May may

April

What´s around the corner? – Be careful!

April
April
April

Well, the crocuses are nice…

April
May

It is May now. It has been a pretty sunny week. We had some rain last weekend and after that there has been the scent of green grass in the air! The first dandelion flowers have come out as well.

May
May

Glory of the snow flowers. Aaand, but it has not snowed in May, yet. 😀

May

It was the warmest day of the year so far on Tuesday. It was 16 degrees Celsius in the daytime and it was not windy. I was sitting on the grass in our garden, by the woods. It was wonderful…

May
May

Solar power in our greenhouse as well.

May

Night owls´garden light the other night…

And yesterday I saw a hedgehog for the first time this year late in the evening. It was getting pretty dark and we came across each other by a tub/container where we collect rainwater so suddenly that I frightened him and he frightened me. 🙂

May

Full moon was coming my way, too…

May

The first thing today… I went to the greenhouse to open the windows. The greenhouse was heated up to 10 degrees Celsius at night, because it was too cold in the nighttime. It was a bit over 30 degrees Celsius inside the greenhouse with the sunlight in the morning, as seen in the pic above.

May

I had to water our cherry tomato plants, they already were all too dry…

May

Outside, garlic has been growing since March.

May

Those grapes… The first small grape hyacinths this year.

It is 13 degrees Celsius, nicely a bit warmer again today.

Leena

May

´Snowflash´ and stuff

March came and so did snow. So let´s feast our eyes on that white for a bit again (or still?)… :p (Too many pictures in this blog post, but this is ´for the record´and spring is already in the air…)

green huntsman spider

Well, this was on Friday a week ago… The greenest guy in the house! A green huntsman spider.

February

And by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village, a week ago as well…

February

In the woods travelling away from the lake…

February

One of the campfires that we have had in our garden lately.

And then came March, the first four pictures on Sunday:

March

G`morning!

March

We still have the upper part of our Christmas tree on the terrace…

March
March

The next eight pictures on Wednesday:

March

I still found a cone in the Christmas tree. 🙂 (I found 41 cones when it was time to take the tree to pieces in January.)

March
March

Hmm… Christmas? No…..

March
March
March
March
March

It was windy, as it has been many a time this winter, no permanent snow cover here in the southernmost part of Finland, but windy Yes…

On Thursday:

March

The amount of snow varies, the snow melted a bit again…

March

The next nine pictures I took yesterday, on Friday:

March

Mooorning! It had been snowing a bit again…

March

It´s very nice that there has still been snow, because ´the spring in the air´feels more like a real spring when there´s some snow melting. 😀

March
March

Small rose flowers in our living room.

March

Sunshine & blue…

March
March

Solar power.

March

Hmm… And in the sky, the moon…

March

Garden campfire yesterday. The sky was clear at night, the moon, stars…

But this morning:

March

Well, grey morning!

March

My morning coffee ideas in the living room…

March

In the afternoon, just for the record…

March
March
  • Leena

Bad winter, baaad…

No permanent snow cover here in the southernmost part of Finland this winter – I guess it´s safe to say this now, at this point in time. Umm… so we already had ´the seventh snow´, ´the eighth snow´and ´the ninth snow´for this season here where I´m living. (At least these we´ve had, I may have forgotten ´one more snow´, but I can´t even count these anymore.) So a bit snow for a few days, a few centimetres of snow for two or three days, and so on… As it has been this winter. And then, again, fricking warm weather, temperatures above zero degrees Celsius, Rain… I am so fed up with this. And hey yes, it started to snow on Wednesday this week and now we have `the tenth snow´for this winter. A few centimetres of snow we Had. – It lasted until today, it´s Sunday today, and the snow is already melting.

February

The amount of snow in centimetres in Finland yesterday. Oh, the northern part of the country and Lapland

The next four pics I took here in our home village on Friday evening when we were coming back from grocery store 🙂 :

February

By the lake Pyhäjärvi. Lit by our car, hmm… Some ice… an ice cover and snow on the lake for that time…

February

On the same spot, looking up… The moon was bright again!

February

Travelling in the woods… A bumpy road.

February

Ended up in an ice rink…

February

Yesterday, my morning coffee, snowman in the middle of the oak trees…

February

This was a week ago. We have not seen this before! The leaf buds have already begun to open in the bush, in late January!

February

And our small common hazel shrub has already begun to open its leaf buds….. This Picture I took yesterday.

