It has been snowing a bit more since yesterday. I went for a walk by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village today, and took some pictures. We must enjoy this weather now. 🙂
Ice and snow… and the sun was shining brightly!
Just ‘hiding behind stuff’… 😀
And I took two pictures in our garden as well:
Afternoon sun.
-Leena
The first two pictures I took in our garden yesterday.
In the November sunshine…
The Finnish autumn came for the bougainvillea – for my ‘mini Spain’ long ago…
The next five pictures I took in our garden today.
It has been snowing a bit, just a little bit.
A common poppy pod.
So this is ‘the second snow’ for this season…
Leaves of a rose bush.
It’s -3 degrees Celsius right now, at around 14.15 pm.
And these last two pictures I took today as well. I’ve been watching cross-country skiing again. The Cross Country World Cup has began in Ruka, Kuusamo, here in Finland this weekend.
And I’ve been watching this competition and making this blog post at the same time – combining two hobbies. 🙂
-Leena
We collected acorns in October.
First these…
…and then these – about 300 acorns in total. Some of the acorns were already sprouting, lovely. 🙂 We collected them from the ground, under big oak trees, here in our home village.
The first two pictures I took in October, the rest of the pictures in this blog post I took today.
So, we planted the acorns in our garden, here…
…and here.
And we also collected some acorns for the land that my boyfriend now has in the region of Etelä-Pohjanmaa – South Ostrobothnia, about 180 kilometres north from our home, that is to say, we already planted the acorns there, into the forest ground. There’s a certain spot or place, an island actually, where broad-leaved trees are growing in the forest, but there are no oak trees, not yet…
So, this is all an experiment, with these acorns, just nice and interesting.
I collected spruce cones, too. These were on the ground in our yard, on the driveway. We don’t have big spruce trees, but there are spruces just outside our yard. I started to collect these just because I think that they are lovely, but my boyfriend said that we could try to get seeds from these as well. Well, that’s a good idea, an interesting experiment, too. The cones have been drying inside the house now.
And I was shoveling compost, emptying a compost bin a bit today. We have this year-round composter for kitchen (and garden) waste.
We shovel the compost into this container, where the process continues, and in the end, it all goes back to nature again. 🙂
-Leena
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
The first six pictures I took in our garden yesterday.
Our red oak is red, strikingly red, this autumn. 🙂
Birch tree & maple tree, again… I got a bit carried away with these two, they are both fabulously yellow, golden, this autumn.
Two pictures that I took by the lake today:
By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village.
And I already wrote earlier that we are growing parsnips, too, for the first time ever, this year. I’ve made roasted parsnips twice, this was last night:
I used only salt and pepper and olive oil. And I don’t peel the parsnips.
Parsnip has a lovely nutty and aromatic flavour, it’s one of my favourite vegetables, best from the oven. 🙂
-Leena
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
Garlic! 🙂 This is the first time that garlic has grown in our garden. – We’ve tried to grow garlic once before, but nothing really happened then…
Now, all of a sudden, we have both smaller and bigger garlics. They are marvellous! I love the smell and taste of garlic and I eat small amounts of raw garlic, too.
We used some of our onions fresh from the garden, but the rest of the onions we dried, because they were pretty small. There are both yellow onions and red onions. Dried onions are delicious as well.
Here’s our fruit and vegetable dryer. A nice machine. The scent of onion, for example, was wonderful when the onions were drying in there.
This year we tried to grow zucchini for the first time ever. Well, actually, we weren’t trying that hard, we didn’t pay that much attention to this try. Here in the pic is our biggest oddball, our smaller zucchinis didn’t have the time to grow bigger before the weather got a bit colder.
And another try… My broad beans… In a raised garden bed with wooden frames these were.
I didn’t get that many broad beans, but some broad beans anyway, and I want to try growing them again next year! 🙂
About the sweet corn… We’ve got more sweet corn now than a year ago. 🙂
And we are drying some sweet corn, too, for seeds, hopefully.
I’ll write about a couple of edibles in the garden a bit later again.
-Leena