October 2018 – Owlnature

Snow

It snowed last night here where I’m living. And it was a surprise – there was no forecast for snow earlier.

The first five pictures I took in our yard.

This was last night.

The next two pictures I took at around 9 am today:

The snow had melted a bit, but there still was snow cover on the ground and on rooftops everywhere.

Sudden winter came for the rose.

But this snow will melt.

…But at around 13.30 pm, still…

October snow came for the viola flowers, too.

The last two pictures I took last Friday, in Etelä-Pohjanmaa – South Ostrobothnia, on the land, on my boyfriend’s new land, about which I wrote earlier, here.

I found red moss in the forest. Red moss is one of my favourites…

And I love campfire coffee. 🙂

-Leena

Autumn colours, by the lake, parsnips…

The first six pictures I took in our garden yesterday.

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

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

Two pictures that I took by the lake today:

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village.

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:

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 Finland – autumn 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:

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

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-Pohjanmaa – South 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:

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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