Yesterday late in the evening, after the cuckoo ( 🙂 ) we went for a walk in a forest nearby. Nordic walking, with the poles. It didn’t rain, but it was cloudy and the air was fresh. The forest surrounding the trail was dense, birds were singing and a raven was croaking. Delightful. I took this pic a bit after 22 pm.
Nordic walking is power! And a nice coffee pause in the forest adds even more power to it. Pack your backpack! 🙂
-Leena
I don’t have any pics of this, but this was such a special event that it must be mentioned here in my blog… I saw a cuckoo bird for the first time in my life. The cuckoo in Finland is the common cuckoo or European cuckoo. It flew to the woods next to our garden.
Over the past few summers (that we have lived in this house) we have heard a cuckoo bird’s wonderful voice here coming from somewhere close. I’ve been missing the voice lately – I already thought that a cuckoo bird will not come here this year at all… but it came with a show! 🙂
-Leena
But first one pic from yesterday:
I was playing a surgeon, a seed potato surgeon – you have to be very cautious when you’re taking the seed potatoes out of the net bag packing, because the shoots get so easily detached from the potatoes and then they will not give you any food… or the food will be very slow… 🙂
So yesterday we made our potato field. It was actually hard work… as it always is with garden… hard, but so nice and therapeutic. 🙂 I took this pic today, as well as the rest of the pics in this blog post.
A rainy day, fresh air and expecting it to be even greener after some rain. It hasn’t rained for days, weeks, at least for a bit more than two weeks it has been dry. Now we don’t have to use the tap water to water everything growing in the garden. Have to be grateful. 🙂
OK, I don’t know how to keep up with the rhubarb…
These, some fern, we have many, the previous owners of this house have planted them. I’m not sure, but the current man of this house may have planted some, too.
Just some of our fern…
This geometric flower plantation is a man made. 😉
-Leena
These first two coffee pics are from yesterday. Some food included in the first pic. 😉
They say it will rain over the weekend. Today we still have some planting to do, and lawn mowing, too.
Our Norway Maple in flower beside the driveway. I took this pic in our front yard today.
Have some cactus, or… Bali? One of my favourite pastilles. Tasty.
Now I need some heeelp! What is this flower called? 🙂 I have a hunch that it’s actually quite common in Finland… The leaves of this plant look a bit poisonous… it’s the spots. I tried to google this flower, but couldn’t find it. This flower stands in the middle of our garden.
EDIT: I found the answer last night, on 14th May. It’s Pulmonaria officinalis, rohtoimikkä in Finnish. And common names in English: common lungwort, lungwort or Our Lady’s milk drops. It’s not poisonous, but an old herb used for medical purposes. It’s a perennial plant and cultivated, not natural, in Finland. They say that the white spots look like unhealthy lungs and the scientific name Pulmonaria officinalis comes from that. Well, I couldn’t see that in particular, but they do look dangerous to me. 🙂 They say this actually is a herbal medicine for lungs.
I already earlier had browsed through a couple of plant and flower books we have, but couldn’t find this flower in them. Last night I finally started to browse through a book that I bought from a flea market some weeks ago. And I found this plant very fast from the book. The book’s original (=English) title is The Complete Book of Herbs and it’s from the year 1988. This book is fairly big and it cost me 50 Euro cents. Sometimes it’s just the books, not the Internet, and the older the book, the better! 🙂
On the vappu weekend we planted sunflower seedlings outside. They were raised from the seed inside the house. We planted these on four different spots in our garden. Hopefully we’ll have at least one fully grown sunflower. That would be great. Last year the seeds were planted straight into soil, and nothing grew. This time we did it properly and in the right way. So, now just hoping… This one in the pic for example has already grown stronger. 🙂
-Leena
One positively overwhelmed nature and garden blogger here again, hi! 🙂
Yesterday we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi…
And yesterday the first narcissus or daffodil flowers opened. The narcissus blooming with pure yellow flowers is lovely, but these different shades are so welcomed… The previous owners of this house have planted these next to the woods.
Deep. 🙂
I somehow find these guys a bit difficult to take pics of…
One tamed, two.
And all these guys… But they kind of form the shape of a heart, though, when you look at it. 😉
On the same spot today, yet another group photo – more narcissus flowers opened today.
The first Leopard’s Bane or doronicum flower close up…
Our big Norway Maple tree is in flower beside the driveway.
And beside the driveway, on the other side, stands a birch, too. 🙂
-Leena
Spring really has sprung. It’s been very warm, 20 degrees Celsius and even a bit warmer for so many days, the sun’s been shining every day and it hasn’t rained. OK, and I visited Turku – I still have one part of my belongings there, but not for long anymore. 🙂 So, I spent three days in a block of flats, on the second floor, and I didn’t go outside at all. Probably had some things to do inside there. 😀 Now I’m back in our country home. In this blog post I have some pics I took on Thursday before travelling to Turku, and pics I took today. They’re like five days ago and today -pics of leaves and ‘stuff’, taken from the same spot. And it’s time to start taking pics of newly emerged or opened up flowers, too.
Leaves of redcurrant five days ago.
The same spot today. OK, and today I remembered again that it’s time to accept that the light dazzles and wind blows in summer when you take pics outside… 🙂
Buds in redcurrant five days ago…
…and the same spot today. There will be berries!
Raspberry leaves five days ago…
…the same spot today.
Lilac bush five days ago…
…and the same spot today. There’s already even a flower bud! Oh, how I love lilacs! 🙂 My favourite bushes. Luckily the previous owners of this house have liked them a lot, too… more pics of lilacs later… 😉
Leopard’s Bane or doronicum has opened up some of her flowers.
Narcissus buds and small grape hyacinth that suddenly emerged again last week. The previous owners of this house have planted these. And there’s narcissus and small grape hyacinth growing on several spots in the garden. More pics of all the flowers later on… Today I found out for example that we have here also quite big flower buds on some plants that I don’t remember knowing what they are and who planted them… 🙂
So this is the time of the year that you truly feel positively overwhelmed by it all… the constantly more and more emerging colour green, grass, leaves, buds, flowers – the abundance of nature all around us, everywhere. It wouldn’t be this amazing and miraculous if we didn’t have the long wintertime… Yesterday when I was travelling in the car from Turku to our country home here in Eura, I really was dazzled and amazed by everything around – the leaves and all that had grown so much in a few days, when I had been inside on the second floor for the three whole days. – It was like the best thing to do these days… 😀 But right now I need to get outside for a bit. So, here was this blog post, and let us take more pics of everything a bit later – right now the memory card of my camera is stuffed, too, and the battery is low. 🙂
-Leena
la primavera – spring
la lila – lilac