palokärki – Owlnature

Snow, thunder, hail May

But first… A bit over a week ago on Saturday. This was the first time that I have seen a great spotted 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.

Leena

More summer, bats again, the longest day of the year 2017…

So today is the longest day of the year 2017. Here where I’m living, the sun rose at 3.52 AM, and the sun sets at 23.13 PM – the length of the day is 19 hours 20 minutes.

The bats have now been here for the fourth time. Or, we have seen them here four times now, in the woods next to our garden and flying close above our heads in the garden. Nice and delightful! 🙂 They were here on Sunday again. They always come just before twelve o’clock at night. On that night we also saw a whole rainbow here, although it hadn’t even rained. It was the first whole rainbow that we’ve seen from our garden.

The black woodpeckers have also been frequent visitors in the woods next to our garden. One really notices when they come – they have the loud and long flight call “klee-yee” when they enter the woods.

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village on Saturday. I was standing on a dock as I took this pic.

Lilac and the big Norway maple beside our driveway once more.

White lilac flowers in the garden as well. We have loads of purple or lilac lilac flowers in big bushes, but only a few white in a small bush. I must say that the purple truly is my favourite lilac anyway… But these white flowers are charming, too, and it wouldn’t be the same without these adding up to it in our garden.

A few more of red campion or red catchfly flowers in the garden.

We found this lovely spot by the river Pyhäjoki in the municipality of Säkylä on Sunday.

Welcome to the countryside! 🙂 With this pic, too, and on Sunday as well. By the river Eurajoki in the municipality of Eura.

Oregano and sage. These two green friends are a bit different in the way that we, who usually grow herbs and everything from seeds, have bought them fully-grown – at half the price at the local grocery store. These are grown in Finland, which we naturally really appreciate. And these aren’t the usual herb pots that you can buy at the grocery stores in wintertime, these are for summer gardening outside… hmm, just to be specific, not that it should make much of a difference…(?) 🙂 But yeah, these for the garden actually are bigger, sturdier… And we have re-potted these, for better growth.

Grow some lettuce, lettuce wants to grow for you! 🙂

By our strawberry field today. There are surprisingly many strawberry flowers and strawberries growing already.

The first fully opened centaurea montana or mountain cornflower or perennial cornflower or mountain bluet flower in the garden today.

And our park lilacs or Hungarian lilacs have started to open their flowers now as well. There seem to be many more flowers in the bushes now than a year ago.

-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