syksy – Page 4 – Owlnature

Two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland

I spent two and a half weeks in Eastern Finland, in the municipality of Rautavaara in the region of Northern Savonia, in August and in September. It’s my boyfriend’s home region and I was travelling with him and our two cats. His family has an old house there in Rautavaara, no one lives in the house anymore, it’s just for summertime visits nowadays, and that’s the place we stayed as well. It’s always about an eight hour’s drive from our home to Rautavaara, and the same back of course. – Always worth the travel.

I didn’t take pictures of, like, everything, but naturally I did ‘get caught up in some things’, and the result is this blog post here now. 🙂 I also took some pictures for our, mine and Owlnature‘s, Instagram (owlnatureleena), and the real Instagram widget has, by the way, (finally :p ) been on the sidebar of my blog for some time now as well.

By the lake Keyritty, just outside the centre of Rautavaara. It was a summery day. So calm, beautiful… just stunning! And it was completely silent here and everywhere we went. 🙂

There were many dragonflies flying and enjoying the sunshine by the house on many days. Here’s two of them.

By another lake on some other day. This is called Tiilikanselkä.

There are actual creeks in the forest, I’m not sure if this is one of them, or is this just some ditch…? Beautiful water areas in the forests, too, anyway.

I went mushroom hunting and all I could find was poisonous monkshood. ;p In this one forest I found monkshood in the wild for the first time.

But we did find a lot of mushrooms, too, during our trip. Here’s one penny bun mushroom or cep or porcino/porcini or boletus edulis mushroom…

And here’s our biggest amount of yellowfoot mushrooms or winter mushrooms or funnel chanterelles or cantharellus/craterellus tubaeformis mushrooms…

In addition to cooking with mushrooms we enjoyed bilberries (or blueberries), lingonberries and crowberries in the forests.

Another lake again. I was on a ridge. There are lakes on either side of the ridge. And there are many ridges in Rautavaara area, fairly small, beautiful… with lakes, forests and swamps.

A creek in the forest, so clear you can see the bottom.

By Tiilikanselkä again, we went there actually three times during our trip. 🙂

And river flows…

…and flows. Until next time. 🙂

-Leena

No-snow November – it’s what’s inside…

There’s no snow out there anymore. All melted… came as no surprise. It’s the fifth season now – November.

The first two pics I took on our regular walk on Tuesday this week.

Going down… loving the spruce trees and all.

By the lake Pyhäjärvi… the lake is not that frozen anymore. It was already getting a bit dark as I took this pic, and it was so foggy that one was not able to quite see…

…yeah, that’s November – sometimes one just can’t see… or what one sees, is all the shades of grey or brown… This is the season in which one needs all the candles and campfires, and Christmas or winter lights that one possibly can have. But what’s the most crucial thing; one has to have the light within oneself… what truly matters is one’s heart, soul, mind… The mind is everything!

This pic I took before the walk. I was sitting at the kitchen table, nibbling some rye bread.

Some bright November moss in our garden. Moss. Magic.

What is that? – Some natural light and blue sky in sight? Today. That was fast. But it happened. 😀

Yes, some natural light outside is very nice indeed, but… you know…

“Eeevery little hamster…”

“…knows that it’s what’s inside…”

“…that counts.”

? 🙂

-Leena

Frozen lake, winter lights, …

All these pictures are from yesterday. The first three pics I took as we were taking our regular walk.

I came from there… just turning around to take a pic… I don’t have much time for taking pics on our regular walks – trying to keep up with my boyfriend’s pace… he is taller and faster, and perhaps in a bit better shape than me… my personal trainer…? 😀 Oh dear, oh dear…

By the frozen lake Pyhäjärvi. It has been so cold that the lake froze fast. But it is not yet safe to walk too far on the ice…

On the ice anyway, have to try it a bit…

Later in the evening I had the inspiration to put up the first Christmas lights, or winter lights, outside. Outside our kitchen window – it’s nice to see the lights when sitting at the kitchen table and the lights also shine in a pleasant way to the kitchen, when it’s dark in there. 🙂

One part of the lights are on our bikes, for practical reasons. My bike is the right one, I’ve had it since the year 1998. 🙂

“Okay, this is all very interesting, but…”:

-Leena

Sunshine and snow

The first snow has fallen. Snow – it feels soft to the touch and under one’s feet, but also makes the whole atmosphere everywhere soft, and magical. 🙂

The first three pics I took yesterday.

A garden bunny – a happy bunny.

And yet another wonderful thing about November; it’s the season of Spanish persimmons! Persimmons are one of my favourite fruits. They are so delicious, sweet, juicy, quite big… 🙂

The strawflowers meet snow now! 😀 They have closed their rustling petals…

Last Sunday, late in the evening, by the lake Pyhäjärvi. The fairly red half moon and the moon glade were just beautiful…

Still following the spiders…? Yes… I am… 😉

A cat paw print… whether it’s summer or winter, our cats enjoy getting outside.

The last pot marigold or calendula flowers today… 🙂

-Leena

Take it spooky or take it easy…

October is turning into November… it’s spooky time! I love spooky. I love horror films, and so on, and I love the darkness and silence here in the countryside… in the dead of night – it can feel creepy when you are alone out there… 🙂

Time to scare your own ghosts… 😉 I came across these kind of tissue ghosts on We Heart It and thought that they would be just perfect ones to make for this time of the year, for Halloween time. Just string, tissues and a pen – everything readily available at home. These ghosts are now hanging on our kitchen window.