February

Oh yes… This was on Wednesday late in the evening. This was my third time on skis this winter. Well, it took me a while, but I finally learned :-p that, this winter, whenever there´s enough snow, I gotta go cross-country skiing, immediately, in our yard. Just go!

Eukalyptusvihta

Whoa! A eucalyptus sauna whisk, we had this for the first time last week. Usually we have Finnish birch sauna whisks, but now we wanted to try this eucalyptus (from Ukraine) whisk, because we found it for half the price in a local grocery store. And we loved it! The whisk was thick, the leaves were wonderfully long and they didn´t fall off. It was very good to hit yourself with it. And the scent when you split the leaves a bit and crush them in your hands is lovely. A nice and a rather exotic experience. 🙂

January

In these pictures… I believe this was our ´seventh´snow, in January this was. Well, this winter it does not matter what day it was or is now…

January

The last three pics I took today:

I started watching cross-country skiing again… Either watching cross-country skiing or dreaming of doing it…? :p

February

Green edibles growing in the kitchen.

  • Leena

A weather report, maybe^

A broken record here. Umm… so we already had some snow again. It was ´the sixth snow´for this season here where I´m living – a few centimetres of snow for one day, just for one day. And then the snow melted. So no snow now, again…

The next three pictures I took yesterday:

January

Well, this was kinda white in colour here yesterday morning. Frost all over, and the sun was shining, too. This mug is my new mug that I found on Friday, in a second hand shop, on the spot where they give their remaining stuff for free there. This mug is like new and just what I need this winter.

January
January

So the temperature went up again during the daytime yesterday, and in the evening it started to sleet a lot. Hmm…

And it was Raining at night.

This was on Friday, the first full moon of 2020:

January

And with a penumbral lunar eclipse it came. I took this pic a bit after 9 pm when the eclipse was on. Of course I knew I would not be able to ´catch the eclipse with my camera´, but I wanted to take pics of the full moon because the sky was all clear and the moon was so bright. And we saw the eclipse clearly. It was just nice. 🙂

January

And this was at around 0.30 am, I was still ´mooning´out there… I was awed by the brightness of the moon and by the landscape that the moonlight created there in the dark. And I was even able to catch three stars with my camera. 😀

Christmas tree cones

On Wednesday it was time to take the Christmas tree to pieces… I found 41 cones in the tree! And some seeds fell from the cones as well. Hopefully at least one black spruce will grow from these.

The rest of the pictures I took today:

January

My morning coffee. I do need this mug…

January
January

No snow… But at least the sun is shining again – there´s the difference between November and January – sunshine in January.

January
January

I watched biathlon and cross-country skiing today. What to watch next…? Something short perhaps. ~Oh, things to do… well, maybe tomorrow…

January
  • 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…

April

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

April

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:

April

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:

April

My coffee and friends…

April

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

April

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

  • Leena

Some more outdoor hobbies

The first picture I took on Sunday:

January
~’How do you play this instrument…?’

Archery! Getting to know archery, learning archery, actually shooting an arrow from a bow… I’ve wanted to do this for many years, we both have, my boyfriend and I, but we started this only just before Christmas. It looks easy, but when I had the bow in my hands for the first time, I didn’t know, I didn’t understand, which way to hold it… That was funny.

Now we just shoot arrows in our garden, without a target stand, but we’re thinking of building a target stand to my boyfriend’s field for example. We have a lot to learn, but it’s so nice to learn and to finally do something that one has been admiring for a long time. Yay! 🙂

January
January

We had the super blood wolf moonsuperverisusikuu in Finnish, early in the morning on Monday, yesterday. I set my alarm clock for 6.25. When I woke up first I looked out of the window with my still sleepy eyes and saw a shiny edge of the moon and thought to myself “good, not cloudy…”, then I went outside and my eyes were still a bit blurry, but I could see that the moon was already turning red. I looked through binoculars and suddenly my eyes were wide open: “this is really happening!” – No clouds this time. I even had time to make coffee and then enjoy my coffee watching the total lunar eclipse. My coffee was hot, but I was freezing a bit at the end of the event, because it was around -20 degrees Celsius.

January
The picture in the book is by Lesley Anne Ivory. The book is Cats Among The Toys by her, from the year 1993.

Morning coffee today…

January

It was cold last night, well under -20 degrees Celsius. Now, in the afternoon, it’s -10 degrees Celsius and it’s snowing.

  • Leena