owlnature – Page 2

´Snowflash´ and stuff

March came and so did snow. So let´s feast our eyes on that white for a bit again (or still?)… :p (Too many pictures in this blog post, but this is ´for the record´and spring is already in the air…)

Well, this was on Friday a week ago… The greenest guy in the house! A green huntsman spider.

And by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village, a week ago as well…

In the woods travelling away from the lake…

One of the campfires that we have had in our garden lately.

And then came March, the first four pictures on Sunday:

G`morning!

We still have the upper part of our Christmas tree on the terrace…

The next eight pictures on Wednesday:

I still found a cone in the Christmas tree. 🙂 (I found 41 cones when it was time to take the tree to pieces in January.)

Hmm… Christmas? No…..

It was windy, as it has been many a time this winter, no permanent snow cover here in the southernmost part of Finland, but windy Yes…

On Thursday:

The amount of snow varies, the snow melted a bit again…

The next nine pictures I took yesterday, on Friday:

Mooorning! It had been snowing a bit again…

It´s very nice that there has still been snow, because ´the spring in the air´feels more like a real spring when there´s some snow melting. 😀

Small rose flowers in our living room.

Sunshine & blue…

Solar power.

Hmm… And in the sky, the moon…

Garden campfire yesterday. The sky was clear at night, the moon, stars…

But this morning:

Well, grey morning!

My morning coffee ideas in the living room…

In the afternoon, just for the record…

Leena

Pics yesterday and today

I´m not gonna talk about that white stuff (snow) now.

It was wonderfully sunny on Thursday and yesterday…

In our garden yesterday:

Morning coffee…

Blue!

In the greenhouse:

This was flowering black-eyed Susan vine last summer.

Ivy plants green in the greenhouse!

And pics today:

Morning coffee…

By the way, this mug and that mug in the beginning of this blog post, and a cup or two more… I found them all on Thursday in two different second hand shops, again, on the spots where they give their remaining stuff for free, and the mugs are like new. Always funny… 🙂

Outside it was sleeting into my coffee mug…

Birds were chirping loudly…

`A lot on the plate´again… Well, don´t we all have. About just reading… I have been reading some Japanese which is interesting and I have also been reading some professional literature in order to ´get my level up´ and by that I mean that I´m of course (?) on the lowest level, so to speak, so there´s only one way to go from here and therefore I ought to be quite excited about things, I guess… :p

And now it´s raining… “Okay, bye!”

And sleeting again a bit later… It´s been sleeting many different times today.

Leena

Bad winter, baaad…

No permanent snow cover here in the southernmost part of Finland this winter – I guess it´s safe to say this now, at this point in time. Umm… so we already had ´the seventh snow´, ´the eighth snow´and ´the ninth snow´for this season here where I´m living. (At least these we´ve had, I may have forgotten ´one more snow´, but I can´t even count these anymore.) So a bit snow for a few days, a few centimetres of snow for two or three days, and so on… As it has been this winter. And then, again, fricking warm weather, temperatures above zero degrees Celsius, Rain… I am so fed up with this. And hey yes, it started to snow on Wednesday this week and now we have `the tenth snow´for this winter. A few centimetres of snow we Had. – It lasted until today, it´s Sunday today, and the snow is already melting.

The amount of snow in centimetres in Finland yesterday. Oh, the northern part of the country and Lapland…

The next four pics I took here in our home village on Friday evening when we were coming back from grocery store 🙂 :

By the lake Pyhäjärvi. Lit by our car, hmm… Some ice… an ice cover and snow on the lake for that time…

On the same spot, looking up… The moon was bright again!

Travelling in the woods… A bumpy road.

Ended up in an ice rink…

Yesterday, my morning coffee, snowman in the middle of the oak trees…

This was a week ago. We have not seen this before! The leaf buds have already begun to open in the bush, in late January!

And our small common hazel shrub has already begun to open its leaf buds….. This Picture I took yesterday.

Oh yes… This was on Wednesday late in the evening. This was my third time on skis this winter. Well, it took me a while, but I finally learned :-p that, this winter, whenever there´s enough snow, I gotta go cross-country skiing, immediately, in our yard. Just go!

Whoa! A eucalyptus sauna whisk, we had this for the first time last week. Usually we have Finnish birch sauna whisks, but now we wanted to try this eucalyptus (from Ukraine) whisk, because we found it for half the price in a local grocery store. And we loved it! The whisk was thick, the leaves were wonderfully long and they didn´t fall off. It was very good to hit yourself with it. And the scent when you split the leaves a bit and crush them in your hands is lovely. A nice and a rather exotic experience. 🙂

In these pictures… I believe this was our ´seventh´snow, in January this was. Well, this winter it does not matter what day it was or is now…

The last three pics I took today:

I started watching cross-country skiing again… Either watching cross-country skiing or dreaming of doing it…? :p

Green edibles growing in the kitchen.

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

~November reign

November, the fifth season, has been grey, brown, black… And then it started to really rain. But yesterday finally: SNOW! (The ‘third snow’ for this season.)

So now some November snapshots:

And then I was like... — And then I was like…

This was three weeks ago, after our ‘second snow’ for this season had melted. I truly loved our Jack-O’-Lantern, he was a very expressive guy. 😀

Still learning archery… I lost one of my arrows last summer. I shot it towards the woods and it got lost in the greenery. I think that the guy who cut the many tiny rowan trees there the other week found it and… this is how I found the arrow. Thanks! 🙂

By the lake Pyhäjärvi near our home on Wednesday this week. Well, that’s kinda light blue…

On Thursday:

Umm, our greenhouse in November. So I love all the seasons. But… meh now already… And it has been a bit difficult to get up in the morning lately. This late November thing…

This was three weeks ago, almost right after my previous blog post. I looked out the window and saw this tiny insect flying outside and jumping on the snow there. Winter came for the tiny creature…

Yesterday morning, this was a lovely surprise – I heard the rain still pour down at night! And they say that the weather will now stay a bit wintry at least for a while…

Yesterday afternoon.

I’m reading Moominvalley in November for the second time. I read it for the first time many years ago when I still lived in Turku. The book was a bit odd experience to me – I was reading it and all the time I was waiting for the book to begin, so to speak, and… then I suddenly had just read the whole book. I don’t know what it was, but all the Moomin books are just great, I have now read them all and I love them, and I did like the November book already earlier, I love the language and so on, but something ‘made me waiting’… So now I must read this November book again so that I can see if I now get the nuances a bit better, or something, because I’m altogether a better person now. Well, no… But Now that I’m reading it again, I can say that I follow the book a bit better. And of course I like it a lot, and I like Ruttuvaari – Grandpa Grumble. 🙂

Today:

A pleasant morning…

Also because… I was watching cross-country skiing again. The Cross-Country World Cup started for this season already yesterday, here in Finland, in Northern Finland, in Ruka, in Kuusamo, one of my favourite places in the world. 🙂

And then sunshine! And our juhannusruusu – ‘Finnish Midsummer rose‘ bush again. This bush was loaded with white flowers in summer, but I don’t think I have any pictures of it, oh dear oh dear…

Blue sky! Haven’t seen that for a while.

The day is short; the length of the day today, here where I’m living, is 6 h 13 min.

A hare it was.

The sun was gently warming my face…

Leena