spring – Owlnature

Summer, everything is in bloom, bats, cuckoo, I do not know why I cannot post pictures on my Instagram…

On Monday a week ago, May 25th. I went outside, there was a pretty gentle breeze, it was fairly quiet, only birds were singing, butterflies were flying here and there around me… It was nothing new, but something felt strange, wonderful… Everything was so green around me, grass and leaves had grown fast. It was warm, it was 21 degrees Celsius – the first time that it was 20 degrees Celsius or more this year. – It was the first day of summer!

And my first parrot tulip had opened. This is the first time that I have parrot tulips in the garden.

It was, again, around 15 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week, but over the weekend it was again around 20 degrees Celsius in the daytime. On Monday this week, June 1st, it was already 24 degrees Celsius. And around 21 degrees Celsius in the daytime it has now been yesterday and today. But at night the coldest temperature was again a bit over 5 degrees Celsius here.

All the parrot tulips opened.

We have seen the first bats for this year here. On Saturday a week ago and last Saturday as well. – Saturday may be the best day of the week. 🙂 It may be just one bat that we have seen, though, because we have seen only one at a time. Anyway, lovely creatures!

Okay so I cannot post pictures on my Instagram, and I do not know why. I have already tried to do everything… I have been restarting, checking, uninstalling, reinstalling… trust it, use it, prove it, groove it like Spice Girls… I even changed my username just for the heck of it, and changed it back again, just because I could do it… But I cannot change my profile picture or post pictures. I can like other people´s pictures and use Instagram in every other way, but my own pictures are doomed…

There has of course never been anything shady about my Instagram or about my actions, the last time that I posted something on my Instagram was on December, but come on, that cannot be the reason! 😮 Can it? And my boyfriend has tried everything and more, and he is a professional software person. I don´t know what I´m gonna do… I can always follow other people and like their pictures, but if I do those things and I am not posting anything, then I´m just weird, a stalker, a creeper… And I still want to post pictures on my Instagram! Perkele.

Grumbling followed by gorgeous flowers…

This is a pic from my phone, the pic that I was kinda trying to post on my Instagram.

Hyacinths, a lovely scent…

The pear tree is in bloom. It´s not as flowery as it was a year ago, but there are flowers, on four spots, as seen on the pic below. And the tree has grown!

In the back of our garden, I think that this is peony tulip. 🙂 It has a wonderful scent.

Forget me not, forget-me-nots… In the back of the garden, and near them…

…our small bird cherry tree is flowering, too.

I had already waited for it… “Cuck-koo!” – Cuckoo bird came back and started calling cuckoo on Sunday evening, and after that it has done it both in the daytime and evenings.

Tulips by my dwarf spruce…

My spruce is growing every year! 🙂

Parrot tulip break ~

I love parrot tulips, they just get better as they get older…

Random 🙂 Viola

The apple tree is in bloom. As marvellous as ever…

Our plum tree already bloomed. – Whoa! We´re just hoping that it had the time to get pollinated… Yesterday when I took this picture there was only a few flowers left to be seen.

Lily of the Valley flowers are here! Love the scent, love them.

Lily of the Valley is the national flower of Finland.

The first lilac flowers have begun to open.

Also our cherry bush and cherry tree are in bloom, hopefully I still have time to take pictures of cherry flowers tomorrow… I have been sitting at this desk for too long today and I have already seen too many pics today as well, phew…

Peonies have grown! I should like clean this spot up a bit…

Leena

Warming up

My hoe… I decided to plant potatoes late in the evening on Monday. A garden hoe is one of my favourite garden tools, I just always get out of breath when I´m like really using it…

I actually planted the potatoes quite deep, the pic doesn´t show it perfectly right. I scattered some chicken manure pellets there, too.

The first ever snakeshead lily flower in our garden. This flower has many names, for example: snakeshead lily, snakeshead fritillary, chess flower, chequered lily, leper lily… Another new favourite!

Just for the record about some animals… A woodcock started its regular flights here already in late March. Usually it starts the evening flights in late April. “Orr, orr, orr, pist!”

We saw a deer walking in our garden and in the woods on Tuesday evening. And I saw a deer leaping through the garden last week, and when we were on a car ride at night, we were there with deer and hares… We saw around four times deer (one or more at once) and almost 10 hares (only one at a time).

By the lake Pyhäjärvi here in our home village late in the evening on Wednesday.

Wood sorrel, I ate some.

So yesterday, on Thursday, it was already a bit warmer – the butterflies returned! Today it was 17 degrees Celsius in the daytime and it was the warmest day of the year this far. Usually we have some days of 20 degrees Celsius, or warmer than that, already in early May or even in April.

Pictures that I took today:

That big… bushy thing is of course rhubarb, and under it in the pic is ramsons, allium ursinum, that has many other names, too, for example: wild garlic, bear´s garlic, wood garlic… We´ve never had this bear´s garlic before (credit goes to my boyfriend who came up with the idea), now we have it on two different spots and hope that it will start spreading.

