kevätvuohenjuuri – Owlnature

And the summer began…

And all of a sudden… it’s summer! The summer began on Friday: it was 17 degrees Celsius in the shade already at 9.00 AM and at around 10.15 AM it was already 20 degrees in the shade, and 24 in the shade at 13.30 PM. Yes, I wrote down everything. 😀 It was also the warmest day that we’ve had this year.

We haven’t had any rain now, and all the rain before this was hail and sleet… So a good rain is what the garden and nature need now!

The first four pictures I took on Saturday, first some of the fern in our garden. Aww, those rolls…

I heart…

What did you say?

And we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids again in the evening. On the bridge again, we didn’t go down there by the rapids at all this time, but… look! Over there, inside the ruins of the mill, there’s somebody sitting there!

Can you see her?

The Norway maple in flower beside our driveway, yesterday morning I took this pic. The tree’s been buzzing with bees in some mornings…

Leopard’s bane or doronicum today, flowers…

The first two narcissus or daffodil flowers opened yesterday. The other one here in the evening light…

The rest of the pictures I took today.

Small grape hyacinth or muscari flowering…

The garden fern growing…

Fern still so small in the woods…

Oh, my peonies! 🙂

Our peas growing…

Everything is growing now, but we really would need the rain to help us out a bit… But we did already start the lawn mowing. 🙂

-Leena

If not cooler, then hotter…

…or the other way round. So the first half of the last day of April was snowy, here is my blog post about it. But the sky did start to clear up and the snow started to melt. In the evening we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids:

I ate my ice cream down there somewhere (=the spot where I was can’t actually be seen in this pic), but by the rapids I was first, and then I came up here. And from here, from the bridge, I took this pic… no snow, not anymore.

And the first day of May, the second day of the Finnish Vappu celebration, the May Day itself, was lovely, sunny and warm. I enjoyed sitting here, on the ground, between our vegetable garden and the woods. 🙂

The next four pictures I took by the lake Pyhäjärvi on Saturday. Oh, the colour blue…

Friday and Saturday were sunny and warm days, too. On Friday I saw the first butterfly of this spring for me this year! It was a peacock butterfly. And I heard and saw the first bees buzzing as well! On Saturday then we visited the lake Pyhäjärvi, and on our way there, we saw a deer. I was actually driving the car at that moment, the deer didn’t jump to the road – it stopped by the ditch. And it was so beautiful! 🙂

Under an alder tree and its catkins, by the lake.

We need more days like this!

But:

The Ibiza lizard and hail in our garden yesterday. It’s been hailing and snowing on many days – last week between Tuesday and Thursday, and this week, it’s been cooler… But the sun has been shining, again, right after almost every time that it has hailed or snowed.

The rest of the pictures I took today. And yes, especially today it has hailed and snowed many times, but the sun’s been shining a bit as well. And today I saw black woodpeckers! Two of them. I hadn’t seen those birds before, in nature. Now they were in ‘our’ woods! And their calls sound so… interesting, too! 🙂

In our vegetable garden. Some frost protection fabric now. We moved some of our strawberry plants here, too.

I thought that there wouldn’t be any narcissus or daffodil plants in our garden this spring, but on Friday I found them, on two spots in the garden, here’s one of them. They had started to grow there again, like, overnight! Literally… I mean, I had been watching those spots! 😀

Leopard’s bane or doronicum. It already has some flower buds, too!

And some green grass has grown everywhere now as well, during May. – The spring has been slow this year, but now it seems that everything has started to grow a bit better, despite the occasional hailing and snowing. And indeed, I already started eating some nettles! 🙂

-Leena

The first green in the garden (& the first vid)

We’ve had sunny days, but still waiting for some crazy winds to calm down. But the sunshine warms…

…and the colour yellow is taking over, gradually.

Juniper berries in our garden. Juniper berries are cones, berry-like cones, not real berries.

