It is May now. It has been a pretty sunny week. We had some rain last weekend and after that there has been the scent of green grass in the air! The first dandelion flowers have come out as well.
Glory of the snow flowers. Aaand, but it has not snowed in May, yet. 😀
It was the warmest day of the year so far on Tuesday. It was 16 degrees Celsius in the daytime and it was not windy. I was sitting on the grass in our garden, by the woods. It was wonderful…
Solar power in our greenhouse as well.
Night owls´garden light the other night…
And yesterday I saw a hedgehog for the first time this year late in the evening. It was getting pretty dark and we came across each other by a tub/container where we collect rainwater so suddenly that I frightened him and he frightened me. 🙂
Full moon was coming my way, too…
The first thing today… I went to the greenhouse to open the windows. The greenhouse was heated up to 10 degrees Celsius at night, because it was too cold in the nighttime. It was a bit over 30 degrees Celsius inside the greenhouse with the sunlight in the morning, as seen in the pic above.
I had to water our cherry tomato plants, they already were all too dry…
Outside, garlic has been growing since March.
Those grapes… The first small grape hyacinths this year.
It is 13 degrees Celsius, nicely a bit warmer again today.
So what it´s been for many weeks now: First everything was normal, and then… The shit and the fan and toilet paper, don´t-wanna-go-to-the-library, washing the skin off your hands, social distancing, self-isolation, sleet and hail, too much news, anxiety, sunshine and pretty warm weather, coltsfoot flowers, snow and sleet, too much news, plants growing, cold weather, snow, anxiety and fear, flies, must-go-to-the-grocery-store-anxiety, washing the skin off your hands, stress, butterflies, a ladybug and bumble bees, hope, snow and too much news, sleet, wind, hail, sunshine, hope, Very windy weather every day, pretty warm weather for two days, sunshine, hailing like crazy (every day), sunshine, The fear of False Hope…
So the crocus leaves, daffodil leaves and tulip leaves started to emerge in March, usually we see them later in April and in May. We did not have permanent snow cover this year…..
Crocus flower buds in April. By the way, I haven´t been taking too many pictures lately, but there´s at least some snapshots in this blog post now anyway.
And so, just for the record: I saw the first butterflies, brimstonebutterflies, on March 25th, the first coltsfoot flowers on April 6th, the first hepatica flowers on April 17th and the first wood anemone flowers on April 28th.
April snows…
The first ladybird here this year, outside our greenhouse in late March when we had some warmer days. We usually see the first butterflies and bumble bees here later in April and ladybirds maybe in May.
A squirrel it was in April. We have seen the busy guy here many times. 🙂
´Gaining ground´… We both did this, and I couldn´t raise my hands for a while after using this machine. Those muscles. 😀 (And those solar panels work for the garden shed.)
I had sunglasses on me, it was nice and warm, it was not windy, it was pretty silent, only birds were singing, butterflies were flying in the woods – it looked like a fairy tale, I was sitting on the garden bench and I was leaning against the wall of our house, I felt like I was in another planet… And then it occurred to me: “This must be the feeling… So many people go to a foreign country… to feel this…” …
I started washing the greenhouse. It was great fun!
Well, lots of things to do at home, Everything in the house and outside, in the garden, in the greenhouse, the yard, the garden shed… By the way, the last time I posted something on my Instagram was on December 6th, I think. – Just saying this to myself…
The greenest guy in the house, the green huntsman spider again, this was in our living room in late March. We saw him often!
Pics today:
We have and have had pretty many crocus flowers this year, a bit hear and there in the garden, it was so cold that these were not open yet at the time of my morning coffee in the middle of the day. It was sleeting a bit again yesterday.
Okay, my boyfriend just said: “It just sleeted again, but now the sun is shining.” So it sleeted today again, I didn´t notice, I don´t have time for everything. 😀 Wait… now I see it… or something – it´s hailing, and the sun is shining at the same time. Springy!
The first daffodil flowers…
by the woods… 🙂
And of course we have these glory of the snow… flowers.
Everything has started to turn green! 🙂 It has been a sunny week again. And it has been warm – around 20 degrees Celsius and even a bit above 20 degrees it has been, in the daytime. Today it’s around 15 degrees Celsius, and they say that it stays that way now. That’s also more normal for us this time of year…
Now a woodcock has started its regular flights here again: “orr, orr, orr, pist!”
The first four pictures I took today:
My coffee, and they are chives… down there. Chives have been growing fast now – they are perennials – were planted here a year ago. They are so delicious! And after a long winter again…..
Grass is growing…
And nettles are growing. It’s nice to sit on the ground and eat tiny, delicious nettle leaves…
Where’s my snow…? ;D
Tiny birch leaves!
Crocus flowers on Tuesday this week.
A pic from yesterday evening. I mark the spots of our ‘surprise’ crocuses so that we won’t step on them before they grow.
By the way, I’ve been posting on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) as well, so trying to have balance between my blog and my Instagram. Well, I’m not actually trying, it has just been flowing naturally, or something… 😀
And today again:
One of our vegetable patches. Last year we had potatoes here, this year something else… We started planting this patch yesterday, and planted onions and peas now first.
The first daffodil or narcissus flower blooming on the ground in our garden.
Spring, spring, Easter. It has been a sunny week. And it has been warmer again – a bit over 10 degrees Celsius, and even warmer than that – around 15 degrees Celsius it has been, too. We have seen coltsfoot flowers. And we have seen flies, mosquitoes, bees and butterflies – signs of summer…
The Ibizalizard, always covered in snow a bit…? 🙂 Well, in wintertime… and this was a bit over a week ago on Friday.