The other bear´s garlic spot.

Cabbage growing in the greenhouse. This is the first time ever that we are trying to grow cabbage. We have some cabbage (normal cabbage? 😀 ) and Brussels sprout growing, but we can´t tell which is which anymore here…

The cabbage plants are still growing in the pots, the cherry tomato plants are planted inside the greenhouse.

I think that this is a green hairstreak butterfly.

Praestans shogun tulips have opened now.

Lilac flower buds are emerging.

One of my evening tasks today was painting which I love doing. Actually we both are making this small garden table and I have been the one filling small holes in it and sanding and painting it.

Leena

Snow, thunder, hail May

But first… A bit over a week ago on Saturday. This was the first time that I have seen a great spotted woodpecker on a bird feeder here. They have usually been only in the woods, in the pine trees and in the big maple tree beside our driveway. The greenhouse is about to fly, because my only ´concern´was the bird as I took this pic with zoom, in our living room, through the Venetian blinds. 🙂

And then… May snow. On Monday morning a week ago in the pic above. Well, it´s not unusual that it snows in May in the southern part of Finland, but it´s not very very common either – it does not happen every year. And the snow had already melted a lot when I took the pic, because I could not get out fast enough. 😀

The next four pictures I took on Friday morning:

The second snow for May, it had already melted a bit when I took these pics. Well, for example two years ago, on this day, it was around 28 degrees Celsius… 😀

Already small blackcurrant leaves! They are the biggest bush/tree leaves in our garden now.

Glory of the snow flowers…

Hyacinth flowers are emerging.

On Sunday, yesterday:

In the afternoon yesterday it was not warm, but cold, and it was thundering! It was the first time that I heard thunder in cold weather (4 degrees Celsius). And then it started to hail some bigger hailstones, well I know they can be a Lot bigger, but the very big hailstones do not usually never happen in our relatively pretty gentle Finland (and we just keep on complaining here :p ), so these were the biggest hailstones that I have ever seen, the pictures actually do not quite do justice to them, and when the hailing first started there was an interesting polka dot pattern for a while in the garden. By the way, this far we have planted onion, carrot and parsnip in this patch in the pic, but there´s still a lot of free space there.

In the afternoon we saw two black woodpeckers in the woods. They were loud. We heard them somewhere near already earlier last week.

Summer flower bed, I have cleared it of everything and left these that may have grown from last year´s seeds, we don´t know what they are, just want to see what comes out of them. My boyfriend took this pic with his phone without my knowing when I was scattering summer flower seeds.

It is here! The grass mowing season, we started it in our garden yesterday. Our lawnmower is a bit broken, a cord there is broken after the winter now (I don´t know how to explain this…) and the machine does not pull, like move itself and drag us along, so we have to push it, and it´s too heavy for it, and pushing a lawnmower is a bit hard work in a yard like ours anyway.

So the sun was already shining a bit again in the afternoon and in the evening yesterday. And a bit later in the evening it was raining, sleeting and hailing (in that order) again and the sun was shining at the same time, too, for some time, but I was not interested anymore, and I went to sauna.

Pictures I took today:

Peonies! They, too, started to emerge earlier than usual this year… These are the tallest stems now.

The sun is shining again today.

Praestans shogun tulip flower, the first tulip flower that has opened.

A sight for sore eyes – there are flower buds emerging in the pear tree!

Our biggest Norway maple tree in bloom.

We visited the town of Rauma today, I just took these snaps when travelling in the car.

Leena

May may

What´s around the corner? – Be careful!

Well, the crocuses are nice…

It is May now. It has been a pretty sunny week. We had some rain last weekend and after that there has been the scent of green grass in the air! The first dandelion flowers have come out as well.

Glory of the snow flowers. Aaand, but it has not snowed in May, yet. 😀

It was the warmest day of the year so far on Tuesday. It was 16 degrees Celsius in the daytime and it was not windy. I was sitting on the grass in our garden, by the woods. It was wonderful…

Solar power in our greenhouse as well.

Night owls´garden light the other night…

And yesterday I saw a hedgehog for the first time this year late in the evening. It was getting pretty dark and we came across each other by a tub/container where we collect rainwater so suddenly that I frightened him and he frightened me. 🙂

Full moon was coming my way, too…

The first thing today… I went to the greenhouse to open the windows. The greenhouse was heated up to 10 degrees Celsius at night, because it was too cold in the nighttime. It was a bit over 30 degrees Celsius inside the greenhouse with the sunlight in the morning, as seen in the pic above.

I had to water our cherry tomato plants, they already were all too dry…

Outside, garlic has been growing since March.

Those grapes… The first small grape hyacinths this year.

It is 13 degrees Celsius, nicely a bit warmer again today.

Leena

The first butterflies and a ladybird in March (and other stories)

You just never hear the end of it.

