Miscellaneous – to one’s heart’s content – Page 6

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

The heat’s been on

The summer has been unbelievably hot in Finland, as it has been all over Europe. At least for now the temperatures have gone down here in Finland, and yeah, there shouldn’t be temperatures like 30 degrees Celsius anymore this summer. (?) Anyway, this summer we learned that temperatures around 25 degrees Celsius are kinda cool. I mean, usually 25 degrees Celsius has been the Heat for us, but this summer we had 30 degrees Celsius or even a bit warmer for so, so many days that, yes, one truly felt it. And it was so dry everywhere for so many weeks that we couldn’t light campfires.

And about me, myself and I… I woke up at 4.30 am when I was working, and with so many early mornings during the week this summer, I didn’t quite yet learn to get my shi…itake together in my free time, I mean, it can be seen, for example, here in my blog… or, you just can’t see anything here… But I learned that I can make money by doing something that has something to do with gardening, funny. 🙂 And now it is the time to do… many things, I have a ton of things to do, but that’s nice, and I’m quite excited about writing here in my blog now, too. 🙂

Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower flowers in our garden now. I planted three tiny young echinacea plants last summer and two of them have been growing this year – the one in the middle didn’t grow at all a year ago either.

Butterflies, too, love echinacea flowers… The right wing of this beauty was a bit damaged.

New flowers still growing.

Echinacea has been one of my dream flowers for my garden.

And here’s another one of my dream plants, in our garden now as well:

Bougainvillea. My ‘mini Spain’. – Bougainvillea is “the miracle bush in the south” for us here in the north. 🙂 These plants are so huge in the south! And the first time I met this wonder was in Spain. My plant was tiny and there were no bracts or flowers when I bought it, and it cost me only a few euros. I’m glad it began to flower!

The actual flowers of bougainvillea, small and sweet.

This summer I’ve seen a bat in our garden. One bat, only once. My boyfriend has seen a couple of bats a couple of times here this summer, but we definitely saw more of them a year ago.

And last week I saw a raccoon dog here for the first time. My boyfriend has seen it here once before this summer. I’m not quite sure how to feel about raccoon dogs here…

The summer is not over yet!

-Leena

Spring is coming [eventually]

It’s been colder again, after Tuesday. The sunny days are back, and the temperatures have been between -3 and -6 degrees Celsius during the daytime and between -10 and -15 during the nighttime. But they say that it will get warmer again… soon. It snowed quite a lot on Tuesday, especially in the evening. I took the first three pictures in this blog post in our garden on Wednesday.

Well…

My refreshment in the car, on Wednesday was this, too. Pineapple, banana, coconut – my favourites, and one of my favourite flavour combinations.

I’ve been browsing through this gardening catalogue lately. For flowers, vegetables, et cetera…

Oh, spring…

My morning coffee today, a bit after 9 am, it was -11 degrees Celsius.

They say that the sun already is as powerful now as it is in September here in Finland. So, that’s not bad, not bad at all. 🙂

-Leena

Waxwings in the garden, pictures from the lake…

The weather’s been warmer for some days now, around 0 degrees Celsius, and it’s been snowing and sleeting and snowing again… Buuut they say that it will get colder, again…

We can’t remember when the last time that we had a garden campfire was, but on Thursday we finally had one (just an Instagram picture [owlnatureleena] to that 🙂 ), and on Sunday we had a garden campfire again. The first time that we saw a flock of waxwings in our garden was on Thursday when we had the campfire, and I saw the waxwings again on Friday.

The pictures in this blog post… this happened on the weekend:

A fine birch tree… – I took just a few pictures by the lake Pyhäjärvi, here in our home village.

Behind birch trees.

And hiding behind alder trees…

In the car, on the frozen lake. The infinity – the lake Pyhäjärvi is about 30 kilometres long and this is the north end of the lake.

