coffee – Page 5 – 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

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

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

The national birdwatch 2018 in Finland & other things…

The temperatures have temporarily gone up. First we had a pretty heavy snowfall on Wednesday, we had about 10 centimetres of fresh snow on the ground in the evening that day. But after that it’s been even raining, raining like crazy for a while, but it still didn’t melt all the snow, so, here where I’m living, we’ve had snow on the ground for seven weeks now. And they say that the temperatures are going down again and that it will snow again. Today it’s already been sleeting and snowing, and heavily and very big snowflakes, too.

My morning coffee today. I love maps… I take every opportunity to have a map to look at, any map, everywhere… 🙂

And yes, today I took again part in the national birdwatch, the national birdwatch 2018, Pihabongaus 2018, organized by BirdLife Suomi here in Finland. The event is every year on the last weekend of January, it’s not a competition, just one hour of birdwatching, and anyone can participate. The idea is to get people interested in the nature around them and to collect information about the birds living here in wintertime. And even hearing the birds counts.

One of the birds’ hideouts… (I took these last two pictures in this blog post after my birdwatch hour.) So, during my hour I was standing and walking in heavy snowfall and in normal snowfall in our garden. And I heard a concert again! – The voices were many, but, again, I didn’t see that many singers. 🙂

I recognized the voices of crows, magpies, great tits and blue tits and I think I recognized the voice of a some type of sparrow and the voice of a bullfinch – I really was lucky enough to see a few bullfinches here on our bird feeder the other day! 🙂 And I heard a woodpecker knocking somewhere near (I’ve seen two great spotted woodpeckers hear earlier). There always are also some other tiny birds chirping and singing, but I still don’t recognize them…

And the birds I actually saw today: a couple of magpies, one great tit and a flock of small birds – I couldn’t see what birds they were.

So, I was enjoying myself and my hour ended just before my freezing point. 😀

My birdwatching trail…

-Leena

Wintry days & oh, deer

Cloudy, cold and frost – three words to describe, in a nutshell, the days lately. So, it’s been a bit colder for some days now, the temperatures have mostly been around -5 degrees Celsius and a bit below. And we’ve had snow on the ground for five weeks now, that’s quite remarkable. 🙂

This happened on Tuesday: I looked out the kitchen window and I saw a deer on the hill. I went outside and there were two deer. Never before have we seen deer here, seen them from our garden. Near our home, yes, many times, but not here.

This is the best pic I have of the event, taken with zoom, and fast. It felt like seeing reindeer in the north. 🙂

The corn plants and… other things…

They have answers…

The cherry tree is patiently waiting for spring…

And a poppy pod… I wonder if there will be flowers here on this spot next summer…

A bit of light yesterday.

And today… My coffee, crepes, apple jam and New York… in Babar’s Yoga for Elephants by Laurent de Brunhoff. I made crepes yesterday, they are oat flour crepes with a bit of barley flour. And the apple jam we made of the apples of our trees in autumn. The word crepe is, by the way, lettu or lätty in Finnish. 🙂

-Leena

Christmas

Now something about Christmas and some pictures I have taken over the past few days. So, the snow is still on the ground. We’ve had snow on the ground for over two weeks now. – I haven’t stopped believing in magic. 😉 We had sunshine and temperatures below zero degrees Celsius on Sunday and yesterday, on Monday. On Sunday we also had bright stars in the sky at night, but last night, at night, it was a bit warmer again and some water was dripping, but it didn’t melt the snow, not yet. And now, in the daytime, it’s a bit colder again and we even have a tiny, a very tiny bit of fresh snow.

In our living room… from where I watch television. 🙂 Yesterday, for example, I watched two films, both of them for the first time; Beauty and the Beast from this year and The Revenant from the year 2015. Two different films, both to my liking.

So, in short, having good food (or more like feasting…), eating chocolate, watching television, going to a candlelit sauna – some of the nice Christmas traditions…

And having coffee… This was my morning coffee yesterday.

Our little drummer this Christmas has been a woodpecker who’s been drumming somewhere near in the daytime every day now.

The sky was changing fast for some minutes there yesterday, it had some interesting features… I was trying to capture at least something…

And having some more glögi… This, too, was yesterday. I was waiting for my hyacinths to open their flowers. 🙂

Happening today, some of the flowers have begun to open…

-Leena

Tag: coffee

Snow

Spring is coming [eventually]

March on

Winter… and winter sports fans

The national birdwatch 2018 in Finland & other things…

Wintry days & oh, deer

Christmas