narsissi – Owlnature

The first butterflies and a ladybird in March (and other stories)

You just never hear the end of it.

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, brimstone butterflies, 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.

Leena

The colour green

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.

Oh, greenery…

Leena

Summer flowers, little friends, eating brain mushrooms…

Finally we have had the rain that the garden, nature and we people needed… now we have had two rainy days, the first one last week after that blog post of mine, and today is the second rainy day. The cooler air also returned for a day or two last week – especially Friday was a ridiculously cold day… Now it’s been all summery again.

One narcissus or daffodil flower was a home for this little guy for two days. This spider really stayed here for two days, but when the cold Friday came, he was presumably off to some warmer place. 🙂

Some rockfoil flowers in our garden, not many, but they are beauties.

Our plum tree has been blooming, now the flowers have already started to disappear. Last year the tree was in bloom already on May 23rd, and there was well over a hundred flowers, but this year… I actually didn’t count them, but I think 20 flowers (or fewer?), definitely not many more than 20… so let’s see what happens… 🙂

High up…

These brainy friends… highly toxic friends… We got some brain mushrooms from Eastern Finland. Brain mushroom, gyromitra esculenta, false morel… These are real delicacies in Finland. Quite unique taste! But very dangerous, deadly, before boiling them at least two times. And most of the poison disappears during the boiling – up in the air, so one has to make sure that the house is ventilated well – we, for example, opened a door and two windows. We ate the first part of our brain mushrooms – cooked them with just cream and a bit of salt, and ate them with potatoes. Excellent food! We still have those mushrooms for two meals in the freezer. In Finnish this brain mushroom is called korvasieni – ear mushroom. 🙂

Okay, I never knew until now that we have this fairly tiny bird cherry tree in the back of our garden. I just found it. And I found it blooming! It’s in a spot where, umm… many different things grow. So, yeah, we still have that sort of spots in our garden. 😀

Good morning! Forget-me-nots in the back of our garden again, by the ditch… My favourite small flowers!

In German, Spanish and English the name of the flower means the same: Vergissmeinnicht – nomeolvides – forget-me-not. But in Finnish the name is lemmikki, literally pet or darling, and the name can also be understood: “a flower of love“. 🙂

Apple flowers now…

But who’s here?

A ladybird or ladybug is here! The first one for me this year. 🙂

The first chickweed wintergreen flower or arctic starflower flower this year, in the back of our garden…

Globeflower blooming in the front yard. We have these also in two other places in our garden, in the backyard.

One of my favourite perennials…

-Leena

Bats seen here, new garden potato field, apple tree flower buds…

It’s been pretty summery now. But still no rain here where we are living – the rain that the garden and nature need now… They say that this afternoon it will rain here… *waiting*. 🙂 It’s now light green around out there everywhere as everything is growing, and in many places some bushes and trees are loaded with white flowers, for example bird cherry trees are in flower now, lovely scent…

This was my project on Thursday and Friday evenings last week; I made a new potato field in our garden. I dug it through the lawn, so to speak, using that garden hoe in the picture. The hoe is my favourite gardening tool, it’s so useful and comfortable to use! And I also used a shovel and, naturally, my bare hands – my bare hands are my other favourite gardening tools – I never use gardening gloves, they are only in the way, a disturbance, and I want to and need to feel the earth in my hands – I’ve gone crazy in that way… 😉 It’s earthing… Body, mind, spirit…

So I dug the new potato field all by myself, one part of the field was already ready; it was our strawberry field before – luckily, because it was hard work that digging. I also had some… theoretical help… ‘someman‘ was helping me to measure the size of the field and telling me where to put the seed potatoes. And when I was taking a short break, drinking some water inside the house, someone who had just gone outside offered me some practical help – this is what I found when I came back outside and to the potato field:

“No, you should do it like this!” – ‘somemeow‘ had moved some seed potatoes that were already placed on the soil, evenly spaced… 🙂

When the potato field was ready on Friday, late in the evening, it was time to go to sauna, with the first fresh birch leaves for this spring or summer… some more earthing… I wrote about sauna earthing already last year, here.
This year the birch leaves are still tiny, because the spring was so slow, but they are so wonderfully fresh and sticky, and naturally, the scent is heavenly. I took again a real bath with the birch leaves: I rubbed the leaves against my skin, buried my face into the leaves, hit myself with the twigs… Stay closer to nature, feel closer to nature, be a bit witchy! 😉

This year we seem to have only four narcissus or daffodil flowers – leaves of this plant we have in all the spots that we have narcissus plants in the garden, but only four flowers, two in one spot and two in another spot. They, too, are late, but they are here…

We’ve heard the calls of cuckoo bird somewhere near here every day now.

