becoming self-sufficient – Page 3

More flowers, one new tree, a hedgehog…

July flowers… German iris is now flowering for the first time in our garden! We brought our German iris from Eastern Finland with us two years ago, my boyfriend’s mother gave it to us.

I read somewhere that when German iris is taken to a new spot it will flower again on the second year that it is on the new spot. And this indeed is exactly what happened to our German iris – it didn’t flower last year, it only had the green leaves. But now… and the colour of the flowers was a surprise to me – I remembered that they would be white… 🙂

Daylily, very short blooming, such a lovely scent… We’ve had many many daylilies flowering now in July, in the place where we put some of the leftovers in our garden… I’m not sure but I think that daylilies may be the ones that were growing already in the beginning of April there, at least these have been the only big flowers growing there this summer.

A bit of rose garden in the pictures above and below.

Rosa splendens, valamonruusu is the name of this rose in Finnish. The scent of roses…

And a cherry tree. We’ve had this new tree in our garden already since the beginning of June. A nice, fairly tall pole is this tree.

This tree is grafted and it should be self-pollinating. And it naturally hasn’t bloomed this year. Now just waiting… 🙂

Siberian iris flowering now as well. These came with us and the German iris from Eastern Finland two years ago, too, but these were flowering already a year ago. And they bloomed already in June last year – this year everything is a little late.

Purple-flowering raspberry blooming again, too.

This very busy little friend was like rolling there inside this tiny flower…

My words are failing me now… the first peony flowers are here! More pictures coming… luxurious days in the garden now… 😉

The first peony poppy flowers are blooming, but not in our garden, not yet. – We’ve managed to plant peony poppy seeds just outside our front yard and our driveway as well. 🙂

Basil growing from seeds in our garden, in the shelter of the house wall.

We’ve had yet another late night visitor in our garden, now a hedgehog. Hedgehogs in Finland are European hedgehogs. We gave the little friend a tiny bit of cat food. The hedgehog searches for food constantly sniffing the ground and the sniffing is very loud. An adorable creature. It likes worms very much.

By the lake Pyhäjärvi last night, 23.15 PM. It was a rainy day yesterday. I was a night driver and this was a lovely spot to stop by for a while. It was very foggy, one couldn’t see the opposite shore, the air felt very warm, it was easy to breathe, it was silent with only the light sound of the small waves… I need to be a night driver more often! 🙂

-Leena

More summer, bats again, the longest day of the year 2017…

So today is the longest day of the year 2017. Here where I’m living, the sun rose at 3.52 AM, and the sun sets at 23.13 PM – the length of the day is 19 hours 20 minutes.

The bats have now been here for the fourth time. Or, we have seen them here four times now, in the woods next to our garden and flying close above our heads in the garden. Nice and delightful! 🙂 They were here on Sunday again. They always come just before twelve o’clock at night. On that night we also saw a whole rainbow here, although it hadn’t even rained. It was the first whole rainbow that we’ve seen from our garden.

The black woodpeckers have also been frequent visitors in the woods next to our garden. One really notices when they come – they have the loud and long flight call “klee-yee” when they enter the woods.

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village on Saturday. I was standing on a dock as I took this pic.

Lilac and the big Norway maple beside our driveway once more.

White lilac flowers in the garden as well. We have loads of purple or lilac lilac flowers in big bushes, but only a few white in a small bush. I must say that the purple truly is my favourite lilac anyway… But these white flowers are charming, too, and it wouldn’t be the same without these adding up to it in our garden.

A few more of red campion or red catchfly flowers in the garden.

We found this lovely spot by the river Pyhäjoki in the municipality of Säkylä on Sunday.

Welcome to the countryside! 🙂 With this pic, too, and on Sunday as well. By the river Eurajoki in the municipality of Eura.

Oregano and sage. These two green friends are a bit different in the way that we, who usually grow herbs and everything from seeds, have bought them fully-grown – at half the price at the local grocery store. These are grown in Finland, which we naturally really appreciate. And these aren’t the usual herb pots that you can buy at the grocery stores in wintertime, these are for summer gardening outside… hmm, just to be specific, not that it should make much of a difference…(?) 🙂 But yeah, these for the garden actually are bigger, sturdier… And we have re-potted these, for better growth.

