Finnish tradition – Page 3

Snow & Vappu – the last day of April in Finland

It’s the last day of April and we are celebrating Vappu here in Finland. Vappu, May Day, First of May, May 1st… the main thing is to celebrate spring!

I wrote about Vappu already a year ago, here. 🙂 And this is just one example how the Vappu weather, actually the whole spring weather can vary here – the spring has been slow this year, as I wrote already in my previous blog post – we’ve been, like, at a standstill a bit, already for some time now. It truly can be seen in the garden and in nature…

I took the picture above and the next two pictures at around 21.30 PM yesterday. It was snowing again, and we had a garden campfire, too.

Despite the weather a robin bird was chirping beautifully, but only for a while – on previous nights it has been singing much longer. And a woodcock was on its regular flight as well: “orr, orr, orr, pist!” 🙂

The garden campfire… but what about the traditional homemade Vappu delicacies this year – I wrote about them last year, here. We do have sima fermenting, but those munkkis I bought at a grocery store, with a bit of discount. And, by the way, we have no balloons this year.

The picture above and the next five pictures I took this morning.

Christmas trees… 😮

What is that? – That’s the sky clearing up a bit.

And it should be clearing up… :p This in the picture above is the first part of our vegetable garden – there ought to be growing for example some early carrots, early peas and garlic in the summer…

It has been snowing again as I’ve been writing this blog post, but the sun has tried to shine as well, and it is 2 degrees Celsius at the moment…

Leena

Leaves coming out

I took all the pictures today. First some birch leaves that are growing inside the house now. I wrote about my birch twigs in the previous blog post .

Pure green. Pure love.

And the happymins! 🙂 And naturally I already tasted one of the tiny leaves… it tasted so fresh, so green, so lovely…

This is so inspirational, too…

Yesterday we noticed that rhubarb is coming through again. 🙂

And these, too. We have no idea what these are… They grow in a place where we put some of the leftovers in our garden – leaves after raking them and some ‘surplus soil’ when we are digging somewhere in our garden and we have to remove some land. Hmm…

Some of the leaves of the lilac bushes have almost started to come out as well. Already in the winter I noticed that the buds were very swollen! I was almost a bit worried about that. 🙂 But yes, this bush is in a really sunny spot all year round.

-Leena

Spring comes by doing, too

It’s a sunny day today. Lately we’ve had sunshine, but some cloudy, even foggy days as well. Last Friday when I woke up in the morning, it was white everywhere… we had snow, but only during the first half of the day – during the other half of the day the sun was shining, and the snow melted away fast.

My morning coffee today. 🙂

The air, too, has already become a bit warmer, the wind can still be a bit cool though – in the shade…

We have seen swans flying and heard them honking almost every day for some time now. It has been lovely… And one night when we had a campfire in our garden we heard the haunting calls of cranes and the delightful voice of the blackbird. Oh, spring… And on another night, when we had a garden campfire again, we heard some very loud voices of swans and other waterfowls from the lake Pyhäjärvi near our home. It lasted for hours, and we even heard some flapping of wings and splashing of water – we can’t remember hearing the sounds of the lake water before, in our garden. 🙂

And we have started digging in our garden… This is just one, a bit bigger example – this we’ll be doing a lot this spring – helping the rain water to flow away from the house and away from some places from our garden lawn as well…

I’ve been moving, for example, rocks, from the other side of our garden to other side, here. There’s still many more to go, some are still frozen to the ground on the other side. And these here in the picture I’ll pile in some way, and so on…

And it was already high time to get some birch twigs, to make the leaves grow inside the house. These are my first for the spring… and the last, too – I’m rationing every spring these twigs; I’m not like grazing, but getting just a little something for the promise of the spring, or the summer! And a little something for some additional vitamins then, too, and for some… happymins – happymins could also mean that it’s more about the feeling than the amount – as I said already last year with my birch twigs… 😉

—

“But I don’t always want to know about the sunshine!”:

“This. Is my new house…”

“Just for your information…”

