fruits – Owlnature

Autumn? And pears, grapes, flowers…

So it’s officially autumn in Finland. I can’t believe I just wrote that.

I was travelling in Eastern Finland with my boyfriend for two weeks, and I will have some pics from there here in my blog a bit later. I have most of the pics on my phone (and there are for example pics of our plums on my phone, too) and I have to find a way to get all the pics to my computer (I have no idea what I’m doing… ;D ) But I did post a few pictures on my Instagram (owlnatureleena). We even saw a tiny bit of Russia. 😀 – Where the country begins, so to speak.

hill Kipari, lake Keyritty, Rautavaara, Northern Savonia, Finland

So now only one pic from the trip. This was on a hill Kipari in the municipality of Rautavaara, in the region of Northern Savonia – Pohjois-Savo. The name of the lake is Keyritty. We stayed in Rautavaara. Such a lovely place.

The first ever pears from our garden! I didn’t have time to take pics of our small pear tree when it had all the pears, but I took a pic of the pears on a plate – all the pears had fallen down from the tree during our trip, they were ripe, and I just picked them from the ground. They were delicious! I made jam.

This year we have grapes, too! I took all these pictures of our grapes yesterday. We had a very little amount of grapes two years ago, but now we have quite a lot, well, relatively lot. They, too, taste so sweet…

The grape vine itself.

The rest of the pictures I took today:

I’m still very much immersed in my reading hobby. Now I’m even reading how to get organized, so this is getting pretty serious. ;p

We have a small patch of lovely little sunflowers. They are grown from our last winter’s bird seeds.

And echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower charm…

This is my “I’m about to finish this blog post” coffee in our greenhouse, with some tomatoes. 🙂

Hmm, in general, I feel like I have tons of things to do now, but it’s just nice, I guess… 😀

The summer flower bed…

Leena

Cherries, cucumbers, one bat, flowers (& friends)…

Just making some lists… :p

Okay, this is the first time ever that we have cherries in our garden.

The small cherry tree had 11 flowers and a few cherries. That was so nice!

The young bush cherry had many many flowers, and many cherries, too. And there are still fruits ripening in the bush. I didn’t know what to expect. 😀 Love them!

The first ever ‘open-field’ cucumbers from our garden.

And there’s more growing, this was yesterday. I planted only one plant, one stem, this stem in the pic. Just a delicious experiment…

Cucumbers in our greenhouse. Greenhouse cucumbers grow really well and are so delicious! We’ve already had several.

Two pics that I took yesterday evening when I closed the windows and the door in the greenhouse:

More cucumbers growing…

I wonder if these tiny ones will still grow…

We saw a bat, the first bat here for this year, on 30th July late in the evening. It was flying, flapping in our garden and in the woods.

Some flower pics that I took in our garden yesterday:

Clematis, by the oak tree.

Tricolor daisy and a friend.

Garden rose and a friend.

Red flax and a friend. Friends everywhere in the garden in August. 🙂

Lily

Sunflower

They come in August.

Good morning today:

With clarkia amoena or godetia flowers…

And a busy friend here as well. 🙂

A little bit of rain and then sunshine again. It’s nice when it rains a bit, it has been rather dry all summer again.

I Have to go to the library today and I should wash the car…

Leena

About some of the edibles in the garden

Today I’ll write a bit about some of the edibles in the garden right now. Here’s really only some of the edibles in the garden – about a few more a bit later…

This is the second time that we are growing sweet corn in our garden. Last summer our sweet corns grew from seedlings, these are grown from seed now. This summer has been very good for growing sweet corn here in Finland, it has been very warm and sunny.

The tallest plant is much taller than I am.

There are cobs growing in three plants or stalks, two cobs in each plant. We had several sweet corn stalks growing, but only three grew taller and are now growing cobs. Hmm, I’m still not sure how to talk about the different parts of the corn plants, how to call them, and not even in Finnish… :p But yeah, I’ll write about the harvest of our sweet corn then later. 🙂

Our potato patch this summer – new patch for potatoes this year again… We haven’t dug up any potatoes yet.

This is how our carrots grow this year; a raised garden bed with a wooden frame. Neat, no weeds.

Beetroot, parsnip and turnip. A raised bed with the frame as well. And we are growing all these three for the first time ever. We haven’t dug up beetroot and parsnips yet.

But we have dug up some carrots and turnips already. I used these in soup.

And we have only one tomato plant growing this year, we had more than one, but only this bears fruit. But yeah, the plant doesn’t look very good anymore. The nights can already be a bit colder, and a bit cold for tomato plants, but we still have warm days. The temperatures have been around 20 degrees Celsius in the daytime.

But there’s fruit turning red all the time now.

Our first ripe tomatoes this year. I will never stop wondering at the taste of home-grown tomatoes – they taste so sweet and amazing. 🙂

-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

About the fruit trees, new trees and a bush, an unidentified flower…

Our plum tree had last year (it was the first whole year for the tree in the garden) only one plum fruit, this year it has six! And what’s more, last year it had well over a hundred flowers, this year not many more than 20. Cool! 🙂

A nice fruit.

In July our grafted cherry tree started to grow a branch on its on. After that it has grown three more branches. What great balancing! 😉

The tree has grown further its ‘original’ branches as well.

A tree in progress…

A cherry bush now, too, we planted it next to the cherry tree last week.

And a pear tree, we planted it last week as well.

The pear tree has such flawless leaves!

EDIT: This could be gladiolus, miekkalilja in Finnish… I suddenly remembered this name, and it sure looked like gladiolus when I searched it. 🙂

An unidentified flower. – Yet another new flower for this autumn and we have no idea what this could be called. I tried to google it a bit, but no luck with that. It’s a fairly big plant, big flowers. We knew that something was planted in this spot, but didn’t believe that anything would bloom here this year.

Beautiful it is…

And another new tree. We planted this aspen tree the other day.

The autumn colour of the aspen trees is always so enchanting, bright, brilliant… And the sound of the aspen leaves quaking in the wind is lovely.

Populus tremula erecta is this tree.

I got a bit carried away with the colours… Well, autumn is once a year. 😉

-Leena

It is coming! – Spring is almost here…

It’s March… quite nice, almost incredible! Lately we’ve had snow and sunshine, grey days, temperatures below freezing and wet snow… everything. And we just may have been hit by the biggest snowfall for this winter earlier this week as well – here in southern Finland we sometimes have this too-much-snow-too-late-it-should-have-been-at-Christmas -thing… But yes, this week’s snow, too, has already been melting. No one’s stopping spring! 🙂

The first 13 pictures I took today, the last two are from last night.

Moss magic at the summer flower bed…

Backyard pine trees.

A clover flower…

A strawflower flower… power. 😉

An annual mallow flower…

…and another…

…a few more…

Perhaps I should plant annual mallow seeds, too, in many places in the garden this spring – then there would be some lace all around the garden in wintertime, how nice would that be? 😀

Double sun… 😉

An Egyptian friend…

At the potato field…

Even though the days may be warm, the nights can be a bit cold:

“I adjusted the thermostat so that it will be a bit warmer in here… is that okay…?”

“Purr… nice! I’m telling you…”
Our radiator tiger. 🙂

-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