peony – Page 2 – Owlnature

More flowers, one new tree, a hedgehog…

July flowers… German iris is now flowering for the first time in our garden! We brought our German iris from Eastern Finland with us two years ago, my boyfriend’s mother gave it to us.

I read somewhere that when German iris is taken to a new spot it will flower again on the second year that it is on the new spot. And this indeed is exactly what happened to our German iris – it didn’t flower last year, it only had the green leaves. But now… and the colour of the flowers was a surprise to me – I remembered that they would be white… 🙂

Daylily, very short blooming, such a lovely scent… We’ve had many many daylilies flowering now in July, in the place where we put some of the leftovers in our garden… I’m not sure but I think that daylilies may be the ones that were growing already in the beginning of April there, at least these have been the only big flowers growing there this summer.

A bit of rose garden in the pictures above and below.

Rosa splendens, valamonruusu is the name of this rose in Finnish. The scent of roses…

And a cherry tree. We’ve had this new tree in our garden already since the beginning of June. A nice, fairly tall pole is this tree.

This tree is grafted and it should be self-pollinating. And it naturally hasn’t bloomed this year. Now just waiting… 🙂

Siberian iris flowering now as well. These came with us and the German iris from Eastern Finland two years ago, too, but these were flowering already a year ago. And they bloomed already in June last year – this year everything is a little late.

Purple-flowering raspberry blooming again, too.

This very busy little friend was like rolling there inside this tiny flower…

My words are failing me now… the first peony flowers are here! More pictures coming… luxurious days in the garden now… 😉

The first peony poppy flowers are blooming, but not in our garden, not yet. – We’ve managed to plant peony poppy seeds just outside our front yard and our driveway as well. 🙂

Basil growing from seeds in our garden, in the shelter of the house wall.

We’ve had yet another late night visitor in our garden, now a hedgehog. Hedgehogs in Finland are European hedgehogs. We gave the little friend a tiny bit of cat food. The hedgehog searches for food constantly sniffing the ground and the sniffing is very loud. An adorable creature. It likes worms very much.

By the lake Pyhäjärvi last night, 23.15 PM. It was a rainy day yesterday. I was a night driver and this was a lovely spot to stop by for a while. It was very foggy, one couldn’t see the opposite shore, the air felt very warm, it was easy to breathe, it was silent with only the light sound of the small waves… I need to be a night driver more often! 🙂

-Leena

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

At a standstill…?

The weather has been cold all the time for some time now here in Finland. Today they said that the spring has come to a standstill now… Yeah, we’ve noticed that… We’ve had some snowing, sleeting or hailing, cold winds, or even a bit crazy winds, or something like that… every day now, but the sun has been shining for a while, and right after almost every time that it has snowed, sleeted or hailed.

And I’ve seen that in some parts of Europe it has been even worse; so much snow, frost, severe frost, frost damages, frost protection with fire buckets in the vineyards for example. Oh no, sometimes it’s more about survival…

This was the first coltsfoot of the spring for me this year! 🙂 By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region, on Friday. ‘By the lake’ means really close, this close:

The lake is free of ice! And the waves are there as well! 😀 The wind was pretty strong on that day, too…
But yes, when I first saw, a bit over a week ago, from the car window, the blue lake again after the winter, on a sunny day, it really looked like out of a fairytale… and magic! 🙂

After a few steps I found more coltsfoot flowers, here’s just two of them…

I haven’t seen coltsfoot flowers anywhere else yet…

After hailing yesterday. It hailed and sleeted many times yesterday… I also went outside to see the dancing of the tiny snow balls when they hit the ground and the huge, but a bit wet, snowflakes – how could they be so big…

Don’t go chasing waterfalls…? 😉

My peonies today. Hmm… they are a bit smaller than exactly a year ago…

And my first ever yellow hyacinth… it’s outside now, and oh, the scent! – The scent is a bit different than the scent of the hyacinths at Christmas time. The scent of this yellow hyacinth is… yellow, a bit green… like spring!

And the viola (no pics now) has been outside now, too. It has a bit damaged flowers now, but some flower buds as well.

