March on

It’s March already – incredible! But the winter weather continues, it’s been even bitterly cold lately, as it has been the case in many other parts of Europe as well. Here in Finland the temperatures have been below -10 degrees Celsius and for some days the temperatures were between -15 and -20 degrees Celsius, and even colder than that. Naturally, it’s been colder during the nighttime because the sun is already warming during the daytime. I mean, the sun’s been shining like crazy! 😀 – So many sunny days lately, it’s been like constant sunshine… And as I am still counting; here, where I’m living, we’ve had snow on the ground for 13 weeks now.

March

I took this picture yesterday, just to show how high the sun already is in the sky here. This was at around 14.10 pm. On the shortest day of the year the sun at its highest point was just above that hill. The increasing daylight truly has made me do all kinds of things, as I already said in the previous blog post, effective. 🙂

March

My morning coffee today, at around 9.10 am. It was -12 degrees Celsius – only -12… 😀

crepes

And crepes with our own apple jam. I used oat flour and a mixture of oat and potato flours. Potato flour is good – it gives the oat flour crepes structure so that they are easy to flip.

Lahti Ski Festival

Did someone say winter sports? – Winter sports is still on. And I love it! This weekend it’s the Lahti Ski Festival here in Finland, it’s part of the World Cup thing. Now there’s Nordic Combined on, with the ski jumping part. Okay, most of us Finns love to watch cross-country skiing and ski jumping, and luckily that’s just what the Lahti Ski Games are about. 🙂

-Leena

Wintry days & oh, deer

Cloudy, cold and frost – three words to describe, in a nutshell, the days lately. So, it’s been a bit colder for some days now, the temperatures have mostly been around -5 degrees Celsius and a bit below. And we’ve had snow on the ground for five weeks now, that’s quite remarkable. 🙂

This happened on Tuesday: I looked out the kitchen window and I saw a deer on the hill. I went outside and there were two deer. Never before have we seen deer here, seen them from our garden. Near our home, yes, many times, but not here.

deer

This is the best pic I have of the event, taken with zoom, and fast. It felt like seeing reindeer in the north. 🙂

January

The corn plants and… other things…

January pine trees

They have answers…

January pine trees

January cherry tree

The cherry tree is patiently waiting for spring…

January cherry tree

January poppy pod

And a poppy pod… I wonder if there will be flowers here on this spot next summer…

January

A bit of light yesterday.

coffee, crepes and Babar's Yoga for Elephants

And today… My coffee, crepes, apple jam and New York… in Babar’s Yoga for Elephants by Laurent de Brunhoff. I made crepes yesterday, they are oat flour crepes with a bit of barley flour. And the apple jam we made of the apples of our trees in autumn. The word crepe is, by the way, lettu or lätty in Finnish. 🙂

-Leena

Blueberry gold, the next peony poppy, the very last peony flower

We’ve been doing quite a lot of Nordic walking, but I don’t always take pics of it… On Thursday I took a pic – I tried to demonstrate what we’ve been doing quite a lot lately; Nordic walking and during that activity picking and eating blueberries, too (isn’t that a healthy and pleasant combination 😉 ) in the forest where one of our favourite walking trails goes.

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The starting and ending point of the trail is by the lake Pyhäjärvi, I took this pic after our walk – trying to get some of my blueberry fingers, too, in the pic. 😀 This previous blog post about Nordic walking was from the same forest, our raven forest near our home. We just love it! – There’s always a raven or many ravens croaking. Once we heard, and saw, many many ravens. We tried to count them; there was at least 15 if not over 20 ravens dashing, flying and croaking. Amazing it was. Ravens are both funny and noble birds. 🙂

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A muffin again yesterday evening… We’re lucky enough to have a lot of wild blueberries in our back garden, too. Yesterday evening we made some blueberry muffins. Muffins of gluten free flour; whole grain oat flour. Oat is the best! 🙂 So delicious and healthy. And traditionally Finnish!

poppy

Two pics of the next peony poppy flower today. This, too, is one of my ‘wild poppies’. This was hit with rain – yesterday, heavily…

poppy

peony

And the very last peony flower – just had to take pics today… Yesterday I was hoping that this would survive the rain and grow bigger…

peony

peony

…so that I could cut it for drying today. And that was what I already did, because I thought the flower is big enough to cut, to save, now. The other peonies that I cut for drying earlier, are still doing (drying) just fine. 🙂

-Leena