viola – 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

Greenhouse, hot, light, bright…

It’s officially summer! And lately… First it was very freaking windy for many days, and a bit cold, too. Now it has been very warm again, even hot (too warm 😀 ) for a few days. For example here where I’m living it was 31 degrees Celsius in the shade in the daytime on Thursday, and not much cooler on Friday, and yesterday it was around 29 degrees as well. Today it’s 21 degrees Celsius – oh, normality… 😀

Our greenhouse is ready, yay! It has been fully ready for a few days now. First pictures that I took when it was still possible to ‘see through’ the greenhouse a bit:

And these are what we put into the ground, going round and round… hmm…

There it is, one of them…

The greenhouse is almost, but not quite, under the monster, our biggest pine tree.

Two pictures from the inside.

A few pictures I took today, the first ‘ready pictures’:

It was a lot of work and everything, but “Phew!” now finally… 😀

There are for example watermelon and sweet peppers growing. We carried 1000 litres of garden soil in bags into/outside the greenhouse.

Fuchsia flowers.

And viola flowers today:

Love the scent in the air…

Sage, too…

stars on the ground — Stars on the ground…

The stars are on the ground again this time of year in Finland. 🙂 – Arctic starflower or chickweed wintergreen in the woods next to our garden, I took this picture at around 11.55 pm on Wednesday. (And I was attacked by mosquitoes, there are plenty of them evenings these days.)

So the days are long now, light and bright. And they are still getting a bit lighter. Today for example, here where I’m living, the sun rose at 03.58 am and the sun sets at 23.03 pm – the length of the day is 19 h 5 min.

Leena

Snow

It snowed last night here where I’m living. And it was a surprise – there was no forecast for snow earlier.

The first five pictures I took in our yard.

This was last night.

The next two pictures I took at around 9 am today:

The snow had melted a bit, but there still was snow cover on the ground and on rooftops everywhere.

Sudden winter came for the rose.

But this snow will melt.

…But at around 13.30 pm, still…

October snow came for the viola flowers, too.

The last two pictures I took last Friday, in Etelä-Pohjanmaa – South Ostrobothnia, on the land, on my boyfriend’s new land, about which I wrote earlier, here.

I found red moss in the forest. Red moss is one of my favourites…

And I love campfire coffee. 🙂

-Leena

Flowers in the garden

I took all the pictures in this blog post in our garden today. I already have a couple of recent flower pictures on my Instagram, here’s now a few more.

There’s still viola flowers, red viola flowers…

A bunch of pictures of the echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower flowers, the most long-lasting flowers I’ve ever had! – Some of the flowers have been there for over a month now. 🙂

Still new flowers, too.

Clarkia amoena or godetia flowers and calendula or pot marigold flowers again. 😉

“Psst…!”

-Leena

The last day of the year, flowers, a book…

Today is the last day of the year 2017. The New Year is here! About the weather again; on Wednesday morning we had again a bit more fresh snow and the sun was shining in the daytime. Thursday and Friday were cloudy days and it was a bit warmer. Yesterday there was a bit more light out there, even some sunlight and it was snowing and the sun was shining by turns in the daytime. Today there was a bit of sunlight again. So, there’s been snow on the ground for three weeks now! 🙂

My hyacinths…

The scent!

As charming as ever…

I bought this amaryllis after Christmas, for half the price. This is my second ever amaryllis plant. The first amaryllis plant I had… exists no more. – The trouble with the bulb plants inside the house… (?) 😮 So, now I’m expecting this plant to just flower for me. 🙂 A bud has begun to open.

And the viola plant is still there in our garden. And it still has fresh flowers! – A few fresh flowers like this one in the pic. This must be sorcery! ;D

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. I have started reading this book now, in Finnish. I am finally reading this book. – I have been interested in this book ever since I first read about it somewhere. A fascinating theme, fascinating nature. “What They Feel, How They Communicate. Discoveries from a Secret World.” – From the English book cover.

A bit of sunlight today, on the last day of the year 2017. Happy New Year! 🙂

-Leena

Finland 100 years old tomorrow, a few December pictures…

Tomorrow, on the 6th of December, is the Independence Day and our Finland, our Suomi is 100 years old. Congratulations Finland and thank you! – Onnea Suomi ja kiitos! 🙂

The December full moon, the supermoon on Sunday. Not a perfect picture, but kind of fascinating. The moon was so bright, magical. It lit up our garden. It was so nice that the sky wasn’t all clouds.

The second part of November was a bit more grey, rainy, dark… the fifth season… But we had a bit of sunshine as well. And some snow, too, for the second time this season, but the snow, of course, melted away again after two days.

Sunshine, viola and her pearls, frozen water droplets, in the garden yesterday. This is a strong plant! It still has several flowers like this one in the picture. Never before have we had fresh flowers in the garden in December…

Today again, some snow on viola… It started to snow a bit last night and it has snowed a bit today, they say that it will snow some more tonight and they say that tomorrow we should have some sunshine again, too, but after that… water again, as one might guess… But the most important thing is that we have snow now. 🙂

Hawthorn berries.

And our strawberry patch.

-Leena

Red oak & more October flowers

The nights have been colder now, the temperature has been around zero degrees Celsius and below. Right now, in the morning, it’s -4 degrees Celsius. Now it’s the time for our red oak to have autumn colours.

Quercus rubra or red oak, we planted this tree in the middle of July this year. A very young tree, tall and slender, hopefully it grows a bit stronger. 🙂

They say (in Finland) that red oaks have the colour red in their leaves in autumn when the trees are young, but when they are older, the autumn colour is not that bright anymore. But… some have seen old and red red oaks in Finland in autumn, and some have seen even green, very green, red oaks in autumn. So, it depends…(?) 🙂 Our red oak stayed green for a long time this autumn, compared with many other trees that have already lost all or almost all of their leaves.