The first green in our garden for this spring is leopard’s bane or doronicum, its small leaves. I already had a picture of these on my Instagram, a week ago. 🙂

Still so tiny… the leaf…

And some new dimensions to Owlnature. I created a YouTube channel, not actually to have a channel, but to have a super easy way to add videos, my own videos, to my website. I’m not saying that I’m necessarily adding quality (high definition videos), but I hope that I can add… some new dimensions; some feeling, some sound… things like that. I’ve never uploaded videos to YouTube before, but I’m not afraid to start now. 🙂 Perhaps I’ll try my phone, too, but this video is taken from my camera. So, this is my first ever YouTube video, raw and rough. 😉 (But at least one can hear some sounds of birds, too, in the video). But just to get started… I was sitting on the garden bench at about 18.30 PM yesterday as I was filming this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIEtu5vMmPA

-Leena

Narcissus flowers, small grape hyacinth, Norway Maple in flower…

One positively overwhelmed nature and garden blogger here again, hi! 🙂

Yesterday we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi…

And yesterday the first narcissus or daffodil flowers opened. The narcissus blooming with pure yellow flowers is lovely, but these different shades are so welcomed… The previous owners of this house have planted these next to the woods.

Deep. 🙂

I somehow find these guys a bit difficult to take pics of…

One tamed, two.

And all these guys… But they kind of form the shape of a heart, though, when you look at it. 😉

On the same spot today, yet another group photo – more narcissus flowers opened today.

The first Leopard’s Bane or doronicum flower close up…

Our big Norway Maple tree is in flower beside the driveway.

And beside the driveway, on the other side, stands a birch, too. 🙂

-Leena

Some pics five days ago and today…

Spring really has sprung. It’s been very warm, 20 degrees Celsius and even a bit warmer for so many days, the sun’s been shining every day and it hasn’t rained. OK, and I visited Turku – I still have one part of my belongings there, but not for long anymore. 🙂 So, I spent three days in a block of flats, on the second floor, and I didn’t go outside at all. Probably had some things to do inside there. 😀 Now I’m back in our country home. In this blog post I have some pics I took on Thursday before travelling to Turku, and pics I took today. They’re like five days ago and today -pics of leaves and ‘stuff’, taken from the same spot. And it’s time to start taking pics of newly emerged or opened up flowers, too.

Leaves of redcurrant five days ago.

The same spot today. OK, and today I remembered again that it’s time to accept that the light dazzles and wind blows in summer when you take pics outside… 🙂

Buds in redcurrant five days ago…

…and the same spot today. There will be berries!

Raspberry leaves five days ago…

…the same spot today.

Lilac bush five days ago…

…and the same spot today. There’s already even a flower bud! Oh, how I love lilacs! 🙂 My favourite bushes. Luckily the previous owners of this house have liked them a lot, too… more pics of lilacs later… 😉

Leopard’s Bane or doronicum has opened up some of her flowers.

Narcissus buds and small grape hyacinth that suddenly emerged again last week. The previous owners of this house have planted these. And there’s narcissus and small grape hyacinth growing on several spots in the garden. More pics of all the flowers later on… Today I found out for example that we have here also quite big flower buds on some plants that I don’t remember knowing what they are and who planted them… 🙂

So this is the time of the year that you truly feel positively overwhelmed by it all… the constantly more and more emerging colour green, grass, leaves, buds, flowers – the abundance of nature all around us, everywhere. It wouldn’t be this amazing and miraculous if we didn’t have the long wintertime… Yesterday when I was travelling in the car from Turku to our country home here in Eura, I really was dazzled and amazed by everything around – the leaves and all that had grown so much in a few days, when I had been inside on the second floor for the three whole days. – It was like the best thing to do these days… 😀 But right now I need to get outside for a bit. So, here was this blog post, and let us take more pics of everything a bit later – right now the memory card of my camera is stuffed, too, and the battery is low. 🙂

-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