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It’s raining cats and dogs… on peony poppies…

Right now, it’s raining cats and dogs… so, I decided that it’s now a good time to publish the rest of the peony poppy flower pics that I have. I love rain, too, but right now I’m just having my coffee and I don’t feel like going outside at all… I just love hearing the sound of heavy rainfall on the roof and looking out the window now… 🙂

The first six pics are from Tuesday.

This must be the most peony-like peony poppy I’ve managed to catch up with this summer…

The same flower in the evening, after some heavy rainfall and hailing… Still so beautiful… 🙂

The rest of the pics are from yesterday.

Red, redder…

“Enough with the flowers already, and what do you mean with “raining cats”… and the freakin’ dogs, anyway?” :

🙂

-Leena

Just more peony poppies (July 31st & August 1st)

These days I’m taking as many pics of peony poppy flowers as I possibly have inspiration to take. And inspiration I have. 🙂 I’ve been having already too many pics to be published right away. So, with these pics we are still on the last day of July and on the first day of August. The first six pics are from Monday, August 1st.

Enjoying the red colour of the flower…

And the purple… and the sunshine…

The next two pics are from Sunday, July 31st. I took these pics late in the evening, just before I started to build the campfire that I had in the blog post on Monday…

I try not to be afraid to take pics in different kinds of light every once in a while…

I already had this, a bit blemished white peony poppy, in the blog post on July 31st. I was actually enchanted with this flower – it looked like a bit blemished fairy dress, or a bit blemished wedding dress, or a bit like my own white dress, a bit blemished by the Mediterranean Sea… 😮 🙂

On the left you can see the first cosmos flower before it opened for the first time the next day.

The rest of the pics are from Monday again.

More red…

It’s been mostly sunny lately, but we’ve experienced some heavy, very heavy rain showers – they have come like some tropical rain showers, except that we had some heavy hailing, too, for a while yesterday. And heavy rainfall and sunshine at the same time. – That’s so lovely! 🙂

I took pics of peony poppies yesterday and today as well – nobody’s surprised about that… 😉 The pics here in my blog a bit later…

-Leena

On the last day of July and on the first day of August…

More pics from yesterday, and some I took today. 🙂

Monkshood, extremely poisonous from roots to the tiny hoods, and we have so much of it in our garden – this is a very traditional plant in the old gardens in Finland. The man who build this house was very much a garden man, we’ve heard, so, no wonder – the fact can be seen in our garden today…

Some sort of marigold, very small marigold.

We can’t remember what this flower is… I’ve tried to google it, but no luck with that. EDIT: This flower is clarkia or godetia, silkkikukka in Finnish. Thanks for the answer, A! 🙂

More pics of my cornflowers. Many charming colours they have…

The first cosmos flower this summer, opened today, missing one petal. I had cosmos flowers last summer, too. These are growing from seeds, of course, and I like them a lot. 🙂

Butterfly flower, schizanthus, poor man’s orchid again…

And strawflowers again. Here it can be seen that our tall strawflowers and the shorter butterfly flowers as well as tiny marigolds are tight neighbours. 😀

Yesterday evening by the lake Pyhäjärvi, after some Nordic walking and eating blueberries again. It was so nice to sit on a bench – the air was perfect, not at all warm, not at all cold. The sun was shining, but wasn’t warming, and the wind was blowing wonderfully. 🙂 And the sound of waves, just lovely…

A campfire in our garden last night. It can be said that this was my birthday campfire – it was not only the last day of July yesterday, but also my birthday (and by the way, the birthday of Harry Potter —> WTF? -Oh yes, says a Harry Potter fan (that’s me) here, aaand, it was also the birthday of J.K. Rowling herself. 😀 ) And… how old am I…? I’m actually a bit younger than Harry Potter… ;D Just a bit…

-Leena

Peony poppies on the last day of July

Hi! I have this moving in and out project going on, maybe I reminisce about it later here in my blog, too, but now I need a break from thinking about it… So, I didn’t have the time or energy to take flower pics earlier this week – I’ve missed some peony poppies now, there has been so many of them, but… oh yes, today, I do have some pics here… 😉 As many pics of peony poppies as you can possibly imagine that I have, that I took, today, when it’s already August tomorrow…

One of my ‘wild’ poppies above, all the other peony poppies in this post have grown from the seeds that I planted this summer.

