There’s a wonderful scent in the air everywhere outside. It’s a combination, a mixture of everything; earth, grass, flowers… Trees are blooming, too. Our plum tree is blooming and our pear tree is blooming, bird cherry trees are blooming outside our yard…
And yesterday evening I finally heard the “cuck-koo” – I think I heard the call of the cuckoo bird already before, but yesterday I heard it clearly.
Our plum tree is full of flowers. We planted this tree four years ago, it has been flowering every year now.
Our pear tree is full of flowers, too. This is the first time that this tree is full of flowers. – We planted it in September 2017. Oh, the scent… 🙂
Everything is growing, everything is green, and there are flowers, too, everywhere! Well, we already had a cold period again, it was a short one, but it was hailing and snowing. Nothing stayed on the ground though, it was just snowing and hailing and the sun was shining as well, at the same time, too, again. – Business as usual.
And now we’ve had warm days again – around 15 degrees Celsius and around 20 degrees Celsius it has been, yesterday it was a bit above 20 degrees Celsius and today it’s already 23 degrees Celsius. Feels like summer for us! 🙂
~”Taller than the trees”
A pic today. There suddenly was a random tulip bulb in my hands last autumn, and I planted it here thinking that it might be nice to have a single tulip blooming beside my dwarf spruce. Well, it is! And the tulip is taller than my tree. 🙂
~Hiding… someone’s always hiding…? 😀
A ladybug or ladybird was hiding in our pear tree yesterday, I saw her (?) again today, in the pear tree, she had come out from her hiding place…
A dandelion in our garden, it is like… two dandelions in one – a broad stem and two different flowers, hmm…
We went for a walk by the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village yesterday.
In the woods there… This doesn’t look bad in pictures, but it looks more impressive in nature, the tree really is bigger in nature, and I always am strangely awed by this big tree that has come down…
Another big tree, a very old birch tree…
We already have the smaller greenhouse in the corner of our terrace. We will have another greenhouse in our garden, a bigger one. This is what we have there now; the ground (foundation not quite ready yet) for the greenhouse and marigold flowers (as a symbol of hope ;D ) – we still have to build, assemble the greenhouse as well…
Everything has started to turn green! 🙂 It has been a sunny week again. And it has been warm – around 20 degrees Celsius and even a bit above 20 degrees it has been, in the daytime. Today it’s around 15 degrees Celsius, and they say that it stays that way now. That’s also more normal for us this time of year…
Now a woodcock has started its regular flights here again: “orr, orr, orr, pist!”
The first four pictures I took today:
My coffee, and they are chives… down there. Chives have been growing fast now – they are perennials – were planted here a year ago. They are so delicious! And after a long winter again…..
Grass is growing…
And nettles are growing. It’s nice to sit on the ground and eat tiny, delicious nettle leaves…
Where’s my snow…? ;D
Tiny birch leaves!
Crocus flowers on Tuesday this week.
A pic from yesterday evening. I mark the spots of our ‘surprise’ crocuses so that we won’t step on them before they grow.
By the way, I’ve been posting on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) as well, so trying to have balance between my blog and my Instagram. Well, I’m not actually trying, it has just been flowing naturally, or something… 😀
And today again:
One of our vegetable patches. Last year we had potatoes here, this year something else… We started planting this patch yesterday, and planted onions and peas now first.
The first daffodil or narcissus flower blooming on the ground in our garden.
Spring, spring, Easter. It has been a sunny week. And it has been warmer again – a bit over 10 degrees Celsius, and even warmer than that – around 15 degrees Celsius it has been, too. We have seen coltsfoot flowers. And we have seen flies, mosquitoes, bees and butterflies – signs of summer…
The Ibizalizard, always covered in snow a bit…? 🙂 Well, in wintertime… and this was a bit over a week ago on Friday.
For the moon… The moon, a fullmoon on Saturday, at around 1.00 am. I was ~mooning around in our garden…
A picture that I took yesterday:
The first flowers on the ground in our garden are crocus flowers. We have those everywhere in the garden. They are lovely surprises also because we can’t remember all the spots where we have planted them. 🙂
The rest of the pictures I took today:
My coffee and friends…
Just a few pictures of crocus flowers now… And also daffodil stems and tulip stems have started to grow on the ground.
‘A walk-in closet’ in the corner of the terrace – that’s the short description of our first ever greenhouse, here. 🙂
…and spring is ‘throwing it right at you’ – snow, hail and shine, too! And it has been a bit colder again.