So what happened then – an ice road…? Yes, we didn’t know this, but when I was taking the pictures by the lake there I noticed that there really is an ice road, an ice track, a very curvy track for cars, too. And because we, me and my boyfriend, are a couple of crazy persons who are about to get a new car, we decided to take our 22-year-old VW Golf for a little ride later that day.

I took these pics when my boyfriend was driving, but before this… I was driving, and because it was a very curvy track and it was slippery and I was driving too fast and… okay, I drove our Golf straight into a snowbank there on the lake and we got stuck in the snow so badly that we needed help to get us out of the snow. – First I actually tried to dig our car out of the snow, with my hands, but it was an impossible piece of work, and fortunately we got some help – our car had to be pulled out of the snow. Oh, an adventure… 🙂

-Leena

March on

It’s March already – incredible! But the winter weather continues, it’s been even bitterly cold lately, as it has been the case in many other parts of Europe as well. Here in Finland the temperatures have been below -10 degrees Celsius and for some days the temperatures were between -15 and -20 degrees Celsius, and even colder than that. Naturally, it’s been colder during the nighttime because the sun is already warming during the daytime. I mean, the sun’s been shining like crazy! 😀 – So many sunny days lately, it’s been like constant sunshine… And as I am still counting; here, where I’m living, we’ve had snow on the ground for 13 weeks now.

I took this picture yesterday, just to show how high the sun already is in the sky here. This was at around 14.10 pm. On the shortest day of the year the sun at its highest point was just above that hill. The increasing daylight truly has made me do all kinds of things, as I already said in the previous blog post, effective. 🙂

My morning coffee today, at around 9.10 am. It was -12 degrees Celsius – only -12… 😀

And crepes with our own apple jam. I used oat flour and a mixture of oat and potato flours. Potato flour is good – it gives the oat flour crepes structure so that they are easy to flip.

Did someone say winter sports? – Winter sports is still on. And I love it! This weekend it’s the Lahti Ski Festival here in Finland, it’s part of the World Cup thing. Now there’s Nordic Combined on, with the ski jumping part. Okay, most of us Finns love to watch cross-country skiing and ski jumping, and luckily that’s just what the Lahti Ski Games are about. 🙂

-Leena

Winter… and winter sports fans

First about the weather again… Winter weather continues, and here, where I’m living, we’ve had snow on the ground for over 10 weeks now! Lately we had a couple of warmer days with the temperatures around 0 degrees Celsius, but now it’s been colder again – around -5 degrees and -10 degrees Celsius and even colder. And it’s been snowing and the sun’s been shining, too…

And today it was -20 degrees Celsius just before 8 am when I took these first two pictures in this blog post:

My morning coffee… You can go outside without your mittens at -20 degrees Celsius if you have a warm winter coat and a mug of warm coffee to warm your hands, naturally. 🙂

So much light already before 8 am!

I love to watch winter sports. Now I’m addicted to the Winter Olympics… I’ve been watching the Olympic Winter Games every day now, and I start watching them in the morning, with headphones, of course… There was curling on when I took this picture this morning. Curling is one of my great favourites, another one of my great favourites is… everything done with snowboards, yay! 🙂

And I’ve been watching the Olympics surrounded by these guys:

So we’ve been very active here… Well, indeed, watching the Winter Olympics has been fun and inspiring – I’ve been doing all kinds of things while watching winter sports – I watch the Olympics for a while and then I do something and then I watch winter sports again and after a moment I do something again… This has been effective for me, perhaps with the increasing daylight, naturally… 🙂

-Leena

Waiting… waiting for summer…?

This happened in our living room last night: I suddenly saw our princess by the grass on the floor, lying and just relaxing there with her eyes closed.

She was like this for quite a while there…

We were wondering whether she was thinking about spring, dreaming of summer… 😉 Waiting for winter to end… All this snow and cold still… Wait! – Did she fall asleep?

…with the green grass as her pillow. Aww… 😀 If she was dreaming of spring, dreaming about summer and everything green out there, I can already share the same dream with her…

-Leena