Finnish tradition – Page 2

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

Snow, garden birds, swans calling in the darkness, the shortness of the day…

It started to snow here where I’m living late in the evening on Saturday, and on Sunday we had many separate snowfalls. It was a surprise, a very pleasant one, because the snow that we had on Independence Day had already melted away earlier. But it wasn’t that cold – around 0 degrees Celsius and -1 degrees Celsius at the lowest. Yesterday, on Monday, we had eight centimetres of snow and it was a bit colder. Today it has been as cold as yesterday and we have pretty heavy snowfall, as promised. 🙂 It has been snowing all day.

The first four pictures I took yesterday.

A snow cat it was.

One of our rose bushes still had some leaves yesterday. The sun was shining low…

About the length of the day… or about the shortness… Today, here where I’m living, the sun rose at 9.35 AM and the sun sets at 15.14 PM – the length of the day is 5 h 39 min. It starts to get lighter again on Friday next week. 🙂

Now we have two feeding spots for wild birds in our garden. This is the new one. We’ve had great tits, blue tits, sparrows, a couple of blackbirds and a great spotted woodpecker.

I’ve heard swans calling many times lately – I’ve been standing in our garden, in the darkness, and I’ve heard the sounds of swans – they’ve been flying somewhere near and some swans have been honking by/on the lake, I think.

It’s the glögi season again! My glögi last night in the pic above. I’ve already drunk some litres of it this season. It’s delicious and nicely warming.

What is glögi? – I wrote this a year ago: Glögi is a traditional, hot and spiced drink. It’s mainly a Christmas (and pre-Christmas) drink in Finland. It can be translated as mulled wine. However, not all the glögi drinks are like wine – alcoholic drinks – some are, but, actually, we drink a lot of juice glögi in Finland, so… glögi is… glögi in Finland. As a non-alcoholic drink it’s some fruit or berry juice, hot and spiced. This one that I’m having is grape, blackcurrant and blueberry juice, spiced with cinnamon, bitter orange peel, cloves, cardamom and ginger – all the traditional Christmas or winter spices. Glögi can be bought ready-made – that’s probably why the juice glögi is so popular.

The rest of the pictures I took today.

Just love, lovely. A wish for Christmas.

This is some wintry December now, but we do have these changing weather conditions here in the southern part of Finland, so, let’s just enjoy this, for now, for a while… 🙂

At the moment we have almost 20 centimetres of snow on the ground, it definitely is the snow record for this season here where I’m living. And last winter, no, no, we didn’t have this much snow, no… So, “go, go… go outside!”, I must say to myself today. Still more snow coming down all the time now.

-Leena

Finland 100 years old tomorrow, a few December pictures…

Tomorrow, on the 6th of December, is the Independence Day and our Finland, our Suomi is 100 years old. Congratulations Finland and thank you! – Onnea Suomi ja kiitos! 🙂

The December full moon, the supermoon on Sunday. Not a perfect picture, but kind of fascinating. The moon was so bright, magical. It lit up our garden. It was so nice that the sky wasn’t all clouds.

The second part of November was a bit more grey, rainy, dark… the fifth season… But we had a bit of sunshine as well. And some snow, too, for the second time this season, but the snow, of course, melted away again after two days.

Sunshine, viola and her pearls, frozen water droplets, in the garden yesterday. This is a strong plant! It still has several flowers like this one in the picture. Never before have we had fresh flowers in the garden in December…

Today again, some snow on viola… It started to snow a bit last night and it has snowed a bit today, they say that it will snow some more tonight and they say that tomorrow we should have some sunshine again, too, but after that… water again, as one might guess… But the most important thing is that we have snow now. 🙂

Hawthorn berries.

And our strawberry patch.

-Leena

Growing tomatoes this year & some bird related things

The story about growing tomatoes this year… It is a short story, very short… so short, that I already wrote it on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) a while ago.

My precious… The summer this year was not very good for growing tomatoes outside in the garden here in Finland. But some tomatoes did grow! We can still, in November, eat tomatoes that have grown in our garden. So… it’s not that bad after all. 🙂

We had only few bigger tomatoes, but many smaller ones. And again, they had to be taken inside the house for ripening. They were ripening on a plate in the kitchen, for weeks. Home-grown tomatoes always taste so incredibly sweet! They are just perfect.

