I wrote this summer story / poem yesterday and today. This is a true story, so all the things in this story have happened to me this summer, just the way I wrote them. At the end of this blog post there are also some flower pictures that I have taken this summer.
Hot days in June, it is so light at night, different things it allows
The lovely sound of summer, little birds are flying around, I know them, they are swallows
The birds wintered in the tropical lands, but now they are here
We humans do not have to travel far, nature is so amazing, near.
A cuckoo bird calling, baby woodpeckers are loud, a fox at me now stares
A tiny spider as white as the flowers of the Midsummer rose. Fancy, just to say who dares
Hide now, seek now, just wait and see, the day just might be fair
Wandering the roads, no one knows, I might meet a friend, it is a hare.
In July then, I am wearing a winter coat, I see a tiny moth dive into embers
The rain is hammering the peony flowers, that a gardener remembers
Then suddenly it is warm again, cherries, strawberries, everything you desire
The scents, the memories, the long-awaited coffee around the campfire.
Frogs are greeting me, raspberries, bilberries, the gold red and blue
Grasshoppers I meet in the kitchen, now that is something new
August, the days are getting shorter, sunflowers open their petals, so yellow
Look at the stars, think now. Learn what is new, wonder, know.
Late August, the Midsummer rose is flowering again, pears and plums ripen on the trees
A hot day, every time the last one for the summer, who knows, oh, summer please!
- Leena, August 25-26, 2020
PoppyFinnish Midsummer roseFinnish Midsummer rose flower and flower spiderIrisPainted daisyRose, on the longest day of the year, at midnightPoppies, on the longest day of the year, at midnightFinnish Valamonruusu ´Rosa Splendens´PeonyPoppies, pot marigolds… summer flowers…Sunflower
Accidentally climbed too high? – Hold on tight! I watched this ladybug climbing up and down the blades of grass yesterday. It was funny. 🙂
Good morning! Today, with our cherry tomato plants in the greenhouse. They are growing well and are sturdy. They are Tiny Tim tomato plants, nice. (I love A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.)
Okay, now that we have had some coffee, let us complain a bit… So in my previous blog post I grumbled that I cannot post pictures on my Instagram (“Kuvaa ei julkaistu” – “The picture was not published” it just says) and I cannot change my profile picture there… I forgot to mention that Instagram does store my pictures… I don´t know how to explain this, but I can see the pictures that I have tried to post there, on the spot where we first go to when we are selecting which picture to post, it´s like added to the gallery of my phone on Instagram, but the “filtered” (I usually use the ´normal´ filter) pictures are not in the actual gallery of my phone. (Oh man I´m good at explaining these things…) And I don´t usually have my Facebook app open on my phone, because I usually use my computer, but yesterday I had a good spot to try to post a picture on my Facebook from my phone and, well… yeah, I guessed it already beforehand – my Facebook worked as usual. Saatana.
Let us concentrate on the flowers… I took the following pictures yesterday.
The cherry tree is in bloom. We planted this tree two years ago, and a year ago it had 11 flowers. Now I can´t count the flowers, the tree is not completely full of flowers, but there many many flowers!
The cherry bush is as flowery as ever. We planted this bush cherry in September 2017, and this is the third year that it flowers like this.
Lily of the Valley amongst ferns.
Forget-me-not
Stars have started to come out in the woods and blue gold is ripening… Chickweed wintergreen or arctic starflower and bilberries. We had a tiny amount of rain yesterday evening, too tiny – everything´s so dry and we also want to collect rainwater… But they say that it should rain a bit more tomorrow.
Today´s pictures:
A pic of what I´m reading, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. I haven´t been reading much lately, but now I want books back into my life again.
Lilac flowers, most of the lilac flowers in our garden haven´t opened yet, only a few.
Oh, the scent…
Globeflower, always looking so nice in the middle of all the green.
On Monday a week ago, May 25th. I went outside, there was a pretty gentle breeze, it was fairly quiet, only birds were singing, butterflies were flying here and there around me… It was nothing new, but something felt strange, wonderful… Everything was so green around me, grass and leaves had grown fast. It was warm, it was 21 degrees Celsius – the first time that it was 20 degrees Celsius or more this year. – It was the first day of summer!
