Nature travel – Owlnature

Autumn? And pears, grapes, flowers…

So it’s officially autumn in Finland. I can’t believe I just wrote that.

I was travelling in Eastern Finland with my boyfriend for two weeks, and I will have some pics from there here in my blog a bit later. I have most of the pics on my phone (and there are for example pics of our plums on my phone, too) and I have to find a way to get all the pics to my computer (I have no idea what I’m doing… ;D ) But I did post a few pictures on my Instagram (owlnatureleena). We even saw a tiny bit of Russia. 😀 – Where the country begins, so to speak.

hill Kipari, lake Keyritty, Rautavaara, Northern Savonia, Finland

So now only one pic from the trip. This was on a hill Kipari in the municipality of Rautavaara, in the region of Northern Savonia – Pohjois-Savo. The name of the lake is Keyritty. We stayed in Rautavaara. Such a lovely place.

The first ever pears from our garden! I didn’t have time to take pics of our small pear tree when it had all the pears, but I took a pic of the pears on a plate – all the pears had fallen down from the tree during our trip, they were ripe, and I just picked them from the ground. They were delicious! I made jam.

This year we have grapes, too! I took all these pictures of our grapes yesterday. We had a very little amount of grapes two years ago, but now we have quite a lot, well, relatively lot. They, too, taste so sweet…

The grape vine itself.

The rest of the pictures I took today:

I’m still very much immersed in my reading hobby. Now I’m even reading how to get organized, so this is getting pretty serious. ;p

We have a small patch of lovely little sunflowers. They are grown from our last winter’s bird seeds.

And echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower charm…

This is my “I’m about to finish this blog post” coffee in our greenhouse, with some tomatoes. 🙂

Hmm, in general, I feel like I have tons of things to do now, but it’s just nice, I guess… 😀

The summer flower bed…

Leena

Gone cross-country skiing [in Kuusamo earlier this week]

It’s been like summer here in Finland this week. Especially here in the southern part of the country it’s been warm for a bit over a week now. The temperatures have been between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius during the day. The sun’s been shining, grass is already green, the trees are growing leaves – everything is growing, everything is green… and there’s more flowers and butterflies. The scent of summer is in the air and we can already eat some herbs from the garden as well.

But I started off this week by going backwards in time, so to speak. – I travelled to Kuusamo in Koillismaa region in northern Finland, just below Lapland. This time it took 10 hours and 30 minutes to travel there by car through the western and middle parts of Finland, and during all that time I saw how the spring advanced… backwards and in the wrong direction. But that was just nice for a bit adventurous soul. 😀

We (me and my dad) arrived in Kuusamo late in the evening on Sunday a week ago, spent Monday and Tuesday there, and travelled back home again on Wednesday. After that it’s already been warmer there in Kuusamo, too, around 20 degrees Celsius, but here, in this blog post now, is one of the last opportunities to talk about cross-country skiing in Kuusamo this spring…

And in Kuusamo the roads and many other places already were free of snow and ice, spring was already there in that way – the snow had already almost mostly melted, almost… Well, there still were heaps of snow here and there, still melting and in the forests there still was snow, here and there. And the lakes were not free of ice.

So, into the woods I went. My very own cross-country skiing equipment waited for me at the cabin.

In the woods, by the lake.

I saw two swans flying and honking over the lake for a couple of times. I also saw an otter, an Eurasian otter that is, swimming in the ice-free water by the woods. I’ve seen that type of an animal swimming there before, too, a few years ago. 🙂

And owls… I think I heard an owl calling! When I first heard the voice I immediately thought something along the lines of “this really might be an owl, there’s possibly something so specific in the voice… is it…?” I heard the voice every evening there, over and over again. Well, here, at home where my computer waited for me, I did some research and it truly might have been the voice of a northern hawk owl. I didn’t see the bird in the woods, but I might also have seen an owl flying when I was travelling in the car from the cabin towards the town centre. I saw the bird pretty well, and there was just something so specific… Or perhaps I’ve finally gone nuts. 😀 Well, nice experiences they were, even though I can’t be 100% sure… But learning new things all the time!

The tracks of a reindeer on the left, my tracks on the right. We went for a walk in the woods together… Well, no, not together, I didn’t see reindeer by the cabin. But we saw many reindeer by the road when we were travelling to Kuusamo. I called them ‘Santa’s reindeer’, because they had winter coat. And before the reindeer I saw a moose standing in a forest.

And when we were travelling back home, about 11 hours through the middle and western parts of Finland, the spring advanced again in the right way, so to speak. And here at home it was like summer already! – At first all the green that had emerged while I was away really felt strange. Stranger than falling into the snow in the north. Nice and delightful, simple adventures everywhere. 🙂

-Leena

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

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

At the Botanic Garden II

The second blog post about my visit to the Botanic Garden in Turku. The first one: here.

More photos… 🙂

Mandarin. It’s nice to take pics of the fruits at the botanic garden…

A banana plant.

Under the banana leaves…

Grapefruit.

Oh lovely… 🙂

A lime fruit. The scent of the flowers was so strong and stunning – loved it!

A casuarina tree.

Some other lovely citrus fruit… I can’t remember the name right now. 🙂

The Ruissalo island, on which the botanic garden is located, is an island of oak trees – a very special island in whole Finland.

In the outside garden of the botanic garden there were lots of blooming crocuses. I took just a couple of pics of them – but had to take the pics, because we don’t have crocuses in our garden here at home – yet! 🙂

A marvelous springtime…

-Leena

At the Botanic Garden

Today it was mostly sunny, but it was a bit cold and even hailing a bit – the perfect spring weather to visit a botanic garden. My favourite place in the city of Turku: The Botanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island. It’s lovely to visit the botanic garden in wintertime or when it’s not an actual summertime in Finland. A tropic near us! 🙂 I have photos for two blog posts, here’s the first one.

Welcome to the jungle!

Epipremnum aureum, golden pothos, devil’s ivy… We have many of these – the house plants, at home… I should count our house plants, I don’t know how many we have… 😉

I’m gonna need some more coffee…

A bird of paradise.

A taro leaf.

A trunk with attitude. A kapok tree.

Beauties… an orchid…? 🙂

A red-eared slider, and she came to pose to her name tag! She has a beautiful name: Alma, and she is as old as I am…

Aaand… in the second post will be different kinds of citrus fruits and some other things, too. 🙂

-Leena