On Sunday, after 23.30 PM, when we were having a campfire in our garden, we had some visitors – bats! Three bats! It was a big surprise. We’ve seen bats before, but not here in our garden and not so close. It was the first warmer night with more mosquitoes here this year. All of a sudden the bats dashed and flapped into the woods beside our garden and into our garden as well, they flew all around here; into our garden, back into the woods, back into our garden… This continued for some time. And they flew also close above our heads every time they flapped into our garden. So close, and they were so cute! 🙂 I thought that bats avoid people, but no, they don’t… It was amazing! – I’ve hoped that we would see bats here in our land, and now we now that it can happen…

The apple trees have small flower buds now. They are late as well. A year ago the flowering had already ended!

-Leena

And the summer began…

And all of a sudden… it’s summer! The summer began on Friday: it was 17 degrees Celsius in the shade already at 9.00 AM and at around 10.15 AM it was already 20 degrees in the shade, and 24 in the shade at 13.30 PM. Yes, I wrote down everything. 😀 It was also the warmest day that we’ve had this year.

We haven’t had any rain now, and all the rain before this was hail and sleet… So a good rain is what the garden and nature need now!

The first four pictures I took on Saturday, first some of the fern in our garden. Aww, those rolls…

I heart…

What did you say?

And we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids again in the evening. On the bridge again, we didn’t go down there by the rapids at all this time, but… look! Over there, inside the ruins of the mill, there’s somebody sitting there!

Can you see her?

The Norway maple in flower beside our driveway, yesterday morning I took this pic. The tree’s been buzzing with bees in some mornings…

Leopard’s bane or doronicum today, flowers…

The first two narcissus or daffodil flowers opened yesterday. The other one here in the evening light…

The rest of the pictures I took today.

Small grape hyacinth or muscari flowering…

The garden fern growing…

Fern still so small in the woods…

Oh, my peonies! 🙂

Our peas growing…

Everything is growing now, but we really would need the rain to help us out a bit… But we did already start the lawn mowing. 🙂

-Leena

If not cooler, then hotter…

…or the other way round. So the first half of the last day of April was snowy, here is my blog post about it. But the sky did start to clear up and the snow started to melt. In the evening we visited the Kauttuankoski rapids:

I ate my ice cream down there somewhere (=the spot where I was can’t actually be seen in this pic), but by the rapids I was first, and then I came up here. And from here, from the bridge, I took this pic… no snow, not anymore.

And the first day of May, the second day of the Finnish Vappu celebration, the May Day itself, was lovely, sunny and warm. I enjoyed sitting here, on the ground, between our vegetable garden and the woods. 🙂

The next four pictures I took by the lake Pyhäjärvi on Saturday. Oh, the colour blue…

Friday and Saturday were sunny and warm days, too. On Friday I saw the first butterfly of this spring for me this year! It was a peacock butterfly. And I heard and saw the first bees buzzing as well! On Saturday then we visited the lake Pyhäjärvi, and on our way there, we saw a deer. I was actually driving the car at that moment, the deer didn’t jump to the road – it stopped by the ditch. And it was so beautiful! 🙂

Under an alder tree and its catkins, by the lake.

We need more days like this!

But:

The Ibiza lizard and hail in our garden yesterday. It’s been hailing and snowing on many days – last week between Tuesday and Thursday, and this week, it’s been cooler… But the sun has been shining, again, right after almost every time that it has hailed or snowed.

The rest of the pictures I took today. And yes, especially today it has hailed and snowed many times, but the sun’s been shining a bit as well. And today I saw black woodpeckers! Two of them. I hadn’t seen those birds before, in nature. Now they were in ‘our’ woods! And their calls sound so… interesting, too! 🙂

In our vegetable garden. Some frost protection fabric now. We moved some of our strawberry plants here, too.

I thought that there wouldn’t be any narcissus or daffodil plants in our garden this spring, but on Friday I found them, on two spots in the garden, here’s one of them. They had started to grow there again, like, overnight! Literally… I mean, I had been watching those spots! 😀

Leopard’s bane or doronicum. It already has some flower buds, too!

And some green grass has grown everywhere now as well, during May. – The spring has been slow this year, but now it seems that everything has started to grow a bit better, despite the occasional hailing and snowing. And indeed, I already started eating some nettles! 🙂

-Leena

Narcissus flowers, small grape hyacinth, Norway Maple in flower…

One positively overwhelmed nature and garden blogger here again, hi! 🙂

Yesterday we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi…

And yesterday the first narcissus or daffodil flowers opened. The narcissus blooming with pure yellow flowers is lovely, but these different shades are so welcomed… The previous owners of this house have planted these next to the woods.