It is coming! – Spring is almost here…

It’s March… quite nice, almost incredible! Lately we’ve had snow and sunshine, grey days, temperatures below freezing and wet snow… everything. And we just may have been hit by the biggest snowfall for this winter earlier this week as well – here in southern Finland we sometimes have this too-much-snow-too-late-it-should-have-been-at-Christmas -thing… But yes, this week’s snow, too, has already been melting. No one’s stopping spring! 🙂

The first 13 pictures I took today, the last two are from last night.

March moss

Moss magic at the summer flower bed…

March moss

backyard pine trees

Backyard pine trees.

March clover flower

A clover flower…

March strawflower

A strawflower flower… power. 😉

March

March annual mallow flower

An annual mallow flower…

March annual mallow flower

…and another…

March annual mallow flowers

…a few more…

March annual mallow flower

Perhaps I should plant annual mallow seeds, too, in many places in the garden this spring – then there would be some lace all around the garden in wintertime, how nice would that be? 😀

double sun

Double sun… 😉

March orange

An Egyptian friend…

March potato field

At the potato field…

Even though the days may be warm, the nights can be a bit cold:

it will be warmer

“I adjusted the thermostat so that it will be a bit warmer in here… is that okay…?”

purr...

“Purr… nice! I’m telling you…”
Our radiator tiger. 🙂

-Leena

Sauna & snow

Just a brief thought on the traditional combination of sauna and snow. It’s nice to take some snow with you when you are taking a sauna bath. I did it yesterday evening, for example. And as with the birch leaves in summertime, I like rubbing it, the snow, against my skin and my face, too, taking a bath with it. It’s cool and very nice indeed! Relaxing and healthy! Sauna earthing… And, naturally, it’s nice to walk from the sauna barefoot, on the snow outside, cool down a bit, and then go back to the warmth of the sauna again – just lovely! Good for your blood circulation. 😉

Of course you can roll naked in the snow. It, too, actually feels nice, but it takes some courage to start doing it. I haven’t done it this winter. Okay, perhaps I should now challenge myself to do it, there might still be time to do it this week… I dare myself to… (?) 😀

As to “there might still be time”; it is happening again, out there… the snow is melting a bit again… But at least spring is just around the corner, soon. 🙂

-Leena

Snowy, snowy – a wintry month…

It’s already March next week! But, there’s still some time to enjoy snow and… ahem, some winter pics. 🙂

The first five pics I took yesterday.

February

It’s been a nice winter week. First we had one night of raining… WATER, but it didn’t melt all the snow, and after that night it started to snow, and now it’s been snowing with the temperatures being moderate and nice winter temperatures; between 0 and about -10 degrees Celsius, and some days the sun has been shining delightfully as well. And the sun is warming a bit, loving us…

But no, we haven’t had, like, heaps of snow this winter – we’ve just had freaking cold weather at times. So, in these pics here now is to be seen our snow record for this winter… Yeah well, it’s been snowing a bit today as well, but… you get the picture, I believe. 🙂

February coffee

Okay, still some time to take winter coffee pics…

February clarkias and coffee

The sturdy clarkia or godetia flowers, too, still standing. I’ll plant clarkia seeds this spring as well, but this time, in many places in the garden.

February

Blue sky, love…

February

The next two pics I took on the day before yesterday.

February

One of those snowfalls it was. And this was at 17:45 PM – a huge increase in the number of daylight hours: on the 16th of December I wrote that the sunset was at 15:12 PM here where I’m living, and the length of the day was 5 hours 31 minutes. Today the sun sets at 17:47 PM and the length of the day is 10 hours 5 minutes – twice the energy already! 🙂

February

And the rest of the pics are again from yesterday.

Taller than the trees...?

Taller than the trees…? 😉

February strawflowers

At the strawflowers again…

February field on a car ride

And this pic I took through a car window as we were travelling to Turku. This was at about 16:30 PM – not long ago it was completely dark at that hour! 🙂

-Leena

Amaryllis blooming again

My amaryllis today:

amaryllis

She really did it! 🙂

amaryllis

The bud was so thin that I thought that there would be only one flower and I believed that the flower would be tiny and poor, but… wow! There’s already two big flowers, and too new buds as well.

amaryllis

I wonder if this now is the last time my amaryllis has flowers… 😮 And it had three leaves growing, but one of them (the shortest one) has now turned brown, and it’s not even dry, just rotten… As I said before; I’m not at all confident…

amaryllis

But yes, this now… As majestic as ever…

February

It’s been freezing cold again and there’s still snow. But the sun’s been shining and it truly is warming nicely during the daytime! And it’s so bright…

-Leena

Whiteout, grey on

Today: snow and fog, thick fog. With the temperature around 0 degrees Celsius. I took these pics by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region.

A curious white wall there was…

February

February

On the ice.

February

One saw that one didn’t see…

February

The shoreline disappeared…

February

February

They disappeared…

-Leena