And my first parrot tulip had opened. This is the first time that I have parrot tulips in the garden.
It was, again, around 15 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week, but over the weekend it was again around 20 degrees Celsius in the daytime. On Monday this week, June 1st, it was already 24 degrees Celsius. And around 21 degrees Celsius in the daytime it has now been yesterday and today. But at night the coldest temperature was again a bit over 5 degrees Celsius here.
All the parrot tulips opened.
We have seen the first bats for this year here. On Saturday a week ago and last Saturday as well. – Saturday may be the best day of the week. 🙂 It may be just one bat that we have seen, though, because we have seen only one at a time. Anyway, lovely creatures!
Okay so I cannot post pictures on my Instagram, and I do not know why. I have already tried to do everything… I have been restarting, checking, uninstalling, reinstalling… trust it, use it, prove it, groove it like Spice Girls… I even changed my username just for the heck of it, and changed it back again, just because I could do it… But I cannot change my profile picture or post pictures. I can like other people´s pictures and use Instagram in every other way, but my own pictures are doomed…
There has of course never been anything shady about my Instagram or about my actions, the last time that I posted something on my Instagram was on December, but come on, that cannot be the reason! 😮 Can it? And my boyfriend has tried everything and more, and he is a professional software person. I don´t know what I´m gonna do… I can always follow other people and like their pictures, but if I do those things and I am not posting anything, then I´m just weird, a stalker, a creeper… And I still wantto post pictures on my Instagram! Perkele.
Grumbling followed by gorgeous flowers…
This is a pic from my phone, the pic that I was kinda trying to post on my Instagram.
Hyacinths, a lovely scent…
The pear tree is in bloom. It´s not as flowery as it was a year ago, but there are flowers, on four spots, as seen on the pic below. And the tree has grown!
In the back of our garden, I think that this is peony tulip. 🙂 It has a wonderful scent.
Forget me not, forget-me-nots… In the back of the garden, and near them…
…our small bird cherry tree is flowering, too.
I had already waited for it… “Cuck-koo!” – Cuckoo bird came back and started calling cuckoo on Sunday evening, and after that it has done it both in the daytime and evenings.
Tulips by my dwarf spruce…
My spruce is growing every year! 🙂
Parrot tulip break ~
I love parrot tulips, they just get better as they get older…
Random 🙂 Viola
The apple tree is in bloom. As marvellous as ever…
Our plum tree already bloomed. – Whoa! We´re just hoping that it had the time to get pollinated… Yesterday when I took this picture there was only a few flowers left to be seen.
Lily of the Valley flowers are here! Love the scent, love them.
Lily of the Valley is the national flower of Finland.
The first lilac flowers have begun to open.
Also our cherry bush and cherry tree are in bloom, hopefully I still have time to take pictures of cherry flowers tomorrow… I have been sitting at this desk for too long today and I have already seen too many pics today as well, phew…
Peonies have grown! I should like clean this spot up a bit…
My hoe… I decided to plant potatoes late in the evening on Monday. A garden hoe is one of my favourite garden tools, I just always get out of breath when I´m like really using it…
I actually planted the potatoes quite deep, the pic doesn´t show it perfectly right. I scattered some chicken manure pellets there, too.
The first ever snakeshead lily flower in our garden. This flower has many names, for example: snakeshead lily, snakeshead fritillary, chess flower, chequered lily, leper lily… Another new favourite!
Just for the record about some animals… A woodcock started its regular flights here already in late March. Usually it starts the evening flights in late April. “Orr, orr, orr, pist!”
We saw a deer walking in our garden and in the woods on Tuesday evening. And I saw a deer leaping through the garden last week, and when we were on a car ride at night, we were there with deer and hares… We saw around four times deer (one or more at once) and almost 10 hares (only one at a time).
By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village late in the evening on Wednesday.
Wood sorrel, I ate some.
