plant – Page 18 – Owlnature

Tea, flowers, Medieval Market, birch sap, coffee…

Some miscellaneous yesterday and today again. I’m visiting Turku now. – I’m on the second floor in a block of flats. I wrote a “story so far” in the sidebar of my blog the other day, telling that I studied in a city, and so on. So, clearly, I’ve lived again in the countryside for two years now, but I’ve had one part of my belongings still here in Turku. But, that’s about to change soon – I’m moving out of here completely now…

…like this – having some tea with no hurry whatsoever, trying to figure out my place in the solar system… 😀
OK, there’s a lot of coffee here in my blog, but… I do drink tea, too! Coffee is coffee and caffeine for me, but my tea I prefer without caffeine. Tea is an evening or a night drink for me. My favourites are chamomile tea and rooibos tea. Yesterday evening (in the pic above) I had chamomile, honey & vanilla tea. Sweet. 🙂

And again flower pics I took in the garden of our country home earlier yesterday. Again phacelia.

And more pics of maiden pink, too. It’s difficult to capture with camera the striking neon red colour the flower has, it dazzles the camera… 😀

One peony bud, three pics…

Yesterday we visited the annual event, the Medieval Market of Turku. The Medieval Market is one of my favourite places in Turku. It’s a place for old, traditional and genuine things, scents, sounds, atmosphere… And I had my traditional cup of nice super drink, ice cold birch sap there. 🙂 Nature’s renewable and healthy magic potion that I’d love to have a little more often.

And morning coffee today. Here’s to us, I guess… 😉

-Leena

A tar kiln, a muffin, flowers… miscellaneous yesterday and today

It all starts with a couple of pics of peony flowers. 🙂 (Peonies earlier here and here.)

Yesterday evening and a summer tradition in the village of Sydänmaa in the municipality of Säkylä, here in Satakunta region: a tar kiln – the real making of tar in a traditional method. The tradition of making tar has its roots in the 1600s in Säkylä. This annual four day (& night) event has been created by skillful local volunteers for 20 years. Yesterday the tar kiln was set on fire, I took these pics right after the blaze started.

Such a nice event and nice memories again! And the fire from the big tar kiln is so hot, I already started sweating as I was taking these pics. 😀

And from the tar kiln we came back home to make some muffins. These are made of gluten free flour; a mix of buckwheat, potato flakes, ground linseed and psyllium. And dark chocolate and banana. We have made different kinds of good gluten free muffins before, this was again something different. 🙂

And again flowers in our garden. This is some sort of phacelia, I don’t know how to say it better in English. In Finnish this is called kellohunajakukka. Lovely flowers and so charming the colour blue! Fairy-tale like. The seeds of these flowers were, by the way, planted by a man. 🙂

Maiden pink. I planted the seeds. 🙂 It’s said that this is one of the most red wild flowers in Finland, if not the reddest. Actually it looks very striking with the colour partly being screaming neon red. Maybe I try to take more pics of this, too, later… This flower can be planted or wild in Finland, but it is, unfortunately, near threatened in the wild.

And today we stopped by the lake Pyhäjärvi…

-Leena

More irises & peonies

Now a pic overflow with my favourite perennials. Yesterday I still took some rainy day pics, pics of irises, too. My first blog post about iris flowers here.

A rainy day can be an inspirational and a lovely day to take pics!

And today peonies again… peonies on a sunny day. My first post about peony flowers here (the rainy yesterday it was).

One way to enjoy the scent is to take pics of the flowers… 😉

Those luxuriants… 🙂

-Leena

A bounty of peonies on a rainy day

Today is a warm and rainy day. It’s really nice to have some rain, because it’s been so dry for the garden for so many days now. And we don’t have to use tap water now, have to be grateful.

So, today, finally some big peony flowers, too, in Owlnature. 🙂

Great delights in the garden, the peonies… Lush…

Still some buds, too.

Such a lovely scent… 🙂

Peony is one of the most charming flowers in a cottage garden or in a traditional garden… like in our garden.

Come out, come out…

More pics of peony flowers later, hopefully. My favourite perennial! That’s why I had the inspiration to have a go now on a rainy day, too. 🙂

-Leena

Wisdom… hope… as you please, but be brave, like an iris flower

This day is for iris flowers in Owlnature. 🙂 Irises in our garden are Siberian irises.

Absolutely one of my favourite perennials, these royals… 🙂

-Leena

A few flowers today (+my “pic page” usernames)

I took a little tour with my camera in our garden today, for the newly opened up flowers for this summer. Today is actually a surprisingly warm day.

The Park lilacs or Hungarian lilacs actually have been flowering already for a while now. Our park lilacs don’t have so many flowers this year – last year they were loaded…

Purple-flowering raspberry is, too, planted by the previous owners of this house. I like it! 🙂

Iris. We have these in two different spots in the garden. The other ones were planted by the previous owners of this house, the other bunch by us – we brought them from eastern Finland last summer, my boyfriend’s mother gave them to us. This flower is of that bunch. I love irises, more pics of them later, hopefully. 🙂 Only two flowers have opened up so far, but there’s so many buds.

Daisy. Daisies are already a bit wild in our garden. – Some of them here, some of them there. One here, one there.

Aaand, I love the “pic pages” or apps… Here’s my favourites, and where Owlnature is… I am… so, my usernames: Instagram: owlnatureleena (I’ve used Instagram before, but at this very moment Owlnature doesn’t have any pics there yet, as I just created the account.) Pinterest: owlnature (The same story as with Instagram.) We Heart It: owlnature (This account I started using already in winter.) Yees, maybe I have the real widgets, too, in the sidebar of my blog some day… 🙂

-Leena

About the plum tree and taking care of it

Our plum tree today. My first blog post about the tree here.

The flowers disappeared quickly and our tiny tree really started to grow some fruits! At least started, and some of the diminutive green fruits have already grown bigger. But still a lot of waiting, though… The plums in this tree should not be that big when they are ripe, but they should be very blue.

So, still hoping to get the two plum fruits that I’m dreaming of this year… 😉

And about taking care of this tree:

The net is keeping our forest rabbit away, although we have our lettuces growing in open ground, and the bunny hasn’t eaten them, but still… And we had a tar moat made out of a plastic container around the trunk of the tree, on the ground, to keep the ants away. That was really necessary and worked very well!

And the aphids, we keep them away with the mixture of water and the traditional Finnish washing liquid, pine soap, called Mäntysuopa – works like a charm! 🙂

Now just waiting what happens to the tiny green fruits…

The next blog post about the tree here.

-Leena