Finnish tradition – Owlnature

Bad winter, baaad…

No permanent snow cover here in the southernmost part of Finland this winter – I guess it´s safe to say this now, at this point in time. Umm… so we already had ´the seventh snow´, ´the eighth snow´and ´the ninth snow´for this season here where I´m living. (At least these we´ve had, I may have forgotten ´one more snow´, but I can´t even count these anymore.) So a bit snow for a few days, a few centimetres of snow for two or three days, and so on… As it has been this winter. And then, again, fricking warm weather, temperatures above zero degrees Celsius, Rain… I am so fed up with this. And hey yes, it started to snow on Wednesday this week and now we have `the tenth snow´for this winter. A few centimetres of snow we Had. – It lasted until today, it´s Sunday today, and the snow is already melting.

The amount of snow in centimetres in Finland yesterday. Oh, the northern part of the country and Lapland…

The next four pics I took here in our home village on Friday evening when we were coming back from grocery store 🙂 :

By the lake Pyhäjärvi. Lit by our car, hmm… Some ice… an ice cover and snow on the lake for that time…

On the same spot, looking up… The moon was bright again!

Travelling in the woods… A bumpy road.

Ended up in an ice rink…

Yesterday, my morning coffee, snowman in the middle of the oak trees…

This was a week ago. We have not seen this before! The leaf buds have already begun to open in the bush, in late January!

And our small common hazel shrub has already begun to open its leaf buds….. This Picture I took yesterday.

Oh yes… This was on Wednesday late in the evening. This was my third time on skis this winter. Well, it took me a while, but I finally learned :-p that, this winter, whenever there´s enough snow, I gotta go cross-country skiing, immediately, in our yard. Just go!

Whoa! A eucalyptus sauna whisk, we had this for the first time last week. Usually we have Finnish birch sauna whisks, but now we wanted to try this eucalyptus (from Ukraine) whisk, because we found it for half the price in a local grocery store. And we loved it! The whisk was thick, the leaves were wonderfully long and they didn´t fall off. It was very good to hit yourself with it. And the scent when you split the leaves a bit and crush them in your hands is lovely. A nice and a rather exotic experience. 🙂

In these pictures… I believe this was our ´seventh´snow, in January this was. Well, this winter it does not matter what day it was or is now…

The last three pics I took today:

I started watching cross-country skiing again… Either watching cross-country skiing or dreaming of doing it…? :p

Green edibles growing in the kitchen.

Leena

Christmas lights~

Black Christmas – musta joulu. – No snow here in the southernmost part of Finland. Until yesterday – a tiny amount of snow here where I´m living. Very tiny. So it has been this “it´s what´s inside that counts” thing at Christmas this year. Yeah, well, we already did have our ´fourth snow´, too, for this season, here where I´m living, after the third one melted, a bit more snow for some days there was again, but it all melted just before Christmas…

Now some pictures:

These first two pictures I took on Monday. We have our first ever Christmas tree in this house. Love the atmosphere and the scent!

~Christmas tree and Christmas food, chocolate, coffee, glögi and watching television, Netflix, Finnish Yle Areena, etc. and enjoying the outdoors a bit and reading, thinking… Mostly. Between Christmas and New Year as well.

And the tree even has cones! It´s black spruce.

I´m not usually on the track, but when it´s Christmas Day, I am. There is a bit longer uphill part there on the track, not a steep one, but you can really feel that you go uphill, and I was just thinking “What the hell am I doing here Now?” But at the end of the track, it all started to feel just nice. 🙂

Two more on Christmas Day,, at night:

White Christmas… lights, on the lilac bush in our front yard.

Outside our living room.

And the snow then finally:

Yesterday morning. A pleasant surprise and this really makes a big difference! Our ´fifth snow´ for this season is this…

In the daytime, still no natural light yesterday.

Coffee pic yesterday.

Hyacinth, the scent…

Yesterday evening, here in our home village.

Pictures today:

Coffee pic by the rose bush Rosa Splendens, Valamonruusu.

It´s a colder day today, it´s -5 degrees Celsius, but they say that it feels like -11 degrees Celsius, now, around 11 am.

There was some natural light coming my way! 😀

Sunshine!

The days are already getting longer. The length of the day today, here where I´m living, is 5 h 32 min.

Leena

The next chapter

It’s… next year! Hmm… 🙂

First four pictures that I took in our yard yesterday, on New Year’s Eve:

A deer it was… I noticed these two days ago, and took this pic yesterday, before it started snowing in the evening.

One of yesterday’s many lights… It was snowing and it was windy. But very nice.

A candlelit sauna and from the sauna outside to walk barefoot in snow on the terrace and in the middle of the yard. And then back to sauna, and then do it again. I love how it feels! 🙂

So I watched one more Christmas film; The Polar Express (2004). I’ve tried to watch it, on two occasions, before – some years ago for the first time and again – was it at Christmas a year ago – I can’t remember anymore, but I fell asleep, on both occasions, already in the beginning of the film. – I was interested, but I was also very tired, obviously… So now I was determined to watch the film. And what a nice adventure it was! – And I’ve been just sleeping through it before… ;D

Another film I’ve watched after Christmas is Bird Box (2018 Netflix).

