seasonal – Page 12

Two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland

I spent two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland, in the municipality of Rautavaara in the region of Northern Savonia, in August and in September. It’s my boyfriend’s home region and I was travelling with him and our two cats. His family has an old house there in Rautavaara, no one lives in the house anymore, it’s just for summertime visits nowadays, and that’s the place we stayed as well. It’s always about an eight hour’s drive from our home to Rautavaara, and the same back of course. – Always worth the travel.

I didn’t take pictures of, like, everything, but naturally I did ‘get caught up in some things’, and the result is this blog post here now. 🙂 I also took some pictures for our, mine and Owlnature‘s, Instagram (owlnatureleena), and the real Instagram widget has, by the way, (finally :p ) been on the sidebar of my blog for some time now as well.

By the lake Keyritty, just outside the centre of Rautavaara. It was a summery day. So calm, beautiful… just stunning! And it was completely silent here and everywhere we went. 🙂

There were many dragonflies flying and enjoying the sunshine by the house on many days. Here’s two of them.

By another lake on some other day. This is called Tiilikanselkä.

There are actual creeks in the forest, I’m not sure if this is one of them, or is this just some ditch…? Beautiful water areas in the forests, too, anyway.

I went mushroom hunting and all I could find was poisonous monkshood. ;p In this one forest I found monkshood in the wild for the first time.

But we did find a lot of mushrooms, too, during our trip. Here’s one penny bun mushroom or cep or porcino/porcini or boletus edulis mushroom…

And here’s our biggest amount of yellowfoot mushrooms or winter mushrooms or funnel chanterelles or cantharellus/craterellus tubaeformis mushrooms…

In addition to cooking with mushrooms we enjoyed bilberries (or blueberries), lingonberries and crowberries in the forests.

Another lake again. I was on a ridge. There are lakes on either side of the ridge. And there are many ridges in Rautavaara area, fairly small, beautiful… with lakes, forests and swamps.

A creek in the forest, so clear you can see the bottom.

By Tiilikanselkä again, we went there actually three times during our trip. 🙂

And river flows…

…and flows. Until next time. 🙂

-Leena

About some of the food growing in the garden & more flowers

First about some of the food growing in our garden. We had some strawberries to eat still in August – a bit different summer indeed, usually the strawberry season has ended well before the end of July in our garden. Peas, potatoes, carrots and onions all grow easily. The pea season is at its end now and we’ve been harvesting our potatoes, too, for some time now, but there are still many potatoes underground, that’s for sure.

Homegrown food is always just so delicious, and sweet… 🙂

We’ve been harvesting our carrots, too. I took a pic yesterday evening when I was about to make soup.

One of the most delicious things you can grow in your garden! This actually is the first time ever that we’re growing onions. – I wonder why we haven’t done it earlier! Here in Finland, in the north, we usually grow onions from onion sets, not from seeds. And onions indeed are easy to grow from sets.

Come out, come out! This year we have more blackcurrant berries than ever before (-during the three previous summers that we’ve lived here). And it’s so nice! Our redcurrant bushes have been loaded with berries every summer, but our blackcurrant berries have been hiding somewhere. (?) 🙂

More common poppy flowers. Other names for common poppy: corn poppy, field poppy, Flanders poppy, red poppy, corn rose.

Our fly honeysuckle has berries now. Not edible, poisonous.

Phlox paniculata or fall phlox ‘early red’, in the middle of our garden. We planted it a bit over a week ago.

And there is no summer without strawflower flowers… 🙂

-Leena

Summer flowers in August

This year everything is a little late, so also the summer flowers are at their prime only now in August.

Peony poppy. There is no summer without peony poppy flowers…

Iris hollandica or Dutch iris. Siberian iris and German iris flowers in July… and this year I have also Dutch iris flowers now in August! 🙂 They are grown from bulbs that I planted in spring this year. My first ones ever.

And there is no summer without annual mallow flowers…

Viper’s bugloss, a bit wild now – I planted the seeds last summer.

More cornflower flowers…

A busy friend.

And more schizanthus or butterfly flower or poor man’s orchid flowers…

Maltese cross or burning love, a perennial, flowering this year as well.

Tropaeolum majus or garden nasturtium or Indian cress flowering. The taste is good as well – a bit peppery. 🙂

And my first ever tropaeolum minus or dwarf nasturtium flowering.

And the Ibiza lizard lurking… 🙂

This summer I have common poppy flowers, too! My first ones ever.

I love all the colours… Another new favourite…

You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine…

With the shadow of a peony poppy…

A nice skirt…? 🙂

-Leena

The last peony flowers, schizanthus & cornflower, bike ride 20 km…

The weather’s been warm lately and it’s been sunny, too, but it’s been really pouring down with rain occasionally, but sometimes the sun’s been trying to shine at the same time as well. Beautiful. 🙂

Now the last peony flowers. This, indeed, has been a bit different summer – we’ve had peony flowers still in August!

I missed some of the flowering of my peonies while I was in Kuusamo, but happily, there’s still been these beauties after my trip, too. 🙂

The very last ones on Thursday.

Schizanthus, butterfly flower or poor man’s orchid has been flowering lately in our garden as well. They are grown from seeds. One of my favourite summer flowers.

Daisies, too.

We have a lot of schizanthus growing this summer, they have been hit by the rain a bit…

On Thursday we took a 20 km bike ride along the lake Pyhäjärvi shoreline. It was nice. I took a picture as I was sitting by the lake for a while. 🙂

Cornflower blooming now as well, grown from seeds. Yet another favourite of mine… And hit by the rain a bit…

-Leena

At the cabin in Kuusamo II

Now the second blog post about my trip to Kuusamo. The first one can be found here. I’ve visited Kuusamo and our cabin there ever since my childhood. This time I travelled with my dad. Cabin or cottage is called mökki in Finnish. Mökki is a highly important thing for many many Finns. Often the mökkis are somewhat modest. We, for example, have no running water there.

The first 22 pictures in this blog post I took at our cabin, the last four pictures I took on the way back home.

Blue fleabane or bitter fleabane is growing wild beside the cabin. In fact, our cabin yard is the only place where I’ve seen these flowers so far. 🙂

Beard lichen or beard moss again.

Red moss. I’ve seen red moss in two spots in the cabin woods so far.

There were some arctic bramble or arctic raspberry flowers in the woods as well.

By the creek again.

And… welcome to the woods:

Cup lichen, right in front of the cabin. Cup lichen is called torvijäkälä in Finnish, literally: horn lichen. So in Finnish we don’t see them as cups, but as horns, the musical instruments. 🙂

An old shed.

Dwarf cornel or bunchberry or Swedish cornel or Lapland cornel or Eurasian dwarf cornel flowering by the creek.

I was attacked by mosquitoes when I took this pic, because it was already late in the evening then. There’s a lot of mosquitoes there in the north in summertime, at our cabin, for example, especially late in the evening and in the woods. Mosquitoes in Finland are not dangerous, just a nuisance. 🙂

A trEEe…

Wood cranesbill or woodland geranium was flowering now there in the north. We have a lot of wood cranesbill beside the cabin road…

…and in different colours as well…

…and by the creek, too.

A throne in the woods. You can imagine how delighted I was to find this in the woods some years ago. 😉 This nature’s sculpture endures the northern winters there really well. It must have been there for ages.

At peace.

A common blue butterfly. We were both regularly there beside the cabin. 🙂 The colour of the butterfly was marvellous…

The underside of the butterfly wing.

Reindeer on the road on our way southward. There was lots of reindeer there on the road in many places, here’s just a couple of pics. One has to be very careful when driving there in the north. – Reindeer live the slow life there. 😉

Hiljainen kansa, The Silent People in Suomussalmi, in Kainuu region, about a two-hour drive south from Kuusamo. A nice and atmospheric place to stop by and take a rest. The Silent People is the creation of local artist Reijo Kela. And the clothes are changed twice a year; summer clothes and winter clothes. There’s a Field Café, too. And during the summer months they make there crispy-edged crêpes on open fire and campfire coffee as well.

“People often ask what precisely is the idea behind the Silent People. A state of psychological withdrawal? The mute Kainuu soul? A forgotten people? Reijo Kela refuses to provide any answer. Viewers are free to come to their own conclusions. It may, however, be of interest to learn that if the Silent People were to be completely undressed there would remain some one thousand wooden crosses standing in the field.” -The Silent People -leaflet & suomussalmi.fi
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And yes, I’m already longing for the cabin again! 🙂

-Leena

At the cabin in Kuusamo I

I travelled to our (my parents’) cabin last week. The cabin is located in Kuusamo, in Koillismaa region in northern Finland. It is, naturally, one of my favourite places on earth. It took 12 hours and 10 minutes to travel there by car through the western and middle parts of Finland, and 11 hours to travel back home through the eastern and middle parts of Finland. – It’s always a long journey. But truly worth the travel! 🙂

I have pictures for two blog posts. I took all the pictures in this blog post at our cabin, in the woods, by the lake.

The stars were still on the ground there in the north! – Chickweed wintergreen flower or arctic starflower flower. These flowered already a month ago in our home woods here in the south. It was so nice to see these flowers again, for the second time this year! 🙂

And lilacs were also flowering there! – It was very nice indeed to travel there in the town and to look out of the car window, and admire the bushes for the second time this summer…

The nights naturally were lighter up there in the north as well. Today, for example, the length of the day is 17 hours and 2 minutes here where I’m living and in Kuusamo it is 18 hours and 33 minutes.

Northern Finland. – The land of reindeer, too! Reindeer is a regular visitor in our cabin woods as well. Or actually, the animals live there and I’m the one visiting our cabin. ;D This guy came back many times during the daytime there.

Heeere we go!

See you!

The days were warm up there during my visit, around 20 degrees Celsius and a bit above.

Black-throated diver or arctic loon was calling there on the lake. The voice is just haunting: “Kwee-kow, kwee-kow, kwee-kow…!” – very far-carrying and wonderful! And, like, moving… it makes you feel that you are somewhere special. The voice of the clear lakeland. 🙂

Some of the tall and old trees in the cabin woods… And the scent of labrador tea or wild rosemary was very intense and lovely…

There’s also a creek flowing. In our woods, like here in the picture above, the flowing of the creek is very slow, but the sound of the fast flowing of the creek can actually be heard, and it can be heard really well, in our cabin yard. Two years ago I went and searched the source of the sound with my boyfriend, and we managed to find it – some parts of it – the woods and the land there were really bushy. 🙂

Beard lichen or beard moss in the trees means that the air is clean! We, too, have a lot of it everywhere in the cabin woods.

A treasure – a cloudberry, still unripe – too bad. 🙂 The gold in the forests – cloudberries – are valuable delicacies. We would have some ripening in our cabin woods right now… buuut I’m here at home now…

The second blog post about my visit to Kuusamo coming a bit later.

-Leena

Summer flowers, little friends, eating brain mushrooms…

Finally we have had the rain that the garden, nature and we people needed… now we have had two rainy days, the first one last week after that blog post of mine, and today is the second rainy day. The cooler air also returned for a day or two last week – especially Friday was a ridiculously cold day… Now it’s been all summery again.

One narcissus or daffodil flower was a home for this little guy for two days. This spider really stayed here for two days, but when the cold Friday came, he was presumably off to some warmer place. 🙂

Some rockfoil flowers in our garden, not many, but they are beauties.

Our plum tree has been blooming, now the flowers have already started to disappear. Last year the tree was in bloom already on May 23rd, and there was well over a hundred flowers, but this year… I actually didn’t count them, but I think 20 flowers (or fewer?), definitely not many more than 20… so let’s see what happens… 🙂

High up…

These brainy friends… highly toxic friends… We got some brain mushrooms from Eastern Finland. Brain mushroom, gyromitra esculenta, false morel… These are real delicacies in Finland. Quite unique taste! But very dangerous, deadly, before boiling them at least two times. And most of the poison disappears during the boiling – up in the air, so one has to make sure that the house is ventilated well – we, for example, opened a door and two windows. We ate the first part of our brain mushrooms – cooked them with just cream and a bit of salt, and ate them with potatoes. Excellent food! We still have those mushrooms for two meals in the freezer. In Finnish this brain mushroom is called korvasieni – ear mushroom. 🙂

Okay, I never knew until now that we have this fairly tiny bird cherry tree in the back of our garden. I just found it. And I found it blooming! It’s in a spot where, umm… many different things grow. So, yeah, we still have that sort of spots in our garden. 😀

Good morning! Forget-me-nots in the back of our garden again, by the ditch… My favourite small flowers!

In German, Spanish and English the name of the flower means the same: Vergissmeinnicht – nomeolvides – forget-me-not. But in Finnish the name is lemmikki, literally pet or darling, and the name can also be understood: “a flower of love“. 🙂