The first five pictures I took in our garden on Sunday. Sunday – funday: first the sun was shining, then some dark clouds started to appear in the sky, and then the sun was shining and it was snowing at the same time, and after that it was just cloudy and it was snowing, and then again clouds were going away and the sun was shining again, and after that again; dark clouds were appearing in the sky and the sun was shining and it started to snow at the same time… – This pattern continued all day.
And at one point it was hailing as well. The sun was still shining on the right-hand side when I took the picture above.
Spring says hello…
So there’s that…
I know what triggers you.
Solar power.
Three pictures that I took yesterday:
Coffee pic… Just to tell that the sun wasn’t exactly shining, but the scent of the coffee was wonderful, and that it was snowing yesterday, too.
And a bit later… Nordic walking in the forest. Ravens were croaking there, and it was snowing a bit.
Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower (bigger leaves) and daisy.
Purple coneflower and daisy growing in our kitchen…
And pictures that I took today:
Having coffee again today. ;D And the sun is shining.
From the garden bench.~Hi!~
My dwarf spruce was completely buried under snow, now she’s back. 🙂
Sofian maailma, Sophie’s World.
I am about to finish reading this book, Sofian maailma – Sophie’s World – A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder. It’s a great book! And a great adventure. And it’s a bit heavy book – there was a week I couldn’t read it, I couldn’t hold the book in my hands, because it was too heavy for my shingles…
It’s March! – Well, that was fast… Ready for spring? – Maybe. 🙂
The first pictures in this blog post I took on Thursday. We visited TheBotanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island, in the city of Turku (our former home!). That was so nice. I took only a few pictures, but here’s something green anyway:
The jungle welcomes you.
And something yellow… There were lemons!
And bananas! Okay, bananas were my favourites and I already have a picture of these on my Instagram. You don’t always see bananas there.
This is what I always call a trunk with attitude. 🙂 A kapok tree. And are those… taro leaves…?
And a few pictures that I took today:
From the garden bench.
..That’s the place to sit, whenever the sun is shining.
Snow, snow… and the composter in our garden ‘exploded’, a bit.
Coffee… and yes, this is what I’m doing right now, and have been doing lately – I’ve been watching cross-country skiing again. 🙂 This time it has been, of course, the Nordic World Ski Championships in Seefeld in Tirol, Austria.
It was sunny and it was windy on Friday, and a lot of snow fell from the wintry trees that we had… We had some sunshine yesterday, too, but today, now it’s already snowing a bit, and they say that it will continue to snow. – Now that is what I really like! Right now, because it’s January! 🙂
Late in the afternoon on Friday.
The next four pictures I took already on Saturday a week ago:
Never before have we seen so many deer tracks in our yard. – We have seen deer tracks often in our garden this winter. The animals are night-time wanderers, but we saw a ‘herd’ of three deer once, early in the morning, and a couple of deer in the daytime.
On Saturday a week ago there were many deer tracks in our yard, first I thought there had been two deer, but then I kept finding new tracks, and it looked like there had been at least three deer. Well, that was our strawberry patch in the pic above – that was the first time that deer had actually been doing something in our garden – digging and eating and it looked like one had been lying down there. Deer oh deer…
Some prints and tracks that I found:
A deer hoof print and a cat paw print.
A deer hoof print and a cat paw print side by side. – A nice coincidence. 🙂 Deer hoof prints that we see here are usually quite small…
…but then I found these tracks – the hoof prints looked a lot bigger… “What was that? – The devil has been in our backyard?”, I thought to myself. ;D
Now pictures that I took yesterday:
Amaryllis. Always majestic… And the scent is lovely and delicate!
My amaryllis had three flowers in the first stem, this is now the second stem, and it has four flowers, the flower in the picture is the first one that’s fully opened. Just marvellous.
Now just one pic of our new house plant, staghorn fern or elkhorn fern. Hopefully it won’t dry out… An interesting plant!
I went for a walk barefoot from the sauna again on Friday night, twice. I had only a towel around me and the snow and the chilly wind felt very nice. Comfortable enough – meaning one can do it without hesitation…
Our cats’ mother, the mother cat, came to live with us – that’s something new and nice as well. We travelled to Central Finland to get her on Monday this week. We had seen the mother cat only once before, very briefly, almost four and a half years ago and we didn’t remember how she actually looked like, so that was an interesting surprise for us, too, when we saw her on Monday. 🙂
