August flowers*

I took these pictures in our garden on Friday, yesterday and today.

August

In the first six pictures… Phlox paniculata or fall phlox.

August
August
August
August

We have four different kinds of fall phlox flowers. Love the scent!

August

Someone else loves the flowers, too! A small tortoiseshell butterfly.

In the next five pictures…

August

Cosmos.

August
August
August
August
August

Clarkia amoena or godetia.

August
August

Calendula or pot marigold.

August
August

Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower.

August
August
August

Oh, that power…

August
August

Sunflower.

August

A busy friend.

August

The best…

August

Head first. 🙂

August

Good morning!” coffee today, with heuchera

August
August

…and Helenium autumnale or sneezeweed.

August
August
August

Rose.

Leena

August

Well, this was in our neighbouring town, in the town of Kokemäki. I was admiring these wooden wolves very much. 🙂

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

The first four pics I took today:

October

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

October

A bit bleak today.

October
October

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

Hello!

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

October harvest

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)…

sweet corn sweet

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:

October

Some sweet corn plant decoration in the garden now.

October

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

hmm

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

The rest of the pics I took today:

love painting

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

October

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

October

It’s our big Norway Maple

October
Who’s raking?

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 SavoniaPohjois-Savo. The name of the lake is Keyritty. We stayed in Rautavaara. Such a lovely place.

pears

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.

grapes

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…

grapes
grapes
grapes
grapes
grape vine

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

sunflowers

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

sunflowers
purple coneflower

And echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower charm…

purple coneflower

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… 😀

summer flower bed in September

The summer flower bed…

summer flowers in September
  • 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.

cherries

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

cherries

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!

cucumbers

The first ever ‘open-field’ cucumbers from our garden.

cucumbers, open field

And there’s more growing, this was yesterday. I planted only one plant, one stem, this stem in the pic. Just a delicious experiment…

cucumbers, greenhouse

Cucumbers in our greenhouse. Greenhouse cucumbers grow really well and are so delicious! We’ve already had several.

cucumber, greenhouse

Two pics that I took yesterday evening when I closed the windows and the door in the greenhouse:

cucumber, greenhouse

More cucumbers growing…

cucumber, greenhouse

I wonder if these tiny ones will still grow…

We saw a bat, the first bat here for this year, on 30th July late in the evening. It was flying, flapping in our garden and in the woods.

Some flower pics that I took in our garden yesterday:

clematis flowers

Clematis, by the oak tree.

clematis flowers
tricolor daisy

Tricolor daisy and a friend.

garden rose

Garden rose and a friend.

garden rose
red flax

Red flax and a friend. Friends everywhere in the garden in August. 🙂

lily

Lily

lily
sunflower

Sunflower

sunflower

They come in August.

Good morning today:

good morning, clarkia amoena, godetia

With clarkia amoena or godetia flowers…

clarkia amoena, godetia
clarkia amoena, godetia

And a busy friend here as well. 🙂

clarkia amoena, godetia

A little bit of rain and then sunshine again. It’s nice when it rains a bit, it has been rather dry all summer again.

I Have to go to the library today and I should wash the car…

  • Leena

October colours and some of the flowers in the garden

Last year it was like we didn’t actually have Virginia creeper at all – but we did have it a year ago as well. It was the second year for this creeper in our garden last year, and it didn’t grow that much, and it had no autumn colour whatsoever then.

This year our Virginia creeper has grown fairly big and it already has… some colour red, too. So nice! 🙂

Gladiolus, the surprise bloomer.

calendula, marigold

Still pot marigold or calendula flowers…

sunflower

The already bloomed sunflowers just hanging…

sunflower

…hanging around…

sunflower

common poppy

And still common poppy flowers…

pear tree

The pear tree with some autumn colours now as well.

pear tree

-Leena

Flowers in September

There are even some new summer flowers for this year in autumn, and some perennials flowering as well.

common poppy & friends

To begin with… there are still common poppy flowers in the garden. Friends are loving it.

calendula/marigold & friends

There is no autumn without pot marigolds or calendulas… 😉

calendula, marigold

My personal little autumn sun…

calendula, marigold

calendula, marigold

calendula, marigold

clematis

Clematis growing and blooming as well. Our first ever clematis plants, planted in summer this year. Yet another new favourite… now I would love to have many different types of clematis flowers.