It was raining heavily yesterday evening, really pouring down with rain for a while – we haven’t experienced anything like that earlier this summer. It was lovely, but I also thought: “There goes some of the flowers, again…” But the flowers that hadn’t still opened, all the plants, got just the wonderful water that they needed.

One of the missed flowers, and the heavy rain of yesterday… :

These were not, however, all the pics that I took today – just the peony poppies… The other flowers of today, and some new, too, hopefully, later… 🙂

-Leena

Flowers in the morning

A nice and sunny morning today was. And so much inspiration while having my morning coffee. I’m not sure if I should warn somebody of… something… but here comes 18 pics of which 17 are flower pics. So, here’s some FLOWER POWER. 🙂

I took today’s pics before and after 9 AM, a few pics are from Friday and Saturday. First peony poppies this morning:

The first peony poppy grown from the seeds that I planted this summer. Five pics of it here… 🙂

It has grown tall.

Marvelous, colourful peony poppies…

And my ‘wild’ poppies, two more of them.

Annual mallow grown from seed. The first opened mallow flower this summer, I planted them last summer, too. Mallows are lovely. Other names for this annual mallow: rose mallow, royal mallow, regal mallow.

A Strawflower bud opening on Friday.

More strawflowers on Saturday.

Nicely rustling flowers, when you touch them. 🙂

Strawflowers this morning:

I took this pic while I was taking a break from taking pics of flowers this morning. 🙂 I was sitting on a bench, eating a banana and redcurrants freshly picked from the bush. Having some more coffee.

And more flowers this morning:

And I planted cornflower seeds, too, this summer. The first flowers are emerging from buds.

Butterfly flower, Schizanthus. Or poor man’s orchid. 🙂 Grown from seed. A tiny and an exotic looking flower.

A choker… And the flower is called red flax. It’s grown from seed in the geometric flower plantation made by a man. 🙂

-Leena

Coffee along with some strawberries, raspberries… and peony poppies

Today’s morning coffee pic with some strawberries and raspberries.

Wonderful time of the year is this… We get lots of berries (hmmm, or them fruits… but let’s not get into that berry-fruit terminology right now… :p ), enough for two people to enjoy many berries every day – raw from the bushes – we’re not preserving them, just eating them when they are fresh, sweet and juicy and healthiest. And oh, the scent! And yes, I’m still dreaming of planting more strawberries – their season goes too fast in Finland every summer…

The next five pics I took between Saturday and today. Peony poppies. These are my ‘wild’ poppies that are already blooming, completely unattended – they have grown from the seeds of the poppies I had last summer – we threw them around randomly in our garden. And some of the poppies now blooming have also grown as a surprise to us – beside the flower bed in which I planted poppies last summer. The poppies are growing through stones and thick soil, I didn’t expect that…

I love peony poppies, too. 😉 They also have a charming and distinctive scent.

Someone else, too, was enjoying themselves. 🙂

I also, of course, planted peony poppy seeds this summer, but the plants of those are still growing…

You can feel that you are in Hawaii, if you just put your mind to it:

Headstrong. Focus.

Well, you just can! – You can lie on a Hawaii textile… like our furry princess in the pics I took yesterday… Or you can plant your own garden, your dreams and reality, outdoors and indoors, and you’ll have the world around you all the time… 🙂

-Leena

All peonies, every pic…

Today the peony pics I talked about yesterday, I said that there would be poppies, too, but I’ll have them in an another post. This one’s devoted to peonies – the last ones for this summer… I took the first six pics on Saturday, they all look almost the same… almost, but not quite! I have them all in this blog post, for myself and for everyone else who loves peonies.

The peony moments go so fast every summer…

There cannot be too many peonies in one’s life. 🙂

The next two pics are from Monday.

And drying peonies:

First I must thank my friend who reminded me about the drying – as much as I love peonies, I would have just let them all go without realizing that I could dry them and have a lovely memory of summer in the dark wintertime, some of my peonies still with me! So, thanks A! 🙂

So, this is the traditional and simple air-drying that I’m doing. – My peonies are drying in our storage room which is the darkest and coolest place in our house, and yet, not very dark and not so cool – we live here in this warm but light jungle in the summertime. 🙂 My peonies were also fully opened as I cut them to dry on Monday, but I checked them today and the process was going just fine – the dream of my peonies being still with me in the winter is still alive! But if I cut the last peony to dry, I’ll cut it before it is fully opened.

And the very last peony bud in the bush today…

I think I’ll try to dry this one, too, if it still grows – I wasn’t so sure that this one would start to open… 🙂

-Leena