flowers – Page 12

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

Sunshine and snow

The first snow has fallen. Snow – it feels soft to the touch and under one’s feet, but also makes the whole atmosphere everywhere soft, and magical. 🙂

The first three pics I took yesterday.

A garden bunny – a happy bunny.

And yet another wonderful thing about November; it’s the season of Spanish persimmons! Persimmons are one of my favourite fruits. They are so delicious, sweet, juicy, quite big… 🙂

The strawflowers meet snow now! 😀 They have closed their rustling petals…

Last Sunday, late in the evening, by the lake Pyhäjärvi. The fairly red half moon and the moon glade were just beautiful…

Still following the spiders…? Yes… I am… 😉

A cat paw print… whether it’s summer or winter, our cats enjoy getting outside.

The last pot marigold or calendula flowers today… 🙂

-Leena

Take it spooky or take it easy…

October is turning into November… it’s spooky time! I love spooky. I love horror films, and so on, and I love the darkness and silence here in the countryside… in the dead of night – it can feel creepy when you are alone out there… 🙂

Time to scare your own ghosts… 😉 I came across these kind of tissue ghosts on We Heart It and thought that they would be just perfect ones to make for this time of the year, for Halloween time. Just string, tissues and a pen – everything readily available at home. These ghosts are now hanging on our kitchen window.

We have had a couple of delightful, sunny days lately, on Saturday and today. The following pics I took on Saturday.

The white viola flower still there. 🙂

It’s still warm in the sunshine. I took this pic as I was sitting on the garden bench… first I had my morning coffee there, then, a bit later, my breakfast, and again, a bit later, I had my camera with me there.

Already waiting for snow, a bit. 🙂

A lantern outside again, late in the evening.

Frost in the morning, today.

“Follow the spiders.” ( – If you want to find anything… in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. )

We found some fluffy balls and wires in the grocery store, for making some spiders. 🙂

What happened…?

“Just take it easy, will you?”:

“I hope she understood what I was trying to say… Zzz…”:

-Leena

Dark & cold, cosy fires & lights, and creating dream home

The campfire owl here again… 🙂 We’ve had already many campfires in our garden this autumn, too, but I usually just relax and enjoy them without my camera or my phone, but on Friday, late in the evening, I had the inspiration for taking some pics, too. (A pic on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) as well.)

Campfires in the garden are a part of my, our, dream home…

So, we have lived in this house for almost two and a half years now. But I still had one part of my belongings in Turku – as I was going on and on here in my blog last summer. 🙂 But since the end of August it has been only this, our country home, for me… and I love it! But this has been quite far from my (or our) dream home; almost everything, every thing, is in the wrong place here inside our home, only like the bookshelf and drawers are in the right spots, there are many untidy and disorganized spots in our home, and partly, naturally, because I brought so many things and pieces of furniture from Turku as well, and so on, and so on… Creating our dream home here now is not about renovating (we have done that, too – more about it later, in some other blog posts, too) and creating our dream home is not, heaven forbid, about buying anything, oh dear… yes, maybe buying some new candles and even more houseplants, but nothing more now… Creating our dream home is now about organizing, tidying up and cleaning up our home – it’s “a bit” of chaos here now… and almost all of our large windows still are without curtains, just window blinds are there… But yes, the only way to start the project for me was, first emptying, then cleaning and organizing, our garage, which definitely is not a place for our car, but for other useful things. 😉

And when we had some room for big items in the garage after rearranging, we removed a big pile of long wooden boards from the middle of our kitchen – they were taking over one third of the floor space there, so we didn’t have a kitchen table and chairs there for a year and a half, or so. (We were renovating some ceilings and walls…)

I now have a tag creating dream home here in my blog, so I’ll be posting, with pics, too, about the project here and there…

Morning coffee yesterday. And a satsuma! It’s the season of Spanish satsumas again! So juicy and delicious, and cheap. 🙂

Under the oak tree…

The strawflowers again! 😀 And they are still opening and closing their rustling petals, with the days and nights…

Yesterday evening, now this was in my dream kitchen. 😉 – Finally the big pile of long wooden boards is out and the kitchen table and the chairs are there! And the table and the chairs are the ones I had already in Turku. 🙂 I’ve been dreaming of candlelights in the dark evenings in the kitchen… warm and cosy… And the light of the warm oven can be seen in the pic, too – I was waiting for home-made thin and crisp barley breads to become ready.

