Scarecrow

The birds have been to our strawberries so much that yesterday I decided to build a make-shift scarecrow and see if they might be afraid of my daughter's old advertisement tee.

 

 

More blooming in the garden

Yesterday we noticed the bhut (naga) jolokia had finally opened its first flowers! Maybe we'll get some real hot chili, too, after all! Sugar peas are blooming too, as are the cucumbers. The zucchinis have a couple peculiar siamese twin fruits.

 

 

Courgettes

I believe that the flowers, filled with feta or mozzarella and (deep)fried are almost the best part of the zucchinis. Thursday evening when we had the first four zucchini flowers - courgettes - big enought to eat, we filled them with feta cheese and fried them. So good!

But mind you, only take the male flowers and/or flowers from ripe zucchinis.

 

 

Zucchini flower opened overnight

Yesterday morning it was 5cm. In the evening it was still a bud, but 9cm.

In the morning, ta-daa:

I suppose those petals will uncurl even further in the course of the day.

Going on in the garden

A lot of stuff going on. We hung the sugar peas on the wooden fence - hope their feelers find their way to the fence and grab on!

I hung a red christmas ball both on the big tomato and chili plants to keep the birda away, for they had been messing around in the plant boxes.

Oregano was transplanted in a bigger box and found its place between the basil boxes.

We got some bamboo poles and wire and built some supports for the beans that had started to fall over.

The eggplant and cherry tomatoes and other tomatoes are growing by the day. Cucumber plant has the first little starts of cucumbers now too!

That first zucchini flower is really big and growing right before our eyes. It more or less doubled its size only today! There's a whole lot of those zucchini flowers already, but that first one out is really showing the way for the others.

We also started today to build a drip irrigation system for our garden. Its somewhat complicated...

To-be butterflies hangin' out

A bunch of caterpillars hangin' out.

 

 

Flowers in the neighborhood

Pictures from another walk around the neighborhood. A couple houses down the neighbors have a pretty tricycle attached to their fence, with violets in the baskets.

 

 

Mushrooms

After the rainy days, mushrooms started popping up on our yard.

 

 

Snails like salad

Baby snail munching on our salad, a moment before I cruelly snatched it away.

Things growing

Zucchini plants are getting bigger and bigger and have started yo grow zucchinis.

Spinach in the box is doing much better than that on the hill ever did (it started to groq flowers before there were reallyany usable leaves) and yesterday we made our first spinach salad out of our own box.

Beans and sugar peas are seemingly happy.

Basil is soon big enough to contribute to our meals.

First chilis of our Medina

About a week ago we picked our first Medinas for some Indian food we cooked.

 

 

The salad bed

The salad bed (with spring onions at the other end) started out with red clover and all sorts of other weeds taking over the whole area where we planted our rucola, salads and spring onions. While they were small, it was impossiböe to be weeding it, but a week ago I was able to do a major clean-up. The salads and onions loved that deed, and have been growing quite well since! Except for those gaps in the rows - don't know if it's been snails or birds or what, messin' up our salad bed.

 

Right side top and middle: a week ago before weeding, bottom: after. left: yesterday after second weeding

 

Our huge tomato plant

Our tomato plant has really grown big already, and continues to grow even though the weather has coolled down a bit here for the time being.

Geese and linden

Yesterday we went walking in the parks of downtown Helsinki and the southern shoreline boulevard. There were geese everywhere, with little ones in tow.

Linden seems to be one of the most common trees in those parks. They seemed to be past just past blooming.

Rucola in a Pot

The rocket in the clay pot has sprouted nicely during these past rainy and only partly sunny days. No sign of parsley yet...

Fruits of our Garden

Tomatoes are growing bigger, as is the first aubergine. Strawberries are producing a lot of fruit, though none of them are ripe yet. The zucchinis are preparing to put out flowers, the plants already being quite big.

Violets

Our violets went all viral when they got some rain after the dry heatwave. They're, like, Finns ;)

Ghost trees

Yesterday we went roller blading, and I saw first hand what the news had been talking about: the River Vantaa bank was full of ghostly trees, covered in that locust web. Today we walked to the store underneath a webbed tree, hanging over the path looking like something from a cemetery in a Halloween movie. With a little bit closer inspection I could see the little worms eating away the leaves of a maple. I guess there wasn't enough buckeye on offer.

First eggplant and new herb pot

Our eggplant now has two flowers, the first one already producing fruit.

We got a new clay pot for herbs yesterday. There it sits, by our sunny wall, with some newly planted rocket and parsley seeds and transplanted oregano in it.

Mid-summer rose

I only today noticed that the rose bush on our yard is actually a Juhannusruusu, "mid-summer rose", and it is in full bloom already!

Flowers in the neighborhood

Another walk around the neighborhood, new flowers blooming.

Buckeye

White dead-nettle

Locust attack

We encountered some strange looking trees on our walk yesterday: trees covered in web and almost completely already eaten by locust.

Our garden in early June

A heatwave has been caressing our garden these past days. Eggplant has its first flower, several tomatoes are growing, there's 14 chilis on the medina, and everything is growing right before our eyes.

Eggplant, tomatoes and the medina

Basil, oregano, spinach and dill

Zucchini, cucumber, peas and beans

Our bhut jolokia seems to be a bit tiny and is not growing taller all that fast, but it does have some flower buds already too!

Beans and peas

On this wonderfully sunny hot Sunday our garden plants have taken a spurt, tomato producing a bunch of new leaves, zucchinis doubling their size, the new batch of dill and spinach and all of the beans and sugar peas sprouting.

Backyard on first summer day

First of June, first calendar-official summer day. And a summery day it was, too! Sunny and warm :) Our herb garden is doing well, all in all. Strawberries have flowers, lilacs on the neighbors' yards are in full bloom and our lawn has turned into a meadow in serious need of a trimming.

Dandelions and the lone tulip on our overgrown lawn