night owl – Owlnature

May may

What´s around the corner? – Be careful!

Well, the crocuses are nice…

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.

Leena

A weather report, maybe^

A broken record here. Umm… so we already had some snow again. It was ´the sixth snow´for this season here where I´m living – a few centimetres of snow for one day, just for one day. And then the snow melted. So no snow now, again…

The next three pictures I took yesterday:

Well, this was kinda white in colour here yesterday morning. Frost all over, and the sun was shining, too. This mug is my new mug that I found on Friday, in a second hand shop, on the spot where they give their remaining stuff for free there. This mug is like new and just what I need this winter.

So the temperature went up again during the daytime yesterday, and in the evening it started to sleet a lot. Hmm…

And it was Raining at night.

This was on Friday, the first full moon of 2020:

And with a penumbral lunar eclipse it came. I took this pic a bit after 9 pm when the eclipse was on. Of course I knew I would not be able to ´catch the eclipse with my camera´, but I wanted to take pics of the full moon because the sky was all clear and the moon was so bright. And we saw the eclipse clearly. It was just nice. 🙂

And this was at around 0.30 am, I was still ´mooning´out there… I was awed by the brightness of the moon and by the landscape that the moonlight created there in the dark. And I was even able to catch three stars with my camera. 😀

On Wednesday it was time to take the Christmas tree to pieces… I found 41 cones in the tree! And some seeds fell from the cones as well. Hopefully at least one black spruce will grow from these.

The rest of the pictures I took today:

My morning coffee. I do need this mug…

No snow… But at least the sun is shining again – there´s the difference between November and January – sunshine in January.

I watched biathlon and cross-country skiing today. What to watch next…? Something short perhaps. ~Oh, things to do… well, maybe tomorrow…

Leena

New Year, new something´´:)

It´s next decade! 😮 🙂

Okay so the very tiny amount of snow we had melted. It was ´the fifth snow´for this season here where I´m living. So now, again, no snow…

So it´s what´s on television, Viaplay, Netflix, etc. that counts. 😉 This was on Sunday, my morning coffee… And I watched my favourite Christmas movie once again. A Christmas Carol, based on my favourite Christmas book, by Charles Dickens.

Snaps from yesterday, the last day of the year, New Year´s Eve it was:

Here in our home village, travelling back from grocery store…

By a December´s rose again… And the sun was shining, again! And the sky was clear and starry at night. It was wonderful. 🙂

Just a few of the many lovely lights outside around here last night…

The rest of the pictures I took today, on the first day of the year 2020, on New Year´s Day:

Well, it was a bit cold at night…

The sun was shining a bit today as well…

I started watching the New Year´s Concert of The Vienna Philharmonic. I love the tradition, and the intermission programme, too.

Green edibles growing in the kitchen. They are growing pretty fast. 🙂

By the Christmas tree…

Outside:

Leena

Christmas lights~

Black Christmas – musta joulu. – No snow here in the southernmost part of Finland. Until yesterday – a tiny amount of snow here where I´m living. Very tiny. So it has been this “it´s what´s inside that counts” thing at Christmas this year. Yeah, well, we already did have our ´fourth snow´, too, for this season, here where I´m living, after the third one melted, a bit more snow for some days there was again, but it all melted just before Christmas…

Now some pictures:

These first two pictures I took on Monday. We have our first ever Christmas tree in this house. Love the atmosphere and the scent!

~Christmas tree and Christmas food, chocolate, coffee, glögi and watching television, Netflix, Finnish Yle Areena, etc. and enjoying the outdoors a bit and reading, thinking… Mostly. Between Christmas and New Year as well.

And the tree even has cones! It´s black spruce.

I´m not usually on the track, but when it´s Christmas Day, I am. There is a bit longer uphill part there on the track, not a steep one, but you can really feel that you go uphill, and I was just thinking “What the hell am I doing here Now?” But at the end of the track, it all started to feel just nice. 🙂

Two more on Christmas Day,, at night:

White Christmas… lights, on the lilac bush in our front yard.

Outside our living room.

And the snow then finally:

Yesterday morning. A pleasant surprise and this really makes a big difference! Our ´fifth snow´ for this season is this…

In the daytime, still no natural light yesterday.

Coffee pic yesterday.

Hyacinth, the scent…

Yesterday evening, here in our home village.

Pictures today:

Coffee pic by the rose bush Rosa Splendens, Valamonruusu.

It´s a colder day today, it´s -5 degrees Celsius, but they say that it feels like -11 degrees Celsius, now, around 11 am.

There was some natural light coming my way! 😀

Sunshine!

The days are already getting longer. The length of the day today, here where I´m living, is 5 h 32 min.

