It’s March! – Well, that was fast… Ready for spring? – Maybe. 🙂
The first pictures in this blog post I took on Thursday. We visited TheBotanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island, in the city of Turku (our former home!). That was so nice. I took only a few pictures, but here’s something green anyway:
The jungle welcomes you.
And something yellow… There were lemons!
And bananas! Okay, bananas were my favourites and I already have a picture of these on my Instagram. You don’t always see bananas there.
This is what I always call a trunk with attitude. 🙂 A kapok tree. And are those… taro leaves…?
And a few pictures that I took today:
From the garden bench.
..That’s the place to sit, whenever the sun is shining.
Snow, snow… and the composter in our garden ‘exploded’, a bit.
Coffee… and yes, this is what I’m doing right now, and have been doing lately – I’ve been watching cross-country skiing again. 🙂 This time it has been, of course, the Nordic World Ski Championships in Seefeld in Tirol, Austria.
First we had more snow and then it was snowing, and then it was snowing again… We had around half a metre of snow here where I’m living. And it was cold. And then it was warmer. And then it was raining… a lot! And then snowing again a bit and the sun’s been shining lately as well, and it’s been a bit warmer again, and the days are much longer… And it’s been very slippery. So all this… Well, business as usual. We still have over 20 centimetres of snow on the ground. And I got shingles about a week ago (it’s pain in the back…) – whatever does that predict…? But it’s beginning to feel a bit like spring outside. And I’m not ready for spring yet, yikes! 😮 ( 🙂 )
This is the third stem of my amaryllis. This had four flowers. The stem grew super tall, the four flowers opened and the plant fell down. I had to cut the stem and put it into a vase.
As there is nothing more to report now, let’s have another moose video… Again in my boyfriend’s forest, or this is the field in the video, the camera is in the forest.
It was sunny and it was windy on Friday, and a lot of snow fell from the wintry trees that we had… We had some sunshine yesterday, too, but today, now it’s already snowing a bit, and they say that it will continue to snow. – Now that is what I really like! Right now, because it’s January! 🙂
Late in the afternoon on Friday.
The next four pictures I took already on Saturday a week ago:
Never before have we seen so many deer tracks in our yard. – We have seen deer tracks often in our garden this winter. The animals are night-time wanderers, but we saw a ‘herd’ of three deer once, early in the morning, and a couple of deer in the daytime.
On Saturday a week ago there were many deer tracks in our yard, first I thought there had been two deer, but then I kept finding new tracks, and it looked like there had been at least three deer. Well, that was our strawberry patch in the pic above – that was the first time that deer had actually been doing something in our garden – digging and eating and it looked like one had been lying down there. Deer oh deer…
Some prints and tracks that I found:
A deer hoof print and a cat paw print.
A deer hoof print and a cat paw print side by side. – A nice coincidence. 🙂 Deer hoof prints that we see here are usually quite small…
…but then I found these tracks – the hoof prints looked a lot bigger… “What was that? – The devil has been in our backyard?”, I thought to myself. ;D
Now pictures that I took yesterday:
Amaryllis. Always majestic… And the scent is lovely and delicate!
My amaryllis had three flowers in the first stem, this is now the second stem, and it has four flowers, the flower in the picture is the first one that’s fully opened. Just marvellous.
Now just one pic of our new house plant, staghorn fern or elkhorn fern. Hopefully it won’t dry out… An interesting plant!
I went for a walk barefoot from the sauna again on Friday night, twice. I had only a towel around me and the snow and the chilly wind felt very nice. Comfortable enough – meaning one can do it without hesitation…
Our cats’ mother, the mother cat, came to live with us – that’s something new and nice as well. We travelled to Central Finland to get her on Monday this week. We had seen the mother cat only once before, very briefly, almost four and a half years ago and we didn’t remember how she actually looked like, so that was an interesting surprise for us, too, when we saw her on Monday. 🙂
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…
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! :
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…
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. 🙂
