plant – Page 17 – Owlnature

Holistic wellness from nature, me -10 kg (!), annual mallow flowers…

It’s getting miscellaneous again. And I’m visiting Turku again, clarifications about my Turku here. 🙂

Morning coffee pic this morning, on my second floor here…

These two pics I took on Thursday at 23.30 PM (still lightly light in Finland) in the garden of our country home, after we had come back from Nordic walking and eating blueberries in the raven forest. 🙂 And after these pics, when I went inside the house, something bizarre happened…

I hadn’t weighed myself for a long time, but after taking the pics above, I DID, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… I have lost 10 kilograms without trying! – I have only moved from the block of flats to a country home. 😀 Yes, I’ve noticed that my face, for example, looks thinner now, compared to pics of me a bit over two years ago, but still, my focus has been my mental health – I mean, really, my peace of mind and all… And I know that 10 kilos in two years may not be that much to some people, but for me, that’s a huge accomplishment! In my case, an accomplishment without even trying – just happening naturally – literally. OK, so, no wonder I’ve been feeling that light, the light and the bright at times. 😉

It was just that living in a city and in a block of flats… it just wasn’t for me, I didn’t know what to do with myself there in the end. I started to feel uneasy and even crazy at times, in a bad way, and I know what panic attacks are. In a way, I lost myself, but yes, I gained WEIGHT. 🙂 But I felt at home spending some time in the bushes of northern and eastern Finland. And yes, I’m not alone in this, my boyfriend had the same problems and he has already lost 20 kilos – he already took everything as a physical project since almost a year ago. And we’ve been eating normal (Finnish) food. But my boyfriend hasn’t eaten any wheat for almost a year now. So, we have never been obese, just easy to see.

But enough of this for now, I must just say that one has to give the good time to grow… So, this whole blog of mine is an ode to nature, I share pics and thoughts and the LOVE here, and I’m witnessing the holistic benefits of living close to nature every day in reality, in my own life, and this does not mean I would not love to visit cities, too, and cities, too, have some nature in them. This is just becoming myself, finding my place…

So, let’s continue the holistic struggle! – This I really mean, and this I say with love. 🙂

And with mallow flowers:

More annual mallow flowers in our garden. I took these pics, too, on Thursday.

-Leena

Flowers in the morning

A nice and sunny morning today was. And so much inspiration while having my morning coffee. I’m not sure if I should warn somebody of… something… but here comes 18 pics of which 17 are flower pics. So, here’s some FLOWER POWER. 🙂

I took today’s pics before and after 9 AM, a few pics are from Friday and Saturday. First peony poppies this morning:

The first peony poppy grown from the seeds that I planted this summer. Five pics of it here… 🙂

It has grown tall.

Marvelous, colourful peony poppies…

And my ‘wild’ poppies, two more of them.

Annual mallow grown from seed. The first opened mallow flower this summer, I planted them last summer, too. Mallows are lovely. Other names for this annual mallow: rose mallow, royal mallow, regal mallow.

A Strawflower bud opening on Friday.

More strawflowers on Saturday.

Nicely rustling flowers, when you touch them. 🙂

Strawflowers this morning:

I took this pic while I was taking a break from taking pics of flowers this morning. 🙂 I was sitting on a bench, eating a banana and redcurrants freshly picked from the bush. Having some more coffee.

And more flowers this morning:

And I planted cornflower seeds, too, this summer. The first flowers are emerging from buds.

Butterfly flower, Schizanthus. Or poor man’s orchid. 🙂 Grown from seed. A tiny and an exotic looking flower.

A choker… And the flower is called red flax. It’s grown from seed in the geometric flower plantation made by a man. 🙂

-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.

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. 🙂

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!

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

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…

…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

Verbena found

As a “note between”… Now I know what the real name of my ‘white crown flower’ or ‘white flower crown’ in this blog post is. It is verbena, rautayrtti in Finnish. I saw these flowers in a garden store with a name tag the other day. 🙂

Coffee along with some strawberries, raspberries… and peony poppies

Today’s morning coffee pic with some strawberries and raspberries.