Leena

Boo! Hello November

Time flies! But so do I. Try to. 🙂

The first three pictures I took a bit over a week ago:

We found many acorns a year ago and we planted them in our garden. Now there are small oak trees growing. This was the last chance to get pics of these small trees with some leaves this year before all the rest of the leaves fell down the next day…

Two patches of oak trees we have now.

This guy was inside our house next to the back door late in the evening. Really a lively creature it was!

Boo! Baaad. Well, The Pumpkin, the only one that we had in our greenhouse. We carved our first ever Jack-O’-Lantern a week ago. For Halloween and this late autumn.

And I made ketchup for the first time ever a week ago. I took this pic while I was still cooking the ketchup. I used our overripe greenhouse tomatoes, jam sugar, vinegar, salt, black pepper and cajun seasoning. The ketchup is delicious, both sweet and spicy.

On Monday morning this week:

October snow. – We had first snow here where I’m living. It was lovely. Last year we had first snow on October 23 and this year on October 28.

“Ugh!” ? 🙂

Just a bit dark here in our home village, yesterday evening I took this pic. No snow now, the first snow in October always comes and goes here in the southern part of Finland.

I heard whooper swans calling when I snapped this last night. I think they were by the lake.

Pictures today:

Books lately… I already read The Little Prince and 1984, they were great books. I’m still reading the second KonMari book, and I like it a lot, too.

Autumnal at our terrace:

And more hobbies… what’s been happening yesterday and today as well. The Finnish cross-country skiing races for this season started, and I’ve been watching, of course. 🙂 They have some snow there in the region of Kainuu, it’s that much north.

Almost some sunlight… 😀

Leena

Cherries, cucumbers, one bat, flowers (& friends)…

Just making some lists… :p

Okay, this is the first time ever that we have cherries in our garden.

The small cherry tree had 11 flowers and a few cherries. That was so nice!

The young bush cherry had many many flowers, and many cherries, too. And there are still fruits ripening in the bush. I didn’t know what to expect. 😀 Love them!

The first ever ‘open-field’ cucumbers from our garden.

And there’s more growing, this was yesterday. I planted only one plant, one stem, this stem in the pic. Just a delicious experiment…

Cucumbers in our greenhouse. Greenhouse cucumbers grow really well and are so delicious! We’ve already had several.

Two pics that I took yesterday evening when I closed the windows and the door in the greenhouse:

More cucumbers growing…

I wonder if these tiny ones will still grow…

We saw a bat, the first bat here for this year, on 30th July late in the evening. It was flying, flapping in our garden and in the woods.

Some flower pics that I took in our garden yesterday:

Clematis, by the oak tree.

Tricolor daisy and a friend.

Garden rose and a friend.

Red flax and a friend. Friends everywhere in the garden in August. 🙂

Lily

Sunflower

They come in August.

Good morning today:

With clarkia amoena or godetia flowers…

And a busy friend here as well. 🙂

A little bit of rain and then sunshine again. It’s nice when it rains a bit, it has been rather dry all summer again.

I Have to go to the library today and I should wash the car…

Leena

Greenhouse, hot, light, bright…

It’s officially summer! And lately… First it was very freaking windy for many days, and a bit cold, too. Now it has been very warm again, even hot (too warm 😀 ) for a few days. For example here where I’m living it was 31 degrees Celsius in the shade in the daytime on Thursday, and not much cooler on Friday, and yesterday it was around 29 degrees as well. Today it’s 21 degrees Celsius – oh, normality… 😀

Our greenhouse is ready, yay! It has been fully ready for a few days now. First pictures that I took when it was still possible to ‘see through’ the greenhouse a bit:

And these are what we put into the ground, going round and round… hmm…

There it is, one of them…

The greenhouse is almost, but not quite, under the monster, our biggest pine tree.

Two pictures from the inside.

A few pictures I took today, the first ‘ready pictures’:

It was a lot of work and everything, but “Phew!” now finally… 😀

There are for example watermelon and sweet peppers growing. We carried 1000 litres of garden soil in bags into/outside the greenhouse.

Fuchsia flowers.

And viola flowers today:

Love the scent in the air…

Sage, too…

stars on the ground — Stars on the ground…

The stars are on the ground again this time of year in Finland. 🙂 – Arctic starflower or chickweed wintergreen in the woods next to our garden, I took this picture at around 11.55 pm on Wednesday. (And I was attacked by mosquitoes, there are plenty of them evenings these days.)

So the days are long now, light and bright. And they are still getting a bit lighter. Today for example, here where I’m living, the sun rose at 03.58 am and the sun sets at 23.03 pm – the length of the day is 19 h 5 min.

Leena