So what it´s been for many weeks now: First everything was normal, and then… The shit and the fan and toilet paper, don´t-wanna-go-to-the-library, washing the skin off your hands, social distancing, self-isolation, sleet and hail, too much news, anxiety, sunshine and pretty warm weather, coltsfoot flowers, snow and sleet, too much news, plants growing, cold weather, snow, anxiety and fear, flies, must-go-to-the-grocery-store-anxiety, washing the skin off your hands, stress, butterflies, a ladybug and bumble bees, hope, snow and too much news, sleet, wind, hail, sunshine, hope, Very windy weather every day, pretty warm weather for two days, sunshine, hailing like crazy (every day), sunshine, The fear of False Hope…

So the crocus leaves, daffodil leaves and tulip leaves started to emerge in March, usually we see them later in April and in May. We did not have permanent snow cover this year…..

Crocus flower buds in April. By the way, I haven´t been taking too many pictures lately, but there´s at least some snapshots in this blog post now anyway.

And so, just for the record: I saw the first butterflies, brimstone butterflies, on March 25th, the first coltsfoot flowers on April 6th, the first hepatica flowers on April 17th and the first wood anemone flowers on April 28th.

April snows…

The first ladybird here this year, outside our greenhouse in late March when we had some warmer days. We usually see the first butterflies and bumble bees here later in April and ladybirds maybe in May.

A squirrel it was in April. We have seen the busy guy here many times. 🙂

´Gaining ground´… We both did this, and I couldn´t raise my hands for a while after using this machine. Those muscles. 😀 (And those solar panels work for the garden shed.)

I had sunglasses on me, it was nice and warm, it was not windy, it was pretty silent, only birds were singing, butterflies were flying in the woods – it looked like a fairy tale, I was sitting on the garden bench and I was leaning against the wall of our house, I felt like I was in another planet… And then it occurred to me: “This must be the feeling… So many people go to a foreign country… to feel this…” …

I started washing the greenhouse. It was great fun!

Well, lots of things to do at home, Everything in the house and outside, in the garden, in the greenhouse, the yard, the garden shed… By the way, the last time I posted something on my Instagram was on December 6th, I think. – Just saying this to myself…

The greenest guy in the house, the green huntsman spider again, this was in our living room in late March. We saw him often!

Pics today:

We have and have had pretty many crocus flowers this year, a bit hear and there in the garden, it was so cold that these were not open yet at the time of my morning coffee in the middle of the day. It was sleeting a bit again yesterday.

Okay, my boyfriend just said: “It just sleeted again, but now the sun is shining.” So it sleeted today again, I didn´t notice, I don´t have time for everything. 😀 Wait… now I see it… or something – it´s hailing, and the sun is shining at the same time. Springy!

The first daffodil flowers…

by the woods… 🙂

And of course we have these glory of the snow… flowers.

Leena

A nature story / poem

Okay, should I call this now `quarantine poetry´, or what…? Anyway, I came up with this story / poem on Wednesday, and wrote it on Wednesday and yesterday.

Sunshine in the early spring, a peaceful serene day
How peppy, you´ll see, a hare is hopping amidst the dry hay
Time to rest, for a wanderer, by a pond 
the scenery´s mellow
A little stream, the sound you seek, when you do not 
miss the snow.

A campfire feels like home, she looks up at the tall trees
Evening falls. The forest, the stories... Write now, 
no one sees!
- A cheerful greeting - Then a quiet leaving. She says 
smiling "That was an owl."
What you do not see is there to be sought, playing 
a meaningful role.

Moss all around, the campfire, the scents, out there 
is no light
Flames dance in the air, the words, expect nothing, then 
feel the might
At night, stand guard, the fire, pen and paper, oh, 
how the day is old
Be curious. The hoot - ask yourself what it told.

Embers, morning´s cold, thoughts are fresh on paper, 
the day´s birdsong, fair
She steps out of the woods, it´s so bright in a field, now 
into the woods hops the hare
Nature has its rhythm, wisdom in the moment, the best 
now is the spring
The road goes on, she stops "On second thoughts...", 
back to the woods she heads and starts to sing.

- Leena, March 18-19, 2020

Heard the blackbird sing

It is a sign of spring! – We heard the blackbird sing for the first time this year here on Monday evening this week. It sounded like magic. 🙂

Swans, too, have been loud, by the lake, lately. We usually hear them in the evening and/or at night. Yesterday for example they were quiet in the evening, but at around 2 am then, they were very loud again.

The first five pics on Thursday:

Morning! It had been snowing / sleeting just a bit again…

That did not last long, it was +5 degrees Celsius again in the afternoon:

The little oak tree still has some of its leaves.

Yesterday, on Friday:

No snow good morning!

But it was windy again in the daytime.

Garden campfire in the evening. We have had campfires in the garden lately as we have been building the garden shed…

And late in the evening it suddenly started to snow when I was standing by the fire. It was Real cold winter snow, and for a while it came down like here in the pic above.

Today: