About the fruit trees, new trees and a bush, an unidentified flower…

Our plum tree had last year (it was the first whole year for the tree in the garden) only one plum fruit, this year it has six! And what’s more, last year it had well over a hundred flowers, this year not many more than 20. Cool! 🙂

plum tree

A nice fruit.

cherry tree

In July our grafted cherry tree started to grow a branch on its on. After that it has grown three more branches. What great balancing! 😉

cherry tree

The tree has grown further its ‘original’ branches as well.

cherry tree

A tree in progress…

cherry bush

A cherry bush now, too, we planted it next to the cherry tree last week.

pear tree

And a pear tree, we planted it last week as well.

pear tree

The pear tree has such flawless leaves!

EDIT: This could be gladiolus, miekkalilja in Finnish… I suddenly remembered this name, and it sure looked like gladiolus when I searched it. 🙂

An unidentified flower. – Yet another new flower for this autumn and we have no idea what this could be called. I tried to google it a bit, but no luck with that. It’s a fairly big plant, big flowers. We knew that something was planted in this spot, but didn’t believe that anything would bloom here this year.

Beautiful it is…

aspen

And another new tree. We planted this aspen tree the other day.

aspen

The autumn colour of the aspen trees is always so enchanting, bright, brilliant… And the sound of the aspen leaves quaking in the wind is lovely.

aspen

Populus tremula erecta is this tree.

aspen

I got a bit carried away with the colours… Well, autumn is once a year. 😉

aspen

-Leena

My new houseplant – identification needed

EDIT: I got an answer: this plant is Dizygotheca, Dizygotheca elegantissima or Plerandra elegantissimaisoliuska-aralia in Finnish. Thank you Anni, for the answer! I also found these common names: false aralia and, indeed, spider aralia. 🙂

I bought a new houseplant from a supermarket called Prisma in the town of Rauma on Saturday. And I still don’t know what the plant is called! 🙂

This plant has some interesting features…

dizoigotea

This is the name tag that the plant has: dizoigotea. I googled it… and, oh dear… Google doesn’t know this either! It only gives me “dizygotic” stuff, when I search just this name in this name tag, and when I use quotation marks with the name, Google doesn’t find anything! But other people have searched this word, too, because it appears in the Google search box when you start writing it there. What IS this…? 😀

Some sort of different spider plant?

The leaves of this plant… what do they remind you of? I must admit that the leaves of this plant caught my attention. 🙂 The ‘leaf groups’ all have the same shape, just the length varies… this ‘leaf group’ in the picture is middle-sized one…

The other side of the leaves is a bit purplish.

The petioles are spotted…

…and the stems are a bit woody, the lower parts are light brown, but the middle and the upper parts of the stems are dark brown, as dark as can be seen in the earlier picture – the dark next to the petioles. (How difficult can this be…? ;D)

Some short stems and younger leaves growing, too.

Hmm… just hoping that this is a strong plant – I would like to keep this.

-Leena

October, October, October

I was eagerly waiting for October already at the beginning of September this autumn. – I was just so ready for everything autumnal; for colourful leaves, and… no leaves at all, dark evenings, campfires, cold nights, (campfires), the cool, crisp air on a sunny autumn day, raking, steaming hot coffee, tea, hot chocolate, glögi… outside in the crisp air, gloves, scarves and knit hats or pipos as we call knit hats in Finnish, I love the Finnish word pipo – it’s just perfect for the item. 🙂 And I was ready to start creating our dream home, here, in our home. – About this project more later, and some pics, too, when anything is ready… ;D

october

October 1st. I tried to make a flower crown with the natural spring and summer flowers that still were blooming in our garden, there were not that many of them anymore… 🙂 After taking this pic 12 swans flew over me, honking as they went.

Norway Maple

October 2nd, pic above and pic below. A foggy morning. In the pic above our big Norway Maple.

October

This was at around 10 AM and after a moment it started to clear up… and all of a sudden the sun was shining in the clear blue sky!

rubber boots

Oh my… Oh, my new rubber boots! And the old ones, too! 😀 I took this pic as I was wearing my new rubber boots for the first time on Thursday last week. I just finally had to buy new rubber boots as my old ones had been leaking, both of them, already for over a year, now they are almost completely cracked – I’ve been storing them with care, but I’ve been wearing them A LOT here in countryside, even in sunny weather, because they are so comfortable. 🙂

The next eight pics are from Friday last week.

Norway Maple

Our Norway Maple in sunshine.

October

sunflower

Whatever happened to our sunflowers? Well, our biggest sunflower for this year is in the pic above… and I love it! 😀 And the tiny spider was feeling the same way! Okay, this year we know that the pre-growing of sunflowers has to be started earlier. 🙂

unknown flower

And these… I still don’t remember what these flowers are called. They are summer flowers grown from seed in summer. Very tough flowers – they are still there in our garden today – cosmos flowers already got frostbitten, badly. EDIT: This flower is clarkia or godetia, silkkikukka in Finnish. Thanks for the answer, A! 🙂

marigold, calendula

Pot marigolds or calendulas are sturdy autumn flowers as well. Still there.

October

In our backyard, a smaller Norway Maple and its friends: three pine trees, a rowan and two junipers.