And some bird related things… I found something that is over 20 years old, something that I missed – something that I thought I had lost forever…

My pendant, my bird! 🙂 I did not believe that this still was somewhere, somewhere safe… but yes, I found this at my childhood home, (where else!). A bronze pendant necklace called Tintti, made in Finland by Kalevala Jewelry. The stone is hand-painted ceramic.

Okay, I found these; my Tintti with its original box and another bronze pendant necklace by Kalevala Jewelry as well. Another bird! A bird called Tampereen seudun lintu, as old as my Tintti, but I didn’t remember that I even had it.

So, I had these in my childhood. I am so happy to have found them! My treasures… I think that these, too, will be in my pictures every once in a while. 🙂 I love jewelry and it can be seen in my blog…

And something I made over the weekend… I was knitting a bit, testing this rainbow yarn that I have. 🙂 At this point in time, another owl. My design – my problems – more fun in the end. I think he needs some fur around his beak…

-Leena

Two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland

I spent two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland, in the municipality of Rautavaara in the region of Northern Savonia, in August and in September. It’s my boyfriend’s home region and I was travelling with him and our two cats. His family has an old house there in Rautavaara, no one lives in the house anymore, it’s just for summertime visits nowadays, and that’s the place we stayed as well. It’s always about an eight hour’s drive from our home to Rautavaara, and the same back of course. – Always worth the travel.

I didn’t take pictures of, like, everything, but naturally I did ‘get caught up in some things’, and the result is this blog post here now. 🙂 I also took some pictures for our, mine and Owlnature‘s, Instagram (owlnatureleena), and the real Instagram widget has, by the way, (finally :p ) been on the sidebar of my blog for some time now as well.

By the lake Keyritty, just outside the centre of Rautavaara. It was a summery day. So calm, beautiful… just stunning! And it was completely silent here and everywhere we went. 🙂

There were many dragonflies flying and enjoying the sunshine by the house on many days. Here’s two of them.

By another lake on some other day. This is called Tiilikanselkä.

There are actual creeks in the forest, I’m not sure if this is one of them, or is this just some ditch…? Beautiful water areas in the forests, too, anyway.

I went mushroom hunting and all I could find was poisonous monkshood. ;p In this one forest I found monkshood in the wild for the first time.

But we did find a lot of mushrooms, too, during our trip. Here’s one penny bun mushroom or cep or porcino/porcini or boletus edulis mushroom…

And here’s our biggest amount of yellowfoot mushrooms or winter mushrooms or funnel chanterelles or cantharellus/craterellus tubaeformis mushrooms…

In addition to cooking with mushrooms we enjoyed bilberries (or blueberries), lingonberries and crowberries in the forests.

Another lake again. I was on a ridge. There are lakes on either side of the ridge. And there are many ridges in Rautavaara area, fairly small, beautiful… with lakes, forests and swamps.

A creek in the forest, so clear you can see the bottom.

By Tiilikanselkä again, we went there actually three times during our trip. 🙂

And river flows…

…and flows. Until next time. 🙂

-Leena

At the cabin in Kuusamo II

Now the second blog post about my trip to Kuusamo. The first one can be found here. I’ve visited Kuusamo and our cabin there ever since my childhood. This time I travelled with my dad. Cabin or cottage is called mökki in Finnish. Mökki is a highly important thing for many many Finns. Often the mökkis are somewhat modest. We, for example, have no running water there.

The first 22 pictures in this blog post I took at our cabin, the last four pictures I took on the way back home.

Blue fleabane or bitter fleabane is growing wild beside the cabin. In fact, our cabin yard is the only place where I’ve seen these flowers so far. 🙂

Beard lichen or beard moss again.

Red moss. I’ve seen red moss in two spots in the cabin woods so far.

There were some arctic bramble or arctic raspberry flowers in the woods as well.

By the creek again.

And… welcome to the woods:

Cup lichen, right in front of the cabin. Cup lichen is called torvijäkälä in Finnish, literally: horn lichen. So in Finnish we don’t see them as cups, but as horns, the musical instruments. 🙂

An old shed.

Dwarf cornel or bunchberry or Swedish cornel or Lapland cornel or Eurasian dwarf cornel flowering by the creek.

