Tulips and leaf buds

Spring has advances in leaps and bounds now that the temperature went from a couple degrees to 20C in one night or so. Tulips in our yard are happily blooming, birches have a faint green about them, apple trees have buds and cherry trees in the neighboring yards are blooming. Our bushes have little leaves and the butterbur a few flowers. Rhubarb is growing nicely. Wood anemonies are at their best.

Birches and our garden

Birches are turning green. The ultimate sign of spring for me! Some are already very green, other types of birches are only getting there, some aren't even remotely green yet. The birches in our neighbor's yard are of the first type, those two latter ones can be found in our yard. 

In our yard, the flowers continue to bloom, tulips are the size of tea cups, and the apple trees are pushing out green and the surprise-berry-bushes have leaves. I found a ladybug snuggled in the nook of a twig on the other tree. A couple of pheasants came for a visit.

Our little starts of a garden have started to sprout, at least some of the stuff we planted. Broccoli, sunflowers, radishes, a cucumber or two, marigolds, chives at least. The nights have still been too cold for basil, parsley, dill, peppers et al.

We live inside the city limits of Helsinki, but we really don't live IN the CITY. I'm loving it!

May Day

May Day dawned cold and cloudy this year. After all those warm sunny days this seems like a slap on the face, May Day or other day. So cold that the wood anemonies in more exposed areas have decided to stay closed and not open their flowers for the day at all. But birches have leaves, which is kinda rare on May Day.

 

 

 

Birch-leaves

As I wrote before, many of the birches are turning green with leaves pushing out :)

 

Officially spring

I may have mentioned it before, but spring is official for me when the birches start turning green. Today they have :) Not all of them, depeding on their subspecies and exposure to sun and whatnot, but they have. And they are heavy with catkins too. Judging by that, we'll be having a harsh pollen year.

The forest behind our house is finally green. I have been waiting and waiting. The leaves have been inching and peeking and teasing, but today the forest was green, when we walked through with the dog.

Squirrels are dithcing their winter coats and turning brown, like the one that was running up and down th birch tree on the neighbor's yard until it stopped for a long while to sit on a branch and munch on something.

Our yard is looking nice with grass starting to grow, some scilla sibericas here and there and the crocuses, even though they are largely starting to wilt already. Last year we had one lone tulip at the edge of the yard, now it looks like we'll have a bunch!

 

Catkins

Walking out today - yet another beautiful sunny day, yey for spring! - I noticed the birches growing catkins already. It's barely March, but there they were, hanging from birch after birch. Today it's been the warmest day of the year so far. We're planning on getting the grill out during the weekend, maybe already tomorrow. Next week it should get colder again according to the forecasts, but I have my fingeres crossed that the meteoroligst have got it wrong!

 

Barren trees

November has been rainy, if not as cold as most of October was. Gushing winds and pouring rain have pretty much knocked off the rest of the leaves in the birches and other trees around. Mostly overcast and wet, even when it's not raining, the weather is as dreary as November tends to be. Every now and then the sun tries to peek through the clouds a bit.

Sun setting already at 5pm or so

 

Sun climing up at 9am or so

 

Autumn on our home street

The trees have finally turned all colors of foliage, and the first proper rain in weeks has set in. Our neighborhood is looking like autumn.

 

Autumn in North-Eastern Finland

We drove up to Kuopio a couple days ago, just for a short visit. On our way back we drove through the beautiful lake area and visited my dairy farmer cousins on their farm. Swans were getting ready to move south, gathering up on the small lake behind the farm, where birches were yellow and the lake surface still enough to mirror the amazing autumn nature.

Autumn at Loppi

Another weekend, another hike. We walked an about eight kilometer hike at Luutasuo, a trail that goes through some bog and marsh, by a couple ponds, and climbs up some steep hills of taiga - boreal coniferous forest - formed by the ice retreating after the Ice Age.

 

Despite the drought of this year, there were plenty of different kinds of mushrooms, most of them already on the decaying side. I also found some blooming strawberries, confused by the extended warm season.

 

 

Windy autumn day

Autumn has been uncharacteristically warm and dry this year. Everything is still green, a whole lot of flowers are still blooming, and the trees have only started to change color and drop their leaves during the past week or so. Some mushrooms are popping up here and there and the acorns are turning brown.

Today was a somewhat windy day, as we were walking along the banks of the river Vantaa, and in the surroundings of the Tuomarinkylä manor, the gushes of wind sending leaves fluttering to the ground.

Autumn is here

The days have still been rather warm, but the nights already sufficiently cold and long to push the trees into the beginnings of foliage, and rising a fog on the ground in the mornings. We've had a very dry autumn so far, but yesterday there came the rains and winds, knocking down the first birch leaves.

 

 

Windy day

It was a very windy day, the birches bending sideways in the wind and even the small purple clover on our yard was fluttering.

Green on the trees

Today was so far the warmest day of this spring. I noticed small leaves starting to sprout in birches and other trees.

We planted some tomatoes, an eggplant and a medina chili plant. We also got some violets and marigilds for our patio.

Spring moving along

It wasn't more than a couple weeks ago that the bench was all covered with snow - no snow anymore! The ants are busy building their nests, birches are in "flower" and I saw the first wood anemonies of this spring today :)