly.

Our plum tree is full of flowers. We planted this tree four years ago, it has been flowering every year now.

Our pear tree is full of flowers, too. This is the first time that this tree is full of flowers. – We planted it in September 2017. Oh, the scent… 🙂

Hyacinths are blooming in the garden as well.

And tulips…

Oh, colours…

Leena

Maytime

Everything is growing, everything is green, and there are flowers, too, everywhere! Well, we already had a cold period again, it was a short one, but it was hailing and snowing. Nothing stayed on the ground though, it was just snowing and hailing and the sun was shining as well, at the same time, too, again. – Business as usual.

And now we’ve had warm days again – around 15 degrees Celsius and around 20 degrees Celsius it has been, yesterday it was a bit above 20 degrees Celsius and today it’s already 23 degrees Celsius. Feels like summer for us! 🙂

A pic today. There suddenly was a random tulip bulb in my hands last autumn, and I planted it here thinking that it might be nice to have a single tulip blooming beside my dwarf spruce. Well, it is! And the tulip is taller than my tree. 🙂

May — ~Hiding… someone’s always hiding…? 😀

A ladybug or ladybird was hiding in our pear tree yesterday, I saw her (?) again today, in the pear tree, she had come out from her hiding place…

A dandelion in our garden, it is like… two dandelions in one – a broad stem and two different flowers, hmm…

We went for a walk by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village yesterday.

In the woods there… This doesn’t look bad in pictures, but it looks more impressive in nature, the tree really is bigger in nature, and I always am strangely awed by this big tree that has come down…

Another big tree, a very old birch tree…

We already have the smaller greenhouse in the corner of our terrace. We will have another greenhouse in our garden, a bigger one. This is what we have there now; the ground (foundation not quite ready yet) for the greenhouse and marigold flowers (as a symbol of hope ;D ) – we still have to build, assemble the greenhouse as well…

Leena

The colour green

Everything has started to turn green! 🙂 It has been a sunny week again. And it has been warm – around 20 degrees Celsius and even a bit above 20 degrees it has been, in the daytime. Today it’s around 15 degrees Celsius, and they say that it stays that way now. That’s also more normal for us this time of year…

Now a woodcock has started its regular flights here again: “orr, orr, orr, pist!”

The first four pictures I took today:

My coffee, and they are chives… down there. Chives have been growing fast now – they are perennials – were planted here a year ago. They are so delicious! And after a long winter again…..

Grass is growing…

And nettles are growing. It’s nice to sit on the ground and eat tiny, delicious nettle leaves…

Where’s my snow…? ;D

Tiny birch leaves!

Crocus flowers on Tuesday this week.

A pic from yesterday evening. I mark the spots of our ‘surprise’ crocuses so that we won’t step on them before they grow.

By the way, I’ve been posting on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) as well, so trying to have balance between my blog and my Instagram. Well, I’m not actually trying, it has just been flowing naturally, or something… 😀

And today again:

One of our vegetable patches. Last year we had potatoes here, this year something else… We started planting this patch yesterday, and planted onions and peas now first.

The first daffodil or narcissus flower blooming on the ground in our garden.

Oh, greenery…

Leena

Around the moon… or Easter…

Spring, spring, Easter. It has been a sunny week. And it has been warmer again – a bit over 10 degrees Celsius, and even warmer than that – around 15 degrees Celsius it has been, too. We have seen coltsfoot flowers. And we have seen flies, mosquitoes, bees and butterflies – signs of summer…

The Ibiza lizard, always covered in snow a bit…? 🙂 Well, in wintertime… and this was a bit over a week ago on Friday.

For the moon… The moon, a full moon on Saturday, at around 1.00 am. I was ~mooning around in our garden…

A picture that I took yesterday:

The first flowers on the ground in our garden are crocus flowers. We have those everywhere in the garden. They are lovely surprises also because we can’t remember all the spots where we have planted them. 🙂

The rest of the pictures I took today:

My coffee and friends…

Just a few pictures of crocus flowers now… And also daffodil stems and tulip stems have started to grow on the ground.

‘A walk-in closet’ in the corner of the terrace – that’s the short description of our first ever greenhouse, here. 🙂

Leena