We have had a couple of delightful, sunny days lately, on Saturday and today. The following pics I took on Saturday.

The white viola flower still there. 🙂

It’s still warm in the sunshine. I took this pic as I was sitting on the garden bench… first I had my morning coffee there, then, a bit later, my breakfast, and again, a bit later, I had my camera with me there.

Already waiting for snow, a bit. 🙂

A lantern outside again, late in the evening.

Frost in the morning, today.

“Follow the spiders.” ( – If you want to find anything… in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. )

We found some fluffy balls and wires in the grocery store, for making some spiders. 🙂

What happened…?

“Just take it easy, will you?”:

“I hope she understood what I was trying to say… Zzz…”:

-Leena

Dark & cold, cosy fires & lights, and creating dream home

The campfire owl here again… 🙂 We’ve had already many campfires in our garden this autumn, too, but I usually just relax and enjoy them without my camera or my phone, but on Friday, late in the evening, I had the inspiration for taking some pics, too. (A pic on my Instagram (owlnatureleena) as well.)

Campfires in the garden are a part of my, our, dream home…

So, we have lived in this house for almost two and a half years now. But I still had one part of my belongings in Turku – as I was going on and on here in my blog last summer. 🙂 But since the end of August it has been only this, our country home, for me… and I love it! But this has been quite far from my (or our) dream home; almost everything, every thing, is in the wrong place here inside our home, only like the bookshelf and drawers are in the right spots, there are many untidy and disorganized spots in our home, and partly, naturally, because I brought so many things and pieces of furniture from Turku as well, and so on, and so on… Creating our dream home here now is not about renovating (we have done that, too – more about it later, in some other blog posts, too) and creating our dream home is not, heaven forbid, about buying anything, oh dear… yes, maybe buying some new candles and even more houseplants, but nothing more now… Creating our dream home is now about organizing, tidying up and cleaning up our home – it’s “a bit” of chaos here now… and almost all of our large windows still are without curtains, just window blinds are there… But yes, the only way to start the project for me was, first emptying, then cleaning and organizing, our garage, which definitely is not a place for our car, but for other useful things. 😉

And when we had some room for big items in the garage after rearranging, we removed a big pile of long wooden boards from the middle of our kitchen – they were taking over one third of the floor space there, so we didn’t have a kitchen table and chairs there for a year and a half, or so. (We were renovating some ceilings and walls…)

I now have a tag creating dream home here in my blog, so I’ll be posting, with pics, too, about the project here and there…

Morning coffee yesterday. And a satsuma! It’s the season of Spanish satsumas again! So juicy and delicious, and cheap. 🙂

Under the oak tree…

The strawflowers again! 😀 And they are still opening and closing their rustling petals, with the days and nights…

Yesterday evening, now this was in my dream kitchen. 😉 – Finally the big pile of long wooden boards is out and the kitchen table and the chairs are there! And the table and the chairs are the ones I had already in Turku. 🙂 I’ve been dreaming of candlelights in the dark evenings in the kitchen… warm and cosy… And the light of the warm oven can be seen in the pic, too – I was waiting for home-made thin and crisp barley breads to become ready.

Living candlelights in lanterns outside in the dark… and this lantern can also be seen from the kitchen window when sitting at the table. 🙂

One more pic of the Friday evening’s campfire to end this blog post… and to celebrate the dark and cold, bewitching evenings and nights! 😉

-Leena

Growing tomatoes

This is what’s been happening this year: we have grown tomatoes for the first time, we started the pre-growing too late, but we’ve got some delicious red tomatoes to eat. The pre-growing should have started already in March or at the beginning of April. I don’t remember when exactly our tomato seeds were planted, but it was like May already… 🙂

The pre-growing happened in small containers inside our house and the pre-grown tiny plants, seedlings, were then planted outside, in buckets with drainage holes in the bottom. The buckets were placed to our vegetable garden – the all day sunny spot between our house and the woods. The wall of our home was sheltering the plants a bit. When it was sometimes raining too much, we carried the plant buckets inside our house. Everything went fine – the plants or their soil didn’t get any mold. – One just has to carefully keep an eye on the plants – when to water them, and how much. And tomatoes like fertilizing, we always use organic fertilizers.

And oh yes, I just love the scent of tomato plants! 🙂

I took this pic on October 3rd. This was the last day our tomatoes were outside – the upper parts of the plants had finally been frozen at night (and the plants were like all gone, the next day, October 4th). We noticed that our tomatoes actually did like a bit cooler air – they were ripening so well in autumn – they started ripening with the combination of cool air and warm sunlight. And it really was so wonderful that we had so summery September for our tomatoes… because we were so late with the planting. 😀 But oh yes, these home-grown ripe tomatoes that we now have had – they’ve tasted so delicious, sweet… they are miraculous! 🙂

Tomatoes do turn red and fully ripen without the main body of the plant, inside the house (and tomatoes do ripen without apples, and so on… 😉 ). The already red tomatoes, that are ripening to be eaten, we have kept on a table in kitchen.

But the first ripening of our tomatoes – the green tomatoes turning red, happens in the cool and dark sauna in our home. And when the sauna is heated, we take the tomatoes to kitchen.

Our biggest tomato for this year, I took it outside for pics… 🙂

So, now we know what to do in March next year!

-Leena