Grow some lettuce, lettuce wants to grow for you! 🙂

By our strawberry field today. There are surprisingly many strawberry flowers and strawberries growing already.

The first fully opened centaurea montana or mountain cornflower or perennial cornflower or mountain bluet flower in the garden today.

And our park lilacs or Hungarian lilacs have started to open their flowers now as well. There seem to be many more flowers in the bushes now than a year ago.

-Leena

Bats seen here, new garden potato field, apple tree flower buds…

It’s been pretty summery now. But still no rain here where we are living – the rain that the garden and nature need now… They say that this afternoon it will rain here… *waiting*. 🙂 It’s now light green around out there everywhere as everything is growing, and in many places some bushes and trees are loaded with white flowers, for example bird cherry trees are in flower now, lovely scent…

This was my project on Thursday and Friday evenings last week; I made a new potato field in our garden. I dug it through the lawn, so to speak, using that garden hoe in the picture. The hoe is my favourite gardening tool, it’s so useful and comfortable to use! And I also used a shovel and, naturally, my bare hands – my bare hands are my other favourite gardening tools – I never use gardening gloves, they are only in the way, a disturbance, and I want to and need to feel the earth in my hands – I’ve gone crazy in that way… 😉 It’s earthing… Body, mind, spirit…

So I dug the new potato field all by myself, one part of the field was already ready; it was our strawberry field before – luckily, because it was hard work that digging. I also had some… theoretical help… ‘someman‘ was helping me to measure the size of the field and telling me where to put the seed potatoes. And when I was taking a short break, drinking some water inside the house, someone who had just gone outside offered me some practical help – this is what I found when I came back outside and to the potato field:

“No, you should do it like this!” – ‘somemeow‘ had moved some seed potatoes that were already placed on the soil, evenly spaced… 🙂

When the potato field was ready on Friday, late in the evening, it was time to go to sauna, with the first fresh birch leaves for this spring or summer… some more earthing… I wrote about sauna earthing already last year, here.
This year the birch leaves are still tiny, because the spring was so slow, but they are so wonderfully fresh and sticky, and naturally, the scent is heavenly. I took again a real bath with the birch leaves: I rubbed the leaves against my skin, buried my face into the leaves, hit myself with the twigs… Stay closer to nature, feel closer to nature, be a bit witchy! 😉

This year we seem to have only four narcissus or daffodil flowers – leaves of this plant we have in all the spots that we have narcissus plants in the garden, but only four flowers, two in one spot and two in another spot. They, too, are late, but they are here…

We’ve heard the calls of cuckoo bird somewhere near here every day now.

On Sunday, after 23.30 PM, when we were having a campfire in our garden, we had some visitors – bats! Three bats! It was a big surprise. We’ve seen bats before, but not here in our garden and not so close. It was the first warmer night with more mosquitoes here this year. All of a sudden the bats dashed and flapped into the woods beside our garden and into our garden as well, they flew all around here; into our garden, back into the woods, back into our garden… This continued for some time. And they flew also close above our heads every time they flapped into our garden. So close, and they were so cute! 🙂 I thought that bats avoid people, but no, they don’t… It was amazing! – I’ve hoped that we would see bats here in our land, and now we now that it can happen…

The apple trees have small flower buds now. They are late as well. A year ago the flowering had already ended!

-Leena

And the summer began…

And all of a sudden… it’s summer! The summer began on Friday: it was 17 degrees Celsius in the shade already at 9.00 AM and at around 10.15 AM it was already 20 degrees in the shade, and 24 in the shade at 13.30 PM. Yes, I wrote down everything. 😀 It was also the warmest day that we’ve had this year.

We haven’t had any rain now, and all the rain before this was hail and sleet… So a good rain is what the garden and nature need now!

The first four pictures I took on Saturday, first some of the fern in our garden. Aww, those rolls…

I heart…

What did you say?

And we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids again in the evening. On the bridge again, we didn’t go down there by the rapids at all this time, but… look! Over there, inside the ruins of the mill, there’s somebody sitting there!

Can you see her?