Okay. 🙂

-Leena

Sauna & snow

Just a brief thought on the traditional combination of sauna and snow. It’s nice to take some snow with you when you are taking a sauna bath. I did it yesterday evening, for example. And as with the birch leaves in summertime, I like rubbing it, the snow, against my skin and my face, too, taking a bath with it. It’s cool and very nice indeed! Relaxing and healthy! Sauna earthing… And, naturally, it’s nice to walk from the sauna barefoot, on the snow outside, cool down a bit, and then go back to the warmth of the sauna again – just lovely! Good for your blood circulation. 😉

Of course you can roll naked in the snow. It, too, actually feels nice, but it takes some courage to start doing it. I haven’t done it this winter. Okay, perhaps I should now challenge myself to do it, there might still be time to do it this week… I dare myself to… (?) 😀

As to “there might still be time”; it is happening again, out there… the snow is melting a bit again… But at least spring is just around the corner, soon. 🙂

-Leena

Hyacinths – favourite flowers this time of the year & have some glögi

Hyacinths are traditional, popular and well-loved Christmas plants or flowers in Finland. And they have been my favourites ever since my childhood.

It’s the scent! The lovely and nostalgic scent of the Christmastime! The hyacinth in these pics is my first hyacinth for this year. The adorable scent started to appear on Tuesday. 🙂

Naturally the look of hyacinths is charming and lovable, too…

…many tiny flowers, and some colour yellow as well! 🙂

The flowers speak for themselves…

And it’s the time for glögi! :

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. 🙂

I think there will be still more glögi and hyacinths in my blog and on my Instagram over the next few weeks… 🙂

-Leena

Rainwater, birch leaves, sauna earthing…

It was time to go to sauna again yesterday evening. And it was the first time that we had fresh birch twigs in sauna this spring. And I had some rainwater, too…

I was lucky enough to get the last rainwater that fell from the sky yesterday before the sun started to show up. 🙂 I love having some fresh rainwater in sauna, I actually should have it there just a little more often. Skin and hair likes it. And you feel so much closer to nature when you use water from the sky. More reviving, calming, relaxing… so delightful. It’s the feeling, too! 🙂 And rainwater saves you money. And water, for the world as well.

Oh, the scent of the fresh birch leaves in sauna! And the feeling, as with the rainwater. And the fresh leaves, too, are good for your skin. I love taking a real bath: rubbing some leaves against my skin, having some leaves on my face, burying my face into the leaves, smelling them… hitting myself with the twigs a bit – that’s what we Finns always do… And it’s all heavenly, healthy, also good for your blood circulation. If there’s some insect poop there in the leaves, despite rinsing them, it doesn’t matter, I mean, because you’re a witch anyway! 😉

I also had some more earthing (getting some good energy from the ground), walking from the sauna barefoot on the cold grass. And one of our two cats, the black with white markings, came to goof around, too. 🙂

The place where we got our birch twigs yesterday. An abandoned railway near our home.

And we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi on a rainy day, last Sunday. Under an alder tree and its leaves, catkins and cones.

-Leena

Campfires and delicacies

So, the campfire people, too, were celebrating vappu on Saturday…

In our garden late in the evening. We had a campfire also on Sunday night. I love it how every campfire is different and the fire itself is constantly changing. Staring at fire is one of the most relaxing things I know… and the warmth at cooling night-time is nice, too.

And the food… Just a pic of campfire marshmallows I had.

Some more delicacies… this is the second chili pepper that we have eaten now, this was yesterday night just before dinner – I was so hungry that I wasn’t able to take a better pic… just needed to have my potatoes… 🙂

Our chili peppers are a bit burning, but delicious. Eating just half the pepper is enough, which is quite good – one pepper for two people… and our chilies are not even that hot types of chili peppers. But they burn nicely. 🙂

And… today I took pics of the real traditional homemade vappu delicacies; this is munkki – like a doughnut ball, simply a ball (mine is a kind of a ball 🙂 ) of wheat flour spiced with ground cardamom and deep-fried in oil and then rolled in sugar. A sin. 😉

And here’s some traditional homemade sima. Sima is a Finnish slightly fermented lemon drink, sweet and sparkling. There’s water, white sugar, brown sugar, the flesh of a lemon, the rind of a lemon, a very tiny piece of yeast and raisins.
To be honest, our sima is still kind of fermenting, but this already tastes like the real deal. And sima is a fresh and good drink for the whole summer as well. And it’s not supposed to be an alcoholic beverage, sima is suitable for children, too. 🙂

-Leena