We live at the edge of the city, in the quiet suberbs of Helsinki. Almost right behind our house, just a few streets down, there are vast forests and fields of hay, wheat, barley and oat, meadows with flowers, city owned orchards of oak trees, and a golf course. Yesterday we went for a walk on the footpaths throught those fields in the gloom of late summer, early autumn.
Geese, while planning their escape from this cooling country, seem to like the already cut hay fields, as well as the ponds of the golf course, where the ducks like to reside as well. They were sitting around in flocks, discussing their strategy. Every now and then one of flocks would take off and re-locate. In the evening, when we went strolling around again, it seemed that the flocks had united and decided to take off to a completely new location.
As of late summer, there are still flowers on the meadows, but already mingling with the flowers is a whole lot of mushrooms. The trees have not started to turn yellow or red, but apples are ripening fast and acorns are growing bigger, berries are making bushes hang heavy.
As already mentioned, we went for another walk in the evening, as the one in the daytime was cut short by rain. The evening sky was mostly clear, with some scattered clouds around, and the almost full moon partly visible through the clouds. The rain and still wet shrubbery had lured the snails out in herds to munch on the moist leaves.
