Waiting… waiting for summer…?

This happened in our living room last night: I suddenly saw our princess by the grass on the floor, lying and just relaxing there with her eyes closed.

She was like this for quite a while there…

We were wondering whether she was thinking about spring, dreaming of summer… 😉 Waiting for winter to end… All this snow and cold still… Wait! – Did she fall asleep?

…with the green grass as her pillow. Aww… 😀 If she was dreaming of spring, dreaming about summer and everything green out there, I can already share the same dream with her…

-Leena

Amaryllis & schlumbergera

It was a bit warmer again out there for a few days and water was dripping, and especially yesterday it rained a bit, but for many hours, but it still didn’t melt the snow we’ve had on the ground for four weeks (that’s a month!) now. And then it sleeted late in the evening. Today the weather’s a bit colder again and they say that it ought to stay that way now and that it ought to snow again as well.

So, now it’s been the perfect time for flowers inside the house! 🙂

amaryllis

My amaryllis is flowering now. Biiig flowers… First it had two flowers.

amaryllis

The jungle here… and, oh, a black panther there, up there in the picture… The black with white markings, a funny type of black panther. 🙂

amaryllis

The colours of this amaryllis are lighter than the colours of my previous amaryllis. I didn’t know what colour my amaryllis would be, or I knew that it has two colours, and I assumed they would be red and white, but the actual hue was a surprise. It turned out to be charming, sweet.

amaryllis

schlumbergera

Schlumbergera or Christmas cactus flowering, too. This plant moved here with my amaryllis after Christmas, my boyfriend decided to buy this plant. I like schlumbergera, too, very much, and I love the name – I think that it sounds beautiful. 🙂

amaryllis

Since yesterday my amaryllis has four flowers.

amaryllis

Why am I, all of a sudden, taking pictures in the corner of our living room…? Because on the usual spot we have now a plant light, a real plant light, purple light. Purple light is nice and decorative and good for the plants, but plants in pictures taken ‘under its spell’… not exactly natural, the colours they have under that light… I’ll have to think of something – I don’t like this corner that much, the way it is now, when it comes to taking pictures here…

amaryllis

jungle, tiger

The purple light… But look, that tiger up there looks pretty natural!

January

So, it’s already been snowing a bit, too, today. Here’s a couple of pictures I took just before publishing this blog post.

January

-Leena

The last day of the year, flowers, a book…

Today is the last day of the year 2017. The New Year is here! About the weather again; on Wednesday morning we had again a bit more fresh snow and the sun was shining in the daytime. Thursday and Friday were cloudy days and it was a bit warmer. Yesterday there was a bit more light out there, even some sunlight and it was snowing and the sun was shining by turns in the daytime. Today there was a bit of sunlight again. So, there’s been snow on the ground for three weeks now! 🙂

hyacinth

My hyacinths

hyacinth

The scent!

hyacinth

As charming as ever…

amaryllis

I bought this amaryllis after Christmas, for half the price. This is my second ever amaryllis plant. The first amaryllis plant I had… exists no more. – The trouble with the bulb plants inside the house… (?) 😮 So, now I’m expecting this plant to just flower for me. 🙂 A bud has begun to open.

viola in December

And the viola plant is still there in our garden. And it still has fresh flowers! – A few fresh flowers like this one in the pic. This must be sorcery! ;D

Puiden salattu elämä - The Hidden Life of Trees & knitted owls

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. I have started reading this book now, in Finnish. I am finally reading this book. – I have been interested in this book ever since I first read about it somewhere. A fascinating theme, fascinating nature. “What They Feel, How They Communicate. Discoveries from a Secret World.” – From the English book cover.

the last day of the year 2017

A bit of sunlight today, on the last day of the year 2017. Happy New Year! 🙂

-Leena

My new houseplant – identification needed

EDIT: I got an answer: this plant is Dizygotheca, Dizygotheca elegantissima or Plerandra elegantissimaisoliuska-aralia in Finnish. Thank you Anni, for the answer! I also found these common names: false aralia and, indeed, spider aralia. 🙂

I bought a new houseplant from a supermarket called Prisma in the town of Rauma on Saturday. And I still don’t know what the plant is called! 🙂

This plant has some interesting features…

dizoigotea

This is the name tag that the plant has: dizoigotea. I googled it… and, oh dear… Google doesn’t know this either! It only gives me “dizygotic” stuff, when I search just this name in this name tag, and when I use quotation marks with the name, Google doesn’t find anything! But other people have searched this word, too, because it appears in the Google search box when you start writing it there. What IS this…? 😀

Some sort of different spider plant?

The leaves of this plant… what do they remind you of? I must admit that the leaves of this plant caught my attention. 🙂 The ‘leaf groups’ all have the same shape, just the length varies… this ‘leaf group’ in the picture is middle-sized one…

The other side of the leaves is a bit purplish.

The petioles are spotted…

…and the stems are a bit woody, the lower parts are light brown, but the middle and the upper parts of the stems are dark brown, as dark as can be seen in the earlier picture – the dark next to the petioles. (How difficult can this be…? ;D)

Some short stems and younger leaves growing, too.

Hmm… just hoping that this is a strong plant – I would like to keep this.

-Leena

Amaryllis leaves

My amaryllis today… She had four big flowers in total, during the second blooming in early February.

amaryllis

Already two leaves (the shortest ones) have turned brown, got rotten and dried up. I don’t know why… But there’s also a new leaf growing, again. And the longest leaf…

amaryllis

Well, the longest leaf is… long. 🙂 Hopefully it stays this way. At least I’ve been trying to take good care of my amaryllis… I’ve been trying to give it reasonable amounts of water and fertilizer.

amaryllis

So, just hoping now…

-Leena

Amaryllis blooming again

My amaryllis today:

amaryllis

She really did it! 🙂

amaryllis

The bud was so thin that I thought that there would be only one flower and I believed that the flower would be tiny and poor, but… wow! There’s already two big flowers, and too new buds as well.

amaryllis

I wonder if this now is the last time my amaryllis has flowers… 😮 And it had three leaves growing, but one of them (the shortest one) has now turned brown, and it’s not even dry, just rotten… As I said before; I’m not at all confident…

amaryllis

But yes, this now… As majestic as ever…

February

It’s been freezing cold again and there’s still snow. But the sun’s been shining and it truly is warming nicely during the daytime! And it’s so bright…

-Leena

Amaryllis after the first flowering

A surprise and some doubts. My first ever amaryllis had seven big flowers in December and in early January. And two short but broad leaves that were having a bit more length at the end of the flowering. And then suddenly a new flower stem started to emerge. I wasn’t expecting that.

amaryllis

Whoa, too fast! 😀 – It really was. I’m actually not at all confident with plants that have bulbs – confident with the bulbs – they always become soft (=normal?), no matter how you water the plants. My amaryllis bulb has become a bit soft, of course, too… And… how much can you actually peel the bulb then? 😮

Okay, first I thought I wasn’t giving my plant enough water, because I really was paying attention to the amount of water I gave her during the flowering. And yes, now I’m thinking that perhaps I now have given my plant too much water – when I last gave her water, because the flower stem got so wild. 😮 But I know that I should now fertilize this plant, its bulb, a bit.

amaryllis

Some fertilizer into this original pot with poor potting soil that my amaryllis still is in, or should I now put my plant into a new pot with nutritious potting soil that I bought yesterday…? I think I’ll choose the latter – I should have done it earlier, I know. 🙂

amaryllis

Okay, let’s just see what happens, I really was only hoping that my amaryllis would start to grow her leaves, but then this surprise happened. 😀 But yes, now there’s also a third leaf growing.

-Leena