Wonderful time of the year is this… We get lots of berries (hmmm, or them fruits… but let’s not get into that berry-fruit terminology right now… :p ), enough for two people to enjoy many berries every day – raw from the bushes – we’re not preserving them, just eating them when they are fresh, sweet and juicy and healthiest. And oh, the scent! And yes, I’m still dreaming of planting more strawberries – their season goes too fast in Finland every summer…

The next five pics I took between Saturday and today. Peony poppies. These are my ‘wild’ poppies that are already blooming, completely unattended – they have grown from the seeds of the poppies I had last summer – we threw them around randomly in our garden. And some of the poppies now blooming have also grown as a surprise to us – beside the flower bed in which I planted poppies last summer. The poppies are growing through stones and thick soil, I didn’t expect that…

I love peony poppies, too. 😉 They also have a charming and distinctive scent.

Someone else, too, was enjoying themselves. 🙂

I also, of course, planted peony poppy seeds this summer, but the plants of those are still growing…

You can feel that you are in Hawaii, if you just put your mind to it:

Headstrong. Focus.

Well, you just can! – You can lie on a Hawaii textile… like our furry princess in the pics I took yesterday… Or you can plant your own garden, your dreams and reality, outdoors and indoors, and you’ll have the world around you all the time… 🙂

-Leena

All peonies, every pic…

Today the peony pics I talked about yesterday, I said that there would be poppies, too, but I’ll have them in an another post. This one’s devoted to peonies – the last ones for this summer… I took the first six pics on Saturday, they all look almost the same… almost, but not quite! I have them all in this blog post, for myself and for everyone else who loves peonies.

The peony moments go so fast every summer…

There cannot be too many peonies in one’s life. 🙂

The next two pics are from Monday.

And drying peonies:

First I must thank my friend who reminded me about the drying – as much as I love peonies, I would have just let them all go without realizing that I could dry them and have a lovely memory of summer in the dark wintertime, some of my peonies still with me! So, thanks A! 🙂

So, this is the traditional and simple air-drying that I’m doing. – My peonies are drying in our storage room which is the darkest and coolest place in our house, and yet, not very dark and not so cool – we live here in this warm but light jungle in the summertime. 🙂 My peonies were also fully opened as I cut them to dry on Monday, but I checked them today and the process was going just fine – the dream of my peonies being still with me in the winter is still alive! But if I cut the last peony to dry, I’ll cut it before it is fully opened.

And the very last peony bud in the bush today…

I think I’ll try to dry this one, too, if it still grows – I wasn’t so sure that this one would start to open… 🙂

-Leena

Interesting flowers

Pics I took between Saturday and today, in this blog post today… I have already so many pics that I’ll have to save the last peony pics and some poppies, too, for the next post, for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, hopefully… 🙂

Burning love… we have it here and there in our garden. 😉

Well, this flower has many other names, too: Maltese Cross, dusky salmon, Flower of Bristol, Jerusalem Cross, nonesuch… Whoa! 🙂

Getting there! – In style! Don’t rush m… us!

Maiden pink again. This time not pink, but dark red. I call this an endless battle, trying to capture the true colours of maiden pink with camera… And the flowers come in so many shades – the neon pink, deep pink, lighter pink, redder, very red… Just marvelous!

My maiden pinks got some new friends. And I don’t know who they are. 😀

This is getting a bit tricky. I planted some summer flower seed mix – I naturally don’t know what will grow, aaand there’s so many flowers of this kind growing there now that I don’t know what to think of this… I googled a bit, and I found viper’s bugloss, neidonkieli in Finnish, which somehow looks like this. I also planted some butterfly flower (perhoskukka in Finnish) seeds somewhere (here?), but this doesn’t actually look like it. Have I forgotten that I planted something like viper’s bugloss, too…? – Completely possible. 😀

Oh, nice flowers! 🙂

“Not interested, actually, you know…” :

“Me neither.” :

Some bellflowers. Especially violet bellflowers we have here and there in our garden – the previous owners of this house got wild with them, too. 🙂 And I don’t know what bellflowers these actually are, but they are always lovely.

And the maiden pinks and their friends now have a purple cornflower amongst them since yesterday – this definitely has grown from the seed mix…

-Leena