I was attacked by mosquitoes when I took this pic, because it was already late in the evening then. There’s a lot of mosquitoes there in the north in summertime, at our cabin, for example, especially late in the evening and in the woods. Mosquitoes in Finland are not dangerous, just a nuisance. 🙂

A trEEe…

Wood cranesbill or woodland geranium was flowering now there in the north. We have a lot of wood cranesbill beside the cabin road…

…and in different colours as well…

…and by the creek, too.

A throne in the woods. You can imagine how delighted I was to find this in the woods some years ago. 😉 This nature’s sculpture endures the northern winters there really well. It must have been there for ages.

At peace.

A common blue butterfly. We were both regularly there beside the cabin. 🙂 The colour of the butterfly was marvellous…

The underside of the butterfly wing.

Reindeer on the road on our way southward. There was lots of reindeer there on the road in many places, here’s just a couple of pics. One has to be very careful when driving there in the north. – Reindeer live the slow life there. 😉

Hiljainen kansa, The Silent People in Suomussalmi, in Kainuu region, about a two-hour drive south from Kuusamo. A nice and atmospheric place to stop by and take a rest. The Silent People is the creation of local artist Reijo Kela. And the clothes are changed twice a year; summer clothes and winter clothes. There’s a Field Café, too. And during the summer months they make there crispy-edged crêpes on open fire and campfire coffee as well.

“People often ask what precisely is the idea behind the Silent People. A state of psychological withdrawal? The mute Kainuu soul? A forgotten people? Reijo Kela refuses to provide any answer. Viewers are free to come to their own conclusions. It may, however, be of interest to learn that if the Silent People were to be completely undressed there would remain some one thousand wooden crosses standing in the field.” -The Silent People -leaflet & suomussalmi.fi
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And yes, I’m already longing for the cabin again! 🙂

-Leena

At the cabin in Kuusamo I

I travelled to our (my parents’) cabin last week. The cabin is located in Kuusamo, in Koillismaa region in northern Finland. It is, naturally, one of my favourite places on earth. It took 12 hours and 10 minutes to travel there by car through the western and middle parts of Finland, and 11 hours to travel back home through the eastern and middle parts of Finland. – It’s always a long journey. But truly worth the travel! 🙂

I have pictures for two blog posts. I took all the pictures in this blog post at our cabin, in the woods, by the lake.

The stars were still on the ground there in the north! – Chickweed wintergreen flower or arctic starflower flower. These flowered already a month ago in our home woods here in the south. It was so nice to see these flowers again, for the second time this year! 🙂

And lilacs were also flowering there! – It was very nice indeed to travel there in the town and to look out of the car window, and admire the bushes for the second time this summer…

The nights naturally were lighter up there in the north as well. Today, for example, the length of the day is 17 hours and 2 minutes here where I’m living and in Kuusamo it is 18 hours and 33 minutes.

Northern Finland. – The land of reindeer, too! Reindeer is a regular visitor in our cabin woods as well. Or actually, the animals live there and I’m the one visiting our cabin. ;D This guy came back many times during the daytime there.

Heeere we go!

See you!

The days were warm up there during my visit, around 20 degrees Celsius and a bit above.

Black-throated diver or arctic loon was calling there on the lake. The voice is just haunting: “Kwee-kow, kwee-kow, kwee-kow…!” – very far-carrying and wonderful! And, like, moving… it makes you feel that you are somewhere special. The voice of the clear lakeland. 🙂

Some of the tall and old trees in the cabin woods… And the scent of labrador tea or wild rosemary was very intense and lovely…

There’s also a creek flowing. In our woods, like here in the picture above, the flowing of the creek is very slow, but the sound of the fast flowing of the creek can actually be heard, and it can be heard really well, in our cabin yard. Two years ago I went and searched the source of the sound with my boyfriend, and we managed to find it – some parts of it – the woods and the land there were really bushy. 🙂

Beard lichen or beard moss in the trees means that the air is clean! We, too, have a lot of it everywhere in the cabin woods.

A treasure – a cloudberry, still unripe – too bad. 🙂 The gold in the forests – cloudberries – are valuable delicacies. We would have some ripening in our cabin woods right now… buuut I’m here at home now…

The second blog post about my visit to Kuusamo coming a bit later.

-Leena