clematis

clematis

Our clematis is growing by an oak tree.

clematis

annual mallow

And there are still many annual mallow flowers at their prime…

cosmos

There is no summe… yeah well, I planted cosmos seeds this year as well, but there’s been only few flowers – all the green parts of the plant have grown, but not much blooming this year. I think it’s the a bit strange summer and the spot where I planted them, both. I planted them by the ditch by the woods – that was the only place I could squeeze them in this year. 😀

shrubby cinquefoil

Shrubby cinquefoil is flowering this autumn as well.

sunflower

This year we have finally succeeded in growing sunflowers! We’ve tried to grow sunflowers already in the summers of 2015 and 2016, and last year we thought that we should start the pre-growing earlier. But… we didn’t pre-grow them this year at all, just planted the seeds directly into the ground. We think it’s the soil – this year we used both fresh soil and the fertile soil in the places where we put our grass clippings and some leaves. Worked like a charm. 🙂

sunflower

clarkia amoena, godetia

Candies… There is no autumn without clarkia amoena or godetia flowers.

clarkia amoena, godetia

peony poppy

And there is still at least one peony poppy flower.

peony poppy

dahlia

Dahlias growing and blooming. Our first ones ever these, too. Planted in spring this year, and new favourites again…

dahlia

Mellow…

dahlia

Cactus dahlia. How charming!

-Leena

October, October, October

I was eagerly waiting for October already at the beginning of September this autumn. – I was just so ready for everything autumnal; for colourful leaves, and… no leaves at all, dark evenings, campfires, cold nights, (campfires), the cool, crisp air on a sunny autumn day, raking, steaming hot coffee, tea, hot chocolate, glögi… outside in the crisp air, gloves, scarves and knit hats or pipos as we call knit hats in Finnish, I love the Finnish word pipo – it’s just perfect for the item. 🙂 And I was ready to start creating our dream home, here, in our home. – About this project more later, and some pics, too, when anything is ready… ;D

october

October 1st. I tried to make a flower crown with the natural spring and summer flowers that still were blooming in our garden, there were not that many of them anymore… 🙂 After taking this pic 12 swans flew over me, honking as they went.

Norway Maple

October 2nd, pic above and pic below. A foggy morning. In the pic above our big Norway Maple.

October

This was at around 10 AM and after a moment it started to clear up… and all of a sudden the sun was shining in the clear blue sky!

rubber boots

Oh my… Oh, my new rubber boots! And the old ones, too! 😀 I took this pic as I was wearing my new rubber boots for the first time on Thursday last week. I just finally had to buy new rubber boots as my old ones had been leaking, both of them, already for over a year, now they are almost completely cracked – I’ve been storing them with care, but I’ve been wearing them A LOT here in countryside, even in sunny weather, because they are so comfortable. 🙂

The next eight pics are from Friday last week.

Norway Maple

Our Norway Maple in sunshine.

October

sunflower

Whatever happened to our sunflowers? Well, our biggest sunflower for this year is in the pic above… and I love it! 😀 And the tiny spider was feeling the same way! Okay, this year we know that the pre-growing of sunflowers has to be started earlier. 🙂

unknown flower

And these… I still don’t remember what these flowers are called. They are summer flowers grown from seed in summer. Very tough flowers – they are still there in our garden today – cosmos flowers already got frostbitten, badly. EDIT: This flower is clarkia or godetia, silkkikukka in Finnish. Thanks for the answer, A! 🙂

marigold, calendula

Pot marigolds or calendulas are sturdy autumn flowers as well. Still there.

October

In our backyard, a smaller Norway Maple and its friends: three pine trees, a rowan and two junipers.

Kauttuankoski

On a bridge above the Kauttuankoski rapids, going for a walk, at around 7 PM, it was about to get dark soon.

October

The bridge down there, in the pic above. The lamp posts were already lit. And the lovely scent of dry leaves around everywhere…

October

In our front yard today. Who’s raking? – Me! When the time is right. 😉

strawflower

And the strawflowers are still standing there with their rustling petals today!

-Leena