So yesterday, on Thursday, it was already a bit warmer – the butterflies returned! Today it was 17 degrees Celsius in the daytime and it was the warmest day of the year this far. Usually we have some days of 20 degrees Celsius, or warmer than that, already in early May or even in April.
Pictures that I took today:
That big… bushy thing is of course rhubarb, and under it in the pic is ramsons, allium ursinum, that has many other names, too, for example: wild garlic, bear´s garlic, wood garlic… We´ve never had this bear´s garlic before (credit goes to my boyfriend who came up with the idea), now we have it on two different spots and hope that it will start spreading.
The other bear´s garlic spot.
Cabbage growing in the greenhouse. This is the first time ever that we are trying to grow cabbage. We have some cabbage (normal cabbage? 😀 ) and Brussels sprout growing, but we can´t tell which is which anymore here…
The cabbage plants are still growing in the pots, the cherry tomato plants are planted inside the greenhouse.
I think that this is a green hairstreak butterfly.
Praestans shogun tulips have opened now.
Lilac flower buds are emerging.
One of my evening tasks today was painting which I love doing. Actually we both are making this small garden table and I have been the one filling small holes in it and sanding and painting it.
But first… A bit over a week ago on Saturday. This was the first time that I have seen a greatspotted woodpecker on a bird feeder here. They have usually been only in the woods, in the pine trees and in the big maple tree beside our driveway. The greenhouse is about to fly, because my only ´concern´was the bird as I took this pic with zoom, in our living room, through the Venetian blinds. 🙂
And then… May snow. On Monday morning a week ago in the pic above. Well, it´s not unusual that it snows in May in the southern part of Finland, but it´s not very very common either – it does not happen every year. And the snow had already melted a lot when I took the pic, because I could not get out fast enough. 😀
The next four pictures I took on Friday morning:
The second snow for May, it had already melted a bit when I took these pics. Well, for example two years ago, on this day, it was around 28 degrees Celsius… 😀
Already small blackcurrant leaves! They are the biggest bush/tree leaves in our garden now.
Glory of the snow flowers…
Hyacinth flowers are emerging.
On Sunday, yesterday:
In the afternoon yesterday it was not warm, but cold, and it was thundering! It was the first time that I heard thunder in cold weather (4 degrees Celsius). And then it started to hail some bigger hailstones, well I know they can be a Lot bigger, but the very big hailstones do not usually never happen in our relatively pretty gentle Finland (and we just keep on complaining here :p ), so these were the biggest hailstones that I have ever seen, the pictures actually do not quite do justice to them, and when the hailing first started there was an interesting polka dot pattern for a while in the garden. By the way, this far we have planted onion, carrot and parsnip in this patch in the pic, but there´s still a lot of free space there.
In the afternoon we saw two black woodpeckers in the woods. They were loud. We heard them somewhere near already earlier last week.
Summer flower bed, I have cleared it of everything and left these that may have grown from last year´s seeds, we don´t know what they are, just want to see what comes out of them. My boyfriend took this pic with his phone without my knowing when I was scattering summer flower seeds.
It is here! The grass mowing season, we started it in our garden yesterday. Our lawnmower is a bit broken, a cord there is broken after the winter now (I don´t know how to explain this…) and the machine does not pull, like move itself and drag us along, so we have to push it, and it´s too heavy for it, and pushing a lawnmower is a bit hard work in a yard like ours anyway.
So the sun was already shining a bit again in the afternoon and in the evening yesterday. And a bit later in the evening it was raining, sleeting and hailing (in that order) again and the sun was shining at the same time, too, for some time, but I was not interested anymore, and I went to sauna.
Pictures I took today:
Peonies! They, too, started to emerge earlier than usual this year… These are the tallest stems now.
The sun is shining again today.
Praestans shogun tulip flower, the first tulip flower that has opened.
A sight for sore eyes – there are flower buds emerging in the pear tree!
Our biggest Norway maple tree in bloom.
We visited the town of Rauma today, I just took these snaps when travelling in the car.
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.
