Tomatoes, a pumpkin, sweet corn, building a garden shed, KonMari (don’t ask…;))

The first four pics I took today:

October

An autumnal sunflower bowing beside our porch. Dignified, charming…

October

A bit bleak today.

October
October

There are still a few small marigold flowers in the summer flower bed.

Hello!

Harvestman…? That’s funny. 🙂 This guy was waiting for us beside our front door when we came back from grocery store yesterday.

October harvest

This picture I took today. I emptied our greenhouse yesterday evening. The things we can eat… Tomatoes, tomatoes, and some of them are still ripening here in our kitchen now. When we planted the tomato plants we used seeds from Finnish greenhouse tomatoes that we bought in grocery store last winter. And The Pumpkin, our only pumpkin this year. I already had a picture of it on my Instagram (owlnatureleena)…

sweet corn sweet

This was a bit over two weeks ago. We harvested our sweet corn. Well, we get some seeds for next year again. 🙂 We also ate a good amount of ‘baby corns’ raw out there while harvesting, they tasted so… sweet!

The next two pics I took today:

October

Some sweet corn plant decoration in the garden now.

October

Purple coneflower in October… I love this colour, too!

hmm

This was last week. We are building a garden shed.

The rest of the pics I took today:

love painting

I love painting! This is the floor of the shed.

October

I honestly still don’t know what this bush is called…

So KonMari, the method of tidying up. Up! I read the book (had already a pic of the book here in my blog…) and I watched the Netflix series, and I liked them both a lot, and I like her. So it was time to start organizing The Mess. 😀 Here in our house. We just finally need to organize and tidy our home up, also for some empty spaces, and some places here need to be more reachable, so to speak, and so on. And just simply… for cleaning up. Now I’ve already done my clothes and our bookshelf. I find the KonMari method very helpful and inspiring. 🙂

A bit of our bookshelf now… Finally it’s presentable! More pics later…? ;D

October

It’s our big Norway Maple

October
Who’s raking?

Things and stuff to do, these among other things. What’s enough? Hmm…

  • Leena

Cherries, cucumbers, one bat, flowers (& friends)…

Just making some lists… :p

Okay, this is the first time ever that we have cherries in our garden.

cherries

The small cherry tree had 11 flowers and a few cherries. That was so nice!

cherries

The young bush cherry had many many flowers, and many cherries, too. And there are still fruits ripening in the bush. I didn’t know what to expect. 😀 Love them!

cucumbers

The first ever ‘open-field’ cucumbers from our garden.

cucumbers, open field

And there’s more growing, this was yesterday. I planted only one plant, one stem, this stem in the pic. Just a delicious experiment…

cucumbers, greenhouse

Cucumbers in our greenhouse. Greenhouse cucumbers grow really well and are so delicious! We’ve already had several.

cucumber, greenhouse

Two pics that I took yesterday evening when I closed the windows and the door in the greenhouse:

cucumber, greenhouse

More cucumbers growing…

cucumber, greenhouse

I wonder if these tiny ones will still grow…

We saw a bat, the first bat here for this year, on 30th July late in the evening. It was flying, flapping in our garden and in the woods.

Some flower pics that I took in our garden yesterday:

clematis flowers

Clematis, by the oak tree.

clematis flowers
tricolor daisy

Tricolor daisy and a friend.

garden rose

Garden rose and a friend.

garden rose
red flax

Red flax and a friend. Friends everywhere in the garden in August. 🙂

lily

Lily

lily
sunflower

Sunflower

sunflower

They come in August.

Good morning today:

good morning, clarkia amoena, godetia

With clarkia amoena or godetia flowers…

clarkia amoena, godetia
clarkia amoena, godetia

And a busy friend here as well. 🙂

clarkia amoena, godetia

A little bit of rain and then sunshine again. It’s nice when it rains a bit, it has been rather dry all summer again.

I Have to go to the library today and I should wash the car…

  • Leena

Autumn colours, by the lake, parsnips…

The first six pictures I took in our garden yesterday.

red oak

Our red oak is red, strikingly red, this autumn. 🙂

red oak

red oak

red oak

October

Birch tree & maple tree, again… I got a bit carried away with these two, they are both fabulously yellow, golden, this autumn.

October

Two pictures that I took by the lake today:

by the lake Pyhäjärvi

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village.

by the lake Pyhäjärvi

And I already wrote earlier that we are growing parsnips, too, for the first time ever, this year. I’ve made roasted parsnips twice, this was last night:

roasted parsnips

I used only salt and pepper and olive oil. And I don’t peel the parsnips.

Parsnip has a lovely nutty and aromatic flavour, it’s one of my favourite vegetables, best from the oven. 🙂

-Leena

Autumn leaves, new grounds, beetroot…

The autumn colours are particularly abundant and vibrant this year. We have our own word for the autumn leaf colour here in Finlandautumn leaf colour is called ruska in Finnish.

It’s exceptionally warm for October in many parts of Finland this weekend – over 15 degrees Celsius.

First just a few pictures that I took in our garden today:

October

October

October rose

We still have rose blooming in the garden, in front of the porch. We planted the plant in the summer this year.

October rose

October rose…

Okay, and what else am I doing…? 🙂 Hmm, for example, working by my computer for a bit again. And we, my boyfriend and I, we’ve been familiarizing ourselves with new grounds and exploring a new land – thanks to my boyfriend who had the chance to buy some land – forest and field, in the region of Etelä-PohjanmaaSouth Ostrobothnia, about 180 kilometres north from our home. So, that’s my boyfriend’s project, but there’s plenty of space also for me to learn new things and to help out, and in fact, we both already attended our first day-long course on how to take care of forest.

