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At a standstill…?

The weather has been cold all the time for some time now here in Finland. Today they said that the spring has come to a standstill now… Yeah, we’ve noticed that… We’ve had some snowing, sleeting or hailing, cold winds, or even a bit crazy winds, or something like that… every day now, but the sun has been shining for a while, and right after almost every time that it has snowed, sleeted or hailed.

And I’ve seen that in some parts of Europe it has been even worse; so much snow, frost, severe frost, frost damages, frost protection with fire buckets in the vineyards for example. Oh no, sometimes it’s more about survival…

This was the first coltsfoot of the spring for me this year! 🙂 By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region, on Friday. ‘By the lake’ means really close, this close:

The lake is free of ice! And the waves are there as well! 😀 The wind was pretty strong on that day, too…
But yes, when I first saw, a bit over a week ago, from the car window, the blue lake again after the winter, on a sunny day, it really looked like out of a fairytale… and magic! 🙂

After a few steps I found more coltsfoot flowers, here’s just two of them…

I haven’t seen coltsfoot flowers anywhere else yet…

After hailing yesterday. It hailed and sleeted many times yesterday… I also went outside to see the dancing of the tiny snow balls when they hit the ground and the huge, but a bit wet, snowflakes – how could they be so big…

Don’t go chasing waterfalls…? 😉

My peonies today. Hmm… they are a bit smaller than exactly a year ago…

And my first ever yellow hyacinth… it’s outside now, and oh, the scent! – The scent is a bit different than the scent of the hyacinths at Christmas time. The scent of this yellow hyacinth is… yellow, a bit green… like spring!

And the viola (no pics now) has been outside now, too. It has a bit damaged flowers now, but some flower buds as well.

-Leena

Snow, spring flowers – waiting…

The Easter weather is quite cold here in Finland! I wasn’t paying attention to the weather forecasts on Wednesday, and yesterday morning I had a big surprise waiting for me when I woke up: snow! And so much of it! It was white everywhere.

This was our viola yesterday morning… she had come here only the day before…

White, white. *Brr…*

Most of the snow melted during the daytime yesterday, but there still is some snow on the ground today.

And now our viola is inside the house, waiting… Hopefully some more pictures of this plant a bit later, outside…

Now I have it! 😉 – My first ever yellow hyacinth, and this also is my first ever springtime hyacinth! – Hyacinths have traditionally been mostly Christmas plants or flowers in Finland, and for me, too. Hopefully more pictures of this plant, too, later…

I took the next five pictures on our regular walk yesterday.

It started to snow again.

It was snowing and the sun tried to shine at the same time. – Spring has definitely arrived in Finland! 🙂

And the snowflakes were huge. It was actually really fun!

The sunshine disappeared, but after a moment again:

Spring, oh, spring!

But remember to keep your paws (and head? 😉 ) warm!:

…our tiger has a suggestion how to do it…

-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

The first green in the garden (& the first vid)

We’ve had sunny days, but still waiting for some crazy winds to calm down. But the sunshine warms…

…and the colour yellow is taking over, gradually.

Juniper berries in our garden. Juniper berries are cones, berry-like cones, not real berries.

The first green in our garden for this spring is leopard’s bane or doronicum, its small leaves. I already had a picture of these on my Instagram, a week ago. 🙂

Still so tiny… the leaf…

And some new dimensions to Owlnature. I created a YouTube channel, not actually to have a channel, but to have a super easy way to add videos, my own videos, to my website. I’m not saying that I’m necessarily adding quality (high definition videos), but I hope that I can add… some new dimensions; some feeling, some sound… things like that. I’ve never uploaded videos to YouTube before, but I’m not afraid to start now. 🙂 Perhaps I’ll try my phone, too, but this video is taken from my camera. So, this is my first ever YouTube video, raw and rough. 😉 (But at least one can hear some sounds of birds, too, in the video). But just to get started… I was sitting on the garden bench at about 18.30 PM yesterday as I was filming this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIEtu5vMmPA

-Leena

Hoot… no, tweet… maybe :)

Today a few pictures from sunny yesterday. We’ve had some sunshine already today as well, but some hailing, too. – Spring is definitely coming. 🙂 Now just waiting for it to become warmer – the wind and the air have been cold. But fortunately, it’s been ever so warm in the sunshine…

The Ibiza lizard in our garden…

The garden bunny and Ibiza lizard…

Okay, I had been thinking about joining Twitter already for some time… and now I’ve done it; my username on Twitter: leenannik. It’s a bit weird place to be, when one doesn’t actually know anybody there, but I think I have my spot there… every once in a while. – I think it’s safe to say that I surely will use my Instagram (owlnatureleena) way more often than my Twitter. Hoot! 😀

A morning owl… garden me…

Siberian iris in March.

-Leena

Dried flowers, a campfire, one knitted owl…

It’s a sunny weekend! And now that the spring is just around the corner, it’s starting to get miscellaneous again… 😉

It was finally time to take these friends outside for a pic yesterday. My dried peonies from last summer… beauties… lovely memories…

My dried flower crown from the summer of 2015 is hanging on a door window in our hall. What actually dominates this picture, however, is an unfinished door window curtain project. 🙂

Our garden campfire last night. It was warming so nicely in the beautiful but cold darkness.

I started knitting again. I love knitting, but I’m not always doing it. 🙂 And… I always need some practice with it. This, for example, is my first ever owl!

-Leena