And two pictures that I took today, on New Year’s Day:

Amaryllis. I bought it yesterday, at half price at a local grocery store. I have to find a place for it in our living room, this is not the place, just taking a… hasty picture of two things that’s been happening. – I was watching the New Year’s Concert of The Vienna Philharmonic. I love watching it every year.

It’s been sleeting and water’s been dripping again today, but they say that it will be colder in the evening again and that it will snow. And they say that then it will be cold and sunny. Hmm…

On the broken couch… Happy New Year!

Leena

Holidays, holidays…

…continue, here at home. Now pictures from Thursday and today. Just relaxing…

I love the novel, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens! I read it, in English, for the first time 16 or 17 years ago. I’ve watched the film by Disney from the year 2009 many many times – I love the film as well. But I watched the film from the year 1984 for the first time on Thursday, and, well, I loved that, too. Spirit!

I’ve watched some other films, too, during these holidays, some of them are traditional Christmas films, for example; Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, The Snowman (1982), Krampus (2015), The Christmas Chronicles (2018 Netflix), Hocus Pocus (1993) [- was it Christmas or Halloween we just had…? 🙂 ]. And I’ve also watched some nature programmes and Finnish comedy Uuno Turhapuro on tv, for example. 🙂

Harry Potter. – First the book, then the film. 🙂 My next film is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which will be one of my New Year’s films, (I finished reading the book a bit over a week ago), and the next book is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (haven’t started it yet). I’m reading Harry Potter in Finnish now first, because the translation by Jaana Kapari is extraordinary!

This, too, is from where I watch television… The plant, the tree in the pic is weeping fig or ficus tree.

Some sunshine again today, but after Christmas it’s been warmer especially in the daytime. It hasn’t been raining, but the snow has been melting a bit and it’s been a bit… blurry out there.

Water was dripping from a bigger tree on me and on my camera as I took pics of my dwarf spruce and the winter lights…

Leena

Christmas, lights, flowers…

Now just pictures from Sunday, Tuesday and yesterday.

They were giving away these ‘bushes’, autumn plants with different colours, at a store, and I chose these three. The Ibiza lizard is covered in snow a bit.

From where I watch television and eat and drink coffee…

We made two ice lanterns for Christmas. I named this one a ‘Red-letter day’…

I was taking a picture of the sun yesterday. It’s was down there hiding behind the trees…

“Well, move!”, I said to myself. “It’s up to you, you know…” ;D

This year I have a pink poinsettia, not a red one. – It was a plan… 😉 I was waiting for some ‘direct sunlight’ to get the poinsettia look natural in a picture… the colours.

Well, hashtag nofilterneeded… Hyacinth. This year one of my hyacinths is a bit different, too. – It’s dark pink, not light pink.

I planted this dwarf spruce in the autumn. And I already have a picture of it on my Instagram without and with these Christmas or winter lights. Here it is in the dark, with the blue Christmas lights. – Blue winter lights, my dream…

And here’s another video from our trail camera, or animal camera that we had in my boyfriend’s forest. Night-time wanderers, moose! :

Leena

Christmas time

Many things to do… I had some interesting new working experiences – it had something to do with getting some traditional Finnish Christmas food into stores, and now it’s Christmas time… Hmm, we’re cleaning our home now, and so on…

My morning coffee today. So, the house is a bit of a mess. That cloth… back there in the picture, for example, is a curtain from our living room. The curtain has fallen down because its handle got loose. And our couch ‘fell down’, too, so we’re basically sitting on the floor now. And we must clean the tables and take the carpets outside and hoover the house, and… But hey, it’s the shortest day of the year today! 🙂

The next three pictures I took in our garden today:

December echinacea purpurea and peony — **Echinacea purpurea** or **purple coneflower** and **peony**…

We’ve had snow on the ground for many days now. And it’s snowing right now as well, and it’s -8 degrees Celsius, so we’ll have a white Christmas this year, too!

And here’s a video from our trail camera or game camera – I just call it an animal camera. We had the animal camera in my boyfriend’s land in the region of Etelä-Pohjanmaa – South Ostrobothnia. We brought the camera home for the winter. And here at home it was possible to get the videos to computer. We got some interesting and delightful videos. There were night-time wanderers… I’ll have a few videos here in my blog, too, so here’s the first one, a hare. 🙂 :

Leena

Independence Day

Today, on 6th December, is the Independence Day in Finland. – Our Suomi is 101 years old! 🙂

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in my home village today in the afternoon.

After the snowfall we already had… water, again, but after that it has been snowing again, just a little bit. – Business as usual.

Two pictures that I took in our garden today.

The next four pictures I took in my boyfriend’s land in the region of Etelä-Pohjanmaa – South Ostrobothnia, about 180 kilometres north from our home, on Monday this week.

Ice on the pond in the forest.

And a bit less than an hour later… Darkness falls early this time of year. But it’s actually pretty nice. – It’s beautiful. And nice for a bit adventurous soul. 😉

And it was me who drove all the way back home, it was dark and it was snowing. Well, it’s me who needs the practice, and I love it.

There’s stream flowing, in a ditch, near the pond. The lovely sound in the forest!

What to eat around the campfire? For example Karelian pies and pesto sauce. Karelian pasties or Karelian pies are traditional pasties in Finland – rye flour and rice porridge. The pesto sauce is Italian, with basil. A delicious combo… out there in the cold! And coffee…

-Leena