I already wrote earlier that we are growing beetroot for the first time ever, this year. Here’s now our pickled beetroot that we made yesterday:

pickled beetroot

I used water, vinegar, sugar, whole white peppercorns, cloves, a cinnamon stick and salt when I was cooking the pickling liquid. And I put also cloves of garlic into the jar. Should be nice. 🙂

-Leena

About some of the edibles in the garden II

Garlic! 🙂 This is the first time that garlic has grown in our garden. – We’ve tried to grow garlic once before, but nothing really happened then…

garlic

Now, all of a sudden, we have both smaller and bigger garlics. They are marvellous! I love the smell and taste of garlic and I eat small amounts of raw garlic, too.

dried onions

We used some of our onions fresh from the garden, but the rest of the onions we dried, because they were pretty small. There are both yellow onions and red onions. Dried onions are delicious as well.

fruit and vegetable dryer

Here’s our fruit and vegetable dryer. A nice machine. The scent of onion, for example, was wonderful when the onions were drying in there.

growing zucchini

This year we tried to grow zucchini for the first time ever. Well, actually, we weren’t trying that hard, we didn’t pay that much attention to this try. Here in the pic is our biggest oddball, our smaller zucchinis didn’t have the time to grow bigger before the weather got a bit colder.

broad bean

And another try… My broad beans… In a raised garden bed with wooden frames these were.

broad bean

broad bean

I didn’t get that many broad beans, but some broad beans anyway, and I want to try growing them again next year! 🙂

sweet corn

About the sweet corn… We’ve got more sweet corn now than a year ago. 🙂

sweet corn

And we are drying some sweet corn, too, for seeds, hopefully.

I’ll write about a couple of edibles in the garden a bit later again.

-Leena

About some of the edibles in the garden

Today I’ll write a bit about some of the edibles in the garden right now. Here’s really only some of the edibles in the garden – about a few more a bit later…

sweet corn

This is the second time that we are growing sweet corn in our garden. Last summer our sweet corns grew from seedlings, these are grown from seed now. This summer has been very good for growing sweet corn here in Finland, it has been very warm and sunny.

sweet corn

The tallest plant is much taller than I am.

sweet corn

There are cobs growing in three plants or stalks, two cobs in each plant. We had several sweet corn stalks growing, but only three grew taller and are now growing cobs. Hmm, I’m still not sure how to talk about the different parts of the corn plants, how to call them, and not even in Finnish… :p But yeah, I’ll write about the harvest of our sweet corn then later. 🙂

potato

Our potato patch this summer – new patch for potatoes this year again… We haven’t dug up any potatoes yet.

carrot

This is how our carrots grow this year; a raised garden bed with a wooden frame. Neat, no weeds.

beetroot, parsnip, turnip

Beetroot, parsnip and turnip. A raised bed with the frame as well. And we are growing all these three for the first time ever. We haven’t dug up beetroot and parsnips yet.

carrot & turnip

But we have dug up some carrots and turnips already. I used these in soup.

tomato

And we have only one tomato plant growing this year, we had more than one, but only this bears fruit. But yeah, the plant doesn’t look very good anymore. The nights can already be a bit colder, and a bit cold for tomato plants, but we still have warm days. The temperatures have been around 20 degrees Celsius in the daytime.

tomato

But there’s fruit turning red all the time now.

tomato

tomato

Our first ripe tomatoes this year. I will never stop wondering at the taste of home-grown tomatoes – they taste so sweet and amazing. 🙂

-Leena

Growing tomatoes this year & some bird related things

The story about growing tomatoes this year… It is a short story, very short… so short, that I already wrote it on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) a while ago.

November tomato

My precious… The summer this year was not very good for growing tomatoes outside in the garden here in Finland. But some tomatoes did grow! We can still, in November, eat tomatoes that have grown in our garden. So… it’s not that bad after all. 🙂

We had only few bigger tomatoes, but many smaller ones. And again, they had to be taken inside the house for ripening. They were ripening on a plate in the kitchen, for weeks. Home-grown tomatoes always taste so incredibly sweet! They are just perfect.

And some bird related things… I found something that is over 20 years old, something that I missed – something that I thought I had lost forever…

An over 20 years old treasure, Tintti, Luontoset, Kalevala Koru

My pendant, my bird! 🙂 I did not believe that this still was somewhere, somewhere safe… but yes, I found this at my childhood home, (where else!). A bronze pendant necklace called Tintti, made in Finland by Kalevala Jewelry. The stone is hand-painted ceramic.

Over 20 years old treasures, Tampereen seudun lintu, Tintti, Luontoset, Kalevala Koru

Okay, I found these; my Tintti with its original box and another bronze pendant necklace by Kalevala Jewelry as well. Another bird! A bird called Tampereen seudun lintu, as old as my Tintti, but I didn’t remember that I even had it.

So, I had these in my childhood. I am so happy to have found them! My treasures… I think that these, too, will be in my pictures every once in a while. 🙂 I love jewelry and it can be seen in my blog…

knitted owl

And something I made over the weekend… I was knitting a bit, testing this rainbow yarn that I have. 🙂 At this point in time, another owl. My design – my problems – more fun in the end. I think he needs some fur around his beak…

-Leena