Living candlelights in lanterns outside in the dark… and this lantern can also be seen from the kitchen window when sitting at the table. 🙂

One more pic of the Friday evening’s campfire to end this blog post… and to celebrate the dark and cold, bewitching evenings and nights! 😉

-Leena

More October

Just some more October pics, from last weekend and past few days, in our garden…

In the backyard again…

October strawberry… In a pot. We thought this plant already died in the summer, but it started to grow again… but still ripe strawberries for this year…? – Not gonna happen. 🙂

One tough cornflower. I’ve been visiting this flower regularly during this autumn – and it’s just always there! It’s been facing downwards already for a while. But it’s still there. 🙂

Backyard trees again – more pine trees, two apple trees, a birch tree, a bigger rowan and one other yellow Norway Maple…

And one sturdy annual mallow! This flower hasn’t fully opened up, and it, too, has already been facing downwards, but it’s been there for ages. 😀

Some lovely yellow tiny flowers spotted in our carrot field…

Under our bigger oak tree…

Our smaller oak tree. 🙂

Dill, too, was still growing nicely in the ground, despite the cold at nights. Now I’ve picked most of them, some we ate, the rest are drying.

Still some tiny single viola flowers in the pots… Two of them in the pics here, symbols of boldness and strength – in the beginning, these plants were here and here. – Oh dear… 🙂

Some October fern…

My next blog post will be about growing tomatoes. 🙂

-Leena

October, October, October

I was eagerly waiting for October already at the beginning of September this autumn. – I was just so ready for everything autumnal; for colourful leaves, and… no leaves at all, dark evenings, campfires, cold nights, (campfires), the cool, crisp air on a sunny autumn day, raking, steaming hot coffee, tea, hot chocolate, glögi… outside in the crisp air, gloves, scarves and knit hats or pipos as we call knit hats in Finnish, I love the Finnish word pipo – it’s just perfect for the item. 🙂 And I was ready to start creating our dream home, here, in our home. – About this project more later, and some pics, too, when anything is ready… ;D

October 1st. I tried to make a flower crown with the natural spring and summer flowers that still were blooming in our garden, there were not that many of them anymore… 🙂 After taking this pic 12 swans flew over me, honking as they went.

October 2nd, pic above and pic below. A foggy morning. In the pic above our big Norway Maple.

This was at around 10 AM and after a moment it started to clear up… and all of a sudden the sun was shining in the clear blue sky!

Oh my… Oh, my new rubber boots! And the old ones, too! 😀 I took this pic as I was wearing my new rubber boots for the first time on Thursday last week. I just finally had to buy new rubber boots as my old ones had been leaking, both of them, already for over a year, now they are almost completely cracked – I’ve been storing them with care, but I’ve been wearing them A LOT here in countryside, even in sunny weather, because they are so comfortable. 🙂

The next eight pics are from Friday last week.

Our Norway Maple in sunshine.

Whatever happened to our sunflowers? Well, our biggest sunflower for this year is in the pic above… and I love it! 😀 And the tiny spider was feeling the same way! Okay, this year we know that the pre-growing of sunflowers has to be started earlier. 🙂

And these… I still don’t remember what these flowers are called. They are summer flowers grown from seed in summer. Very tough flowers – they are still there in our garden today – cosmos flowers already got frostbitten, badly. EDIT: This flower is clarkia or godetia, silkkikukka in Finnish. Thanks for the answer, A! 🙂

Pot marigolds or calendulas are sturdy autumn flowers as well. Still there.

In our backyard, a smaller Norway Maple and its friends: three pine trees, a rowan and two junipers.

On a bridge above the Kauttuankoski rapids, going for a walk, at around 7 PM, it was about to get dark soon.

The bridge down there, in the pic above. The lamp posts were already lit. And the lovely scent of dry leaves around everywhere…

In our front yard today. Who’s raking? – Me! When the time is right. 😉

And the strawflowers are still standing there with their rustling petals today!

-Leena

Summery September

Still all summery, warm. I’m actually already ready for everything autumnal, but… it will happen soon enough… again… 🙂 So now some flower power! Again! 😀 I took these pics yesterday and today. Some of the flowers are old friends – flowers that have been in my blog already in summer, but here’s also some new flowers, a bit late blooming, and I took pics of them only just today – flowers with a bit more autumnal colours…

First the strawflowers and tiny marigolds. The tall strawflowers are very sturdy flowers! I wouldn’t have believed they are still standing. 🙂 And the rustling petals have been very tough, too!