Kauttuankoski

On a bridge above the Kauttuankoski rapids, going for a walk, at around 7 PM, it was about to get dark soon.

October

The bridge down there, in the pic above. The lamp posts were already lit. And the lovely scent of dry leaves around everywhere…

October

In our front yard today. Who’s raking? – Me! When the time is right. 😉

strawflower

And the strawflowers are still standing there with their rustling petals today!

-Leena

On the last day of July and on the first day of August…

More pics from yesterday, and some I took today. 🙂

monkshood

Monkshood, extremely poisonous from roots to the tiny hoods, and we have so much of it in our garden – this is a very traditional plant in the old gardens in Finland. The man who build this house was very much a garden man, we’ve heard, so, no wonder – the fact can be seen in our garden today…

monkshood

marigold

Some sort of marigold, very small marigold.

DSC04750

We can’t remember what this flower is… I’ve tried to google it, but no luck with that. EDIT: This flower is clarkia or godetia, silkkikukka in Finnish. Thanks for the answer, A! 🙂

cornflower

More pics of my cornflowers. Many charming colours they have…

cornflower

cornflower

cosmos

The first cosmos flower this summer, opened today, missing one petal. I had cosmos flowers last summer, too. These are growing from seeds, of course, and I like them a lot. 🙂

butterfly flower

Butterfly flower, schizanthus, poor man’s orchid again…

strawflower

And strawflowers again. Here it can be seen that our tall strawflowers and the shorter butterfly flowers as well as tiny marigolds are tight neighbours. 😀

strawflower

Pyhäjärvi

Yesterday evening by the lake Pyhäjärvi, after some Nordic walking and eating blueberries again. It was so nice to sit on a bench – the air was perfect, not at all warm, not at all cold. The sun was shining, but wasn’t warming, and the wind was blowing wonderfully. 🙂 And the sound of waves, just lovely…

campfire

A campfire in our garden last night. It can be said that this was my birthday campfire – it was not only the last day of July yesterday, but also my birthday (and by the way, the birthday of Harry Potter —> WTF? -Oh yes, says a Harry Potter fan (that’s me) here, aaand, it was also the birthday of J.K. Rowling herself. 😀 ) And… how old am I…? I’m actually a bit younger than Harry Potter… ;D Just a bit…

-Leena

Interesting flowers

Pics I took between Saturday and today, in this blog post today… I have already so many pics that I’ll have to save the last peony pics and some poppies, too, for the next post, for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, hopefully… 🙂

burning love

Burning love… we have it here and there in our garden. 😉

burning love

Well, this flower has many other names, too: Maltese Cross, dusky salmon, Flower of Bristol, Jerusalem Cross, nonesuch… Whoa! 🙂

burning love

DSC04459

Getting there! – In style! Don’t rush m… us!

maiden pink

Maiden pink again. This time not pink, but dark red. I call this an endless battle, trying to capture the true colours of maiden pink with camera… And the flowers come in so many shades – the neon pink, deep pink, lighter pink, redder, very red… Just marvelous!

DSC04431

My maiden pinks got some new friends. And I don’t know who they are. 😀

DSC04427

This is getting a bit tricky. I planted some summer flower seed mix – I naturally don’t know what will grow, aaand there’s so many flowers of this kind growing there now that I don’t know what to think of this… I googled a bit, and I found viper’s bugloss, neidonkieli in Finnish, which somehow looks like this. I also planted some butterfly flower (perhoskukka in Finnish) seeds somewhere (here?), but this doesn’t actually look like it. Have I forgotten that I planted something like viper’s bugloss, too…? – Completely possible. 😀

DSC04473

DSC04474

Oh, nice flowers! 🙂

DSC04475

“Not interested, actually, you know…” :

DSC04359

“Me neither.” :

DSC04382

DSC04463

Some bellflowers. Especially violet bellflowers we have here and there in our garden – the previous owners of this house got wild with them, too. 🙂 And I don’t know what bellflowers these actually are, but they are always lovely.

DSC04468

DSC04478

And the maiden pinks and their friends now have a purple cornflower amongst them since yesterday – this definitely has grown from the seed mix…

-Leena

Mountain cornflowers, petunia and their friends

Yesterday’s flower pics.

DSC03992

Centaurea montana or mountain cornflower or perennial cornflower or mountain bluet. These, too, are flowers that we have on many different spots in our garden, thank you, the previous owners of this house! I like these. 🙂

DSC03986

DSC03984

DSC03998

The tiny yellow flowers on the background are meadow buttercups, very wild in our garden… 🙂

DSC04001

DSC04003

More petunia pics. Now the lovely colour combination can be seen a bit better…

DSC04004

DSC04016

In the same pot with the petunia is another flower, too. It was there when we got this, and I don’t know what this flower is, haven’t found the answer. I call it the white crown flower

DSC04019

…or the white flower crown

EDIT: The answer came to me in a garden store, I saw these flowers there with a name tag. 🙂 This is verbena, rautayrtti in Finnish.

DSC04025

Red campion or red catchfly. A bit wild in our garden as well. And a bit everywhere, for example around the rapids.

DSC04024

DSC03954

On Friday by the lake Pyhäjärvi. It was raining a bit as I took this pic.

-Leena