puutarha – Page 3

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

Snow again

It snowed yesterday evening and at night. So this is ‘the second snow’ for this season here where I’m living. But they say that it will Rain tomorrow… and on Sunday… Well, because taking pics is a good and an efficient way to enjoy snow now, I took pics in our garden today:

Coffee and contemplation… (-I’m a big fan of Stranger Things, too…) I saw this pic and it made me wonder why our terrace fence is sh*tty… 🙂

Well, this was yesterday evening here in our home village, it had already been snowing a bit.

Snowed…

“Oh no, not again!” ? 🙂

Juhannusruusu – ‘Finnish Midsummer rose‘ bush.

And books I just started reading… The House at Pooh Corner and Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places. Interesting things…

Summer’s flowers, winter beauties…

Raspberry leaves.

‘The House at Pooh Corner‘ occurred to me because… We are building this garden shed in one corner of our garden, hmm…

Tiny oak trees… Now we can really see them. 🙂 They grew from acorns in the summer this year.

Leena

Boo! Hello November

Time flies! But so do I. Try to. 🙂

The first three pictures I took a bit over a week ago:

We found many acorns a year ago and we planted them in our garden. Now there are small oak trees growing. This was the last chance to get pics of these small trees with some leaves this year before all the rest of the leaves fell down the next day…

Two patches of oak trees we have now.

This guy was inside our house next to the back door late in the evening. Really a lively creature it was!

Boo! Baaad. Well, The Pumpkin, the only one that we had in our greenhouse. We carved our first ever Jack-O’-Lantern a week ago. For Halloween and this late autumn.

And I made ketchup for the first time ever a week ago. I took this pic while I was still cooking the ketchup. I used our overripe greenhouse tomatoes, jam sugar, vinegar, salt, black pepper and cajun seasoning. The ketchup is delicious, both sweet and spicy.

On Monday morning this week:

October snow. – We had first snow here where I’m living. It was lovely. Last year we had first snow on October 23 and this year on October 28.

“Ugh!” ? 🙂

Just a bit dark here in our home village, yesterday evening I took this pic. No snow now, the first snow in October always comes and goes here in the southern part of Finland.

I heard whooper swans calling when I snapped this last night. I think they were by the lake.

Pictures today:

Books lately… I already read The Little Prince and 1984, they were great books. I’m still reading the second KonMari book, and I like it a lot, too.

Autumnal at our terrace:

And more hobbies… what’s been happening yesterday and today as well. The Finnish cross-country skiing races for this season started, and I’ve been watching, of course. 🙂 They have some snow there in the region of Kainuu, it’s that much north.

Almost some sunlight… 😀

Leena

Tomatoes, a pumpkin, sweet corn, building a garden shed, KonMari (don’t ask…;))

The first four pics I took today:

An autumnal sunflower bowing beside our porch. Dignified, charming…

A bit bleak today.

There are still a few small marigold flowers in the summer flower bed.

Harvestman…? That’s funny. 🙂 This guy was waiting for us beside our front door when we came back from grocery store yesterday.

This picture I took today. I emptied our greenhouse yesterday evening. The things we can eat… Tomatoes, tomatoes, and some of them are still ripening here in our kitchen now. When we planted the tomato plants we used seeds from Finnish greenhouse tomatoes that we bought in grocery store last winter. And The Pumpkin, our only pumpkin this year. I already had a picture of it on my Instagram (owlnatureleena)…

This was a bit over two weeks ago. We harvested our sweet corn. Well, we get some seeds for next year again. 🙂 We also ate a good amount of ‘baby corns’ raw out there while harvesting, they tasted so… sweet!

The next two pics I took today:

Some sweet corn plant decoration in the garden now.

Purple coneflower in October… I love this colour, too!

This was last week. We are building a garden shed.

The rest of the pics I took today:

I love painting! This is the floor of the shed.

I honestly still don’t know what this bush is called…

So KonMari, the method of tidying up. Up! I read the book (had already a pic of the book here in my blog…) and I watched the Netflix series, and I liked them both a lot, and I like her. So it was time to start organizing The Mess. 😀 Here in our house. We just finally need to organize and tidy our home up, also for some empty spaces, and some places here need to be more reachable, so to speak, and so on. And just simply… for cleaning up. Now I’ve already done my clothes and our bookshelf. I find the KonMari method very helpful and inspiring. 🙂

A bit of our bookshelf now… Finally it’s presentable! More pics later…? ;D

It’s our big Norway Maple…

Things and stuff to do, these among other things. What’s enough? Hmm…

Leena

Autumn? And pears, grapes, flowers…

So it’s officially autumn in Finland. I can’t believe I just wrote that.

I was travelling in Eastern Finland with my boyfriend for two weeks, and I will have some pics from there here in my blog a bit later. I have most of the pics on my phone (and there are for example pics of our plums on my phone, too) and I have to find a way to get all the pics to my computer (I have no idea what I’m doing… ;D ) But I did post a few pictures on my Instagram (owlnatureleena). We even saw a tiny bit of Russia. 😀 – Where the country begins, so to speak.

hill Kipari, lake Keyritty, Rautavaara, Northern Savonia, Finland

So now only one pic from the trip. This was on a hill Kipari in the municipality of Rautavaara, in the region of Northern Savonia – Pohjois-Savo. The name of the lake is Keyritty. We stayed in Rautavaara. Such a lovely place.

The first ever pears from our garden! I didn’t have time to take pics of our small pear tree when it had all the pears, but I took a pic of the pears on a plate – all the pears had fallen down from the tree during our trip, they were ripe, and I just picked them from the ground. They were delicious! I made jam.

This year we have grapes, too! I took all these pictures of our grapes yesterday. We had a very little amount of grapes two years ago, but now we have quite a lot, well, relatively lot. They, too, taste so sweet…

The grape vine itself.

The rest of the pictures I took today:

I’m still very much immersed in my reading hobby. Now I’m even reading how to get organized, so this is getting pretty serious. ;p

We have a small patch of lovely little sunflowers. They are grown from our last winter’s bird seeds.

And echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower charm…

This is my “I’m about to finish this blog post” coffee in our greenhouse, with some tomatoes. 🙂

Hmm, in general, I feel like I have tons of things to do now, but it’s just nice, I guess… 😀

The summer flower bed…

Leena

Cherries, cucumbers, one bat, flowers (& friends)…

Just making some lists… :p

Okay, this is the first time ever that we have cherries in our garden.

The small cherry tree had 11 flowers and a few cherries. That was so nice!

The young bush cherry had many many flowers, and many cherries, too. And there are still fruits ripening in the bush. I didn’t know what to expect. 😀 Love them!