The Norway maple in flower beside our driveway, yesterday morning I took this pic. The tree’s been buzzing with bees in some mornings…

Leopard’s bane or doronicum today, flowers…

The first two narcissus or daffodil flowers opened yesterday. The other one here in the evening light…

The rest of the pictures I took today.

Small grape hyacinth or muscari flowering…

The garden fern growing…

Fern still so small in the woods…

Oh, my peonies! 🙂

Our peas growing…

Everything is growing now, but we really would need the rain to help us out a bit… But we did already start the lawn mowing. 🙂

-Leena

Dandelions, cuckoo bird, bug hotels… spring advancing

Yesterday I noticed that the spring was at the same point here where we are living than it was in Turku already last Wednesday ( – my previous blog post here). Now it’s greener here, too, and we have many dandelion flowers as well. We had the first few dandelion flowers here on Saturday – I saw them after I had written that blog post of mine, when we went for a car ride.

And on that car ride, we visited the lake Köyliönjärvi near our home village. The bench over there was calling… 😀

It was lovely to sit there on the bench… Truly, once again, after the wintertime (and all the hailing lately), it really did feel like I was in a fairytale! 🙂

Hepatica flowers… these we’ve seen already a lot earlier here as well! But on Sunday I took a couple of pics of these as we were collecting some material for bug hotels. This was by a forest dirt road here in our home village. The forest was loaded with hepatica flowers beside the road, from one end of the road to the other end. Marvellous!

The first dandelion flower in our garden on Monday… or, actually, after this pic I noticed another one, too, and yesterday there was even more. It was high time to start eating them! 😉

We heard the calls of cuckoo bird already last week. From afar. Last night then we heard the bird coming near our garden. We heard a “Cuck-koo!” – only one “Cuck-koo!”. – It was funny, but I said that we want more!

And the bug hotel or insect hotel… Even though we have many heaps of dry leaves and dry twigs and forest land for bugs and insects here, we are building some bug hotels – it’s just fun and helpful, and the bug hotels always look nice as well. 🙂

Here’s the first two of them in the picture. And we’ll build even more bug hotels, different types of them, too. More pics then as well.

The night-time and ‘hailing time’ frost protection fabric has worked its magic in our vegetable garden. The peas, carrots and garlic have started to grow under it. This is the biggest sprout there, garlic, today.

-Leena

Growing tomatoes

This is what’s been happening this year: we have grown tomatoes for the first time, we started the pre-growing too late, but we’ve got some delicious red tomatoes to eat. The pre-growing should have started already in March or at the beginning of April. I don’t remember when exactly our tomato seeds were planted, but it was like May already… 🙂

The pre-growing happened in small containers inside our house and the pre-grown tiny plants, seedlings, were then planted outside, in buckets with drainage holes in the bottom. The buckets were placed to our vegetable garden – the all day sunny spot between our house and the woods. The wall of our home was sheltering the plants a bit. When it was sometimes raining too much, we carried the plant buckets inside our house. Everything went fine – the plants or their soil didn’t get any mold. – One just has to carefully keep an eye on the plants – when to water them, and how much. And tomatoes like fertilizing, we always use organic fertilizers.

And oh yes, I just love the scent of tomato plants! 🙂

I took this pic on October 3rd. This was the last day our tomatoes were outside – the upper parts of the plants had finally been frozen at night (and the plants were like all gone, the next day, October 4th). We noticed that our tomatoes actually did like a bit cooler air – they were ripening so well in autumn – they started ripening with the combination of cool air and warm sunlight. And it really was so wonderful that we had so summery September for our tomatoes… because we were so late with the planting. 😀 But oh yes, these home-grown ripe tomatoes that we now have had – they’ve tasted so delicious, sweet… they are miraculous! 🙂

Tomatoes do turn red and fully ripen without the main body of the plant, inside the house (and tomatoes do ripen without apples, and so on… 😉 ). The already red tomatoes, that are ripening to be eaten, we have kept on a table in kitchen.

But the first ripening of our tomatoes – the green tomatoes turning red, happens in the cool and dark sauna in our home. And when the sauna is heated, we take the tomatoes to kitchen.

Our biggest tomato for this year, I took it outside for pics… 🙂

So, now we know what to do in March next year!

-Leena

Rainy day pics

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