-Leena

Dried flowers, a campfire, one knitted owl…

It’s a sunny weekend! And now that the spring is just around the corner, it’s starting to get miscellaneous again… 😉

It was finally time to take these friends outside for a pic yesterday. My dried peonies from last summer… beauties… lovely memories…

My dried flower crown from the summer of 2015 is hanging on a door window in our hall. What actually dominates this picture, however, is an unfinished door window curtain project. 🙂

Our garden campfire last night. It was warming so nicely in the beautiful but cold darkness.

I started knitting again. I love knitting, but I’m not always doing it. 🙂 And… I always need some practice with it. This, for example, is my first ever owl!

-Leena

Snow light

It started to snow on Tuesday, rather late in the evening. We went for a drive – that’s what we often do when it really starts to snow. 🙂 And we’ve noticed many times that some wild animals become very active when it’s snowing. – We usually see at least hares and deers – yeah, one has to be careful driving out there! On Tuesday evening we saw a hare and a fox.

These pics I took yesterday and today.

Yesterday’s light…

By the frozen lake Pyhäjärvi yesterday, the sun was already almost gone for the day. The days are at their shortest now. Here where I’m living, the sun rose today at 9:41 AM and it sets at 15:12 PM – the length of the day is 5 hours 31 minutes.

The rest of the pics I took today.

Lilac bush in December, on our front yard, Christmas or winter lights around her.

They say that this snow might still be on the ground on Christmas – I surely hope so, but let’s see what happens… Not heaps of snow, but enough for the spirit. 🙂

Our backyard peony in December. 🙂

-Leena

Blueberry gold, the next peony poppy, the very last peony flower

We’ve been doing quite a lot of Nordic walking, but I don’t always take pics of it… On Thursday I took a pic – I tried to demonstrate what we’ve been doing quite a lot lately; Nordic walking and during that activity picking and eating blueberries, too (isn’t that a healthy and pleasant combination 😉 ) in the forest where one of our favourite walking trails goes.

The starting and ending point of the trail is by the lake Pyhäjärvi, I took this pic after our walk – trying to get some of my blueberry fingers, too, in the pic. 😀 This previous blog post about Nordic walking was from the same forest, our raven forest near our home. We just love it! – There’s always a raven or many ravens croaking. Once we heard, and saw, many many ravens. We tried to count them; there was at least 15 if not over 20 ravens dashing, flying and croaking. Amazing it was. Ravens are both funny and noble birds. 🙂

A muffin again yesterday evening… We’re lucky enough to have a lot of wild blueberries in our back garden, too. Yesterday evening we made some blueberry muffins. Muffins of gluten free flour; whole grain oat flour. Oat is the best! 🙂 So delicious and healthy. And traditionally Finnish!

Two pics of the next peony poppy flower today. This, too, is one of my ‘wild poppies’. This was hit with rain – yesterday, heavily…

And the very last peony flower – just had to take pics today… Yesterday I was hoping that this would survive the rain and grow bigger…

…so that I could cut it for drying today. And that was what I already did, because I thought the flower is big enough to cut, to save, now. The other peonies that I cut for drying earlier, are still doing (drying) just fine. 🙂

-Leena

All peonies, every pic…

Today the peony pics I talked about yesterday, I said that there would be poppies, too, but I’ll have them in an another post. This one’s devoted to peonies – the last ones for this summer… I took the first six pics on Saturday, they all look almost the same… almost, but not quite! I have them all in this blog post, for myself and for everyone else who loves peonies.

The peony moments go so fast every summer…

There cannot be too many peonies in one’s life. 🙂

The next two pics are from Monday.

And drying peonies:

First I must thank my friend who reminded me about the drying – as much as I love peonies, I would have just let them all go without realizing that I could dry them and have a lovely memory of summer in the dark wintertime, some of my peonies still with me! So, thanks A! 🙂

So, this is the traditional and simple air-drying that I’m doing. – My peonies are drying in our storage room which is the darkest and coolest place in our house, and yet, not very dark and not so cool – we live here in this warm but light jungle in the summertime. 🙂 My peonies were also fully opened as I cut them to dry on Monday, but I checked them today and the process was going just fine – the dream of my peonies being still with me in the winter is still alive! But if I cut the last peony to dry, I’ll cut it before it is fully opened.

And the very last peony bud in the bush today…

I think I’ll try to dry this one, too, if it still grows – I wasn’t so sure that this one would start to open… 🙂

-Leena