Ruissalo – Owlnature

Marching

It’s March! – Well, that was fast… Ready for spring? – Maybe. 🙂

The first pictures in this blog post I took on Thursday. We visited The Botanic 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:

..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.

Leena

A visit at the botanic garden & the crocus flower in the home garden

We visited The Botanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island, in the city of Turku, on Wednesday. I didn’t take many pictures this time. But I did write two blog posts about the place already last year; here and here. 🙂

And yes, the weather still had the same pattern on that day, too; hailing, hailing and sunshine at the same time, sunshine, hailing, hailing and sunshine at the same time, sunshine, hailing… It continued the whole day. And we noticed that the spring had advanced a bit more in Turku than here where we are living – about 90 kilometres north of Turku. In Turku there was a bit greener there everywhere, more flowers in the gardens and dandelion flowers in nature – we haven’t even seen any dandelion flowers here “in the north” yet. 🙂

But here it was very warm…

“Hello!” – Koi carps there, too.

Howea forsteriana or kentia palm.

Aloe vera. I’d love to have an aloe vera plant at home! 🙂

Bougainvillea up there. Okay, I want to go back to Spain now…

And I’m still gonna need some more coffee… Coffea arabica is this plant.

Epipremnum aureum, golden pothos, devil’s ivy… One of my favourite houseplants. A bit bigger leaves at the botanic garden.

This echeveria succulent plant was at the garden store Plantagen. It caught my eye from the distance, had to take a pic. 🙂

And this pic I took as we were travelling back home from Turku. One of those moments when it was hailing…

And in the home garden… The crocus flower – the one and only in our garden. 🙂 I thought that we wouldn’t see this marvel this spring, but all of a sudden… here it blooms again!

The first fresh flower in our garden this year.

-Leena

At the Botanic Garden II

The second blog post about my visit to the Botanic Garden in Turku. The first one: here.

More photos… 🙂

Mandarin. It’s nice to take pics of the fruits at the botanic garden…

A banana plant.

Under the banana leaves…

Grapefruit.

Oh lovely… 🙂

A lime fruit. The scent of the flowers was so strong and stunning – loved it!

A casuarina tree.

Some other lovely citrus fruit… I can’t remember the name right now. 🙂

The Ruissalo island, on which the botanic garden is located, is an island of oak trees – a very special island in whole Finland.

In the outside garden of the botanic garden there were lots of blooming crocuses. I took just a couple of pics of them – but had to take the pics, because we don’t have crocuses in our garden here at home – yet! 🙂

A marvelous springtime…

-Leena

At the Botanic Garden

Today it was mostly sunny, but it was a bit cold and even hailing a bit – the perfect spring weather to visit a botanic garden. My favourite place in the city of Turku: The Botanic Garden of the University of Turku, in the Ruissalo island. It’s lovely to visit the botanic garden in wintertime or when it’s not an actual summertime in Finland. A tropic near us! 🙂 I have photos for two blog posts, here’s the first one.

Welcome to the jungle!

Epipremnum aureum, golden pothos, devil’s ivy… We have many of these – the house plants, at home… I should count our house plants, I don’t know how many we have… 😉

I’m gonna need some more coffee…

A bird of paradise.

A taro leaf.

A trunk with attitude. A kapok tree.

Beauties… an orchid…? 🙂

A red-eared slider, and she came to pose to her name tag! She has a beautiful name: Alma, and she is as old as I am…

Aaand… in the second post will be different kinds of citrus fruits and some other things, too. 🙂

-Leena