For the moon… The moon, a fullmoon on Saturday, at around 1.00 am. I was ~mooning around in our garden…
A picture that I took yesterday:
The first flowers on the ground in our garden are crocus flowers. We have those everywhere in the garden. They are lovely surprises also because we can’t remember all the spots where we have planted them. 🙂
The rest of the pictures I took today:
My coffee and friends…
Just a few pictures of crocus flowers now… And also daffodil stems and tulip stems have started to grow on the ground.
‘A walk-in closet’ in the corner of the terrace – that’s the short description of our first ever greenhouse, here. 🙂
Spring days… But it’s been a bit cooler now, but not cooler than normally in Finland this time of the year; the temperatures have been around 10 degrees Celsius in the daytime. – Some days it’s been more like 5 degrees, but some days it’s been 13 degrees. And in the nighttime the temperatures have been a bit above 0 degrees Celsius. It’s been a bit more cloudy now, but in the daytime there still has been more sunshine than rain altogether.
I took all the pictures in this blog post in our garden today.
More crocus flowers. Now we already have crocuses growing in many places in the garden. We don’t even remember all the places we planted crocus bulbs last autumn, and I don’t even know all the places my boyfriend planted them. 🙂
That white stuff on the ground, by the way, is spring fertilizer for the cherry tree…
Charming surprises.
And more butterflies… I saw the first butterfly in our garden on Sunday the 15th, it was a brimstone butterfly, and I’ve seen brimstone butterflies here a few times more after that, too. A few bees have been buzzing as well, and we saw a tiny hedgehog in the woods next to our garden, too.
We’ve been working in the garden for some time now, turning the garden into our outdoor living room again, clearing it up and so on. And raking, raking again – how come we have so, so many fallen leaves on the ground now in April even though we raked, like everything, last autumn…?
Onions, red onions are already growing, from onion sets, in these pots in our garden. Planted about two weeks ago.
A composter with a crown on the top. 🙂 We have been using this composter for fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds, used tea bags, and so on… for over a week now. This is our first composter for kitchenwaste, Biolan pikakompostori – quick composter220eco, a year-round composter. So simple, useful and nice. And the crown is a container that we use for collecting the fruit peels, coffee grounds, et cetera, in the kitchen.
Warmer, warmer… The spring is near, the spring is like here! – The nights have still been a bit colder, the temperatures have been around 0 degrees Celsius in the nighttime, but in the daytime it’s beginning to feel a lot like spring! – The temperatures have been around 10 degrees Celsius and now even between 10 and 16 degrees Celsius during the day.
First two pictures that I took by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in Satakunta region on Friday.
Okay, most of Finland still has snow, the northern part of the country like tons of it – well, that’s not even a bad thing, they have lovely spring days there, too, but just for comparison – here in the southernmost part of Finland the snow has mostly melted. But for example our lake Pyhäjärvi still has a lot of snow and ice and on it, an ice cover, but there already are some ice-free spots somewhere as well.
We saw the first butterfly for this year for us on Friday as well. Not here at home, but in our neighbouring municipality Säkylä. It was a peacock butterfly.
Tiny insects have already been dancing in the evening sun everywhere here, too.
Yesterday we found a new walking track for us, and it’s not even far from our home. 😮 🙂 We took the shortest route now first, just to see the place, the forest. The forest was mostly spruce trees, but there were also some pine trees and other trees as well.
Parts of the track were still covered with snow and ice…
…so it was a bit slippery with these old ‘bad ice skates’ of mine. But it was warm there, I had too many hoodies on me…
Ants, too, were already busy in the forest.
And we saw another peacock butterfly there. A charming, silent forest it was. Glad to have found it! It’s been there all this time, but we’ve noticed it only now. 🙂
And we saw the first coltsfoot flowers for this year for us, too. There were several coltsfoot flowers by the car park there.
And a few pictures that I took in our garden today:
The smell of the earth that is free of the snow now is lovely.
Swans have been flying and honking here, and we hear loud voices of waterfowls every evening again, from the lake I think.
We planted many crocus bulbs in our garden last autumn. And I wasn’t prepared for flowers yesterday… 😀 But yes, we already found two yellow crocus flowers!
One in the front yard and the other in the backyard.
We visited The Botanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island, in the city of Turku, on Wednesday. I didn’t take many pictures this time. But I did write two blog posts about the place already last year; here and here. 🙂
And yes, the weather still had the same pattern on that day, too; hailing, hailing and sunshine at the same time, sunshine, hailing, hailing and sunshine at the same time, sunshine, hailing… It continued the whole day. And we noticed that the spring had advanced a bit more in Turku than here where we are living – about 90 kilometres north of Turku. In Turku there was a bit greener there everywhere, more flowers in the gardens and dandelion flowers in nature – we haven’t even seen any dandelion flowers here “in the north” yet. 🙂
But here it was very warm…
“Hello!” – Koi carps there, too.
Howea forsteriana or kentia palm.
Aloe vera. I’d love to have an aloe vera plant at home! 🙂
Bougainvillea up there. Okay, I want to go back to Spain now…
And I’m still gonna need some more coffee… Coffea arabica is this plant.
Epipremnum aureum, golden pothos, devil’s ivy… One of my favourite houseplants. A bit bigger leaves at the botanic garden.
This echeveria succulent plant was at the garden store Plantagen. It caught my eye from the distance, had to take a pic. 🙂
And this pic I took as we were travelling back home from Turku. One of those moments when it was hailing…
And in the home garden… The crocus flower – the one and only in our garden. 🙂 I thought that we wouldn’t see this marvel this spring, but all of a sudden… here it blooms again!
