Around the longest day of the year

The longest day of the year was a couple days ago. Not that the days are too short plus/minus a month or two from it either. Summer is a bit of a fickle thing in June. Sometimes the weather is great, sometimes the rain is great and sometimes the thunderstorms are great. 

Last weekend I was in mid-Finland at my ex-inlaws' summer place with a bunch of teens. The evening there was absolutely beautiful. Sun had already vanished behind the trees when we got there around nine but it was light outside for three more hours. The darkest point of the night here now is between one and three am. 

It's Midsummer's Eve here today. Our apple trees are growing a lot of apples, we have started a little box garden after my husband built a couple of boxes - we have tomatoes in one and basil, chives, parsley and dill in the other one - and I made some "vihdat" a while ago for the sauna in the evening. Summer is summer even when it's rainy.

Narcissi and crocusi in Brussels

I travelled to Brussels on a business trip last week and though it was colder than usual, not much warmer that it has been in Finland lately, there was no snow and crocusi and narcissi had popped up and were blooming here and there.

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.

 

 

Early autumn bog hike

We went for a hike on Torronsuo bog approximately 100km North-East of Helsinki. We walked along the duckboards through the bog admiring the fabulous colors around us, then through the forest to a road that took us to this cabin and lean two with a fireplace.

 

 

The path through the bog was aligned with wiry hay, cotton grass, marsh tea, a lot of cranberries everywhere and some small lingonberries, but no cloudberries anymore; their leaves were already turning red. Small mushrooms were growing in the wet bog, but the surrounding forests were home to some rather big fly agarics and porcinis.

 

 

 

Finnish archipelago

Last week we went island-hopping in the Turku archipelago. They are islands with forests and fields, apple trees and flowers and raspberries and all sorts of other growth.

 

 

 

 

Blooming palm trees

Last day in Las Palmas before heading back home. I walked to a supermarket for some last minute shopping and saw these palm trees with white flower shoots next to the parking lot.

 

Mountains of Gran Canaria

A couple days ago we went for a roadtrip over the mountains of northern-northwestern Gran Canaria.

On the east and north side of the island the mountainsides are full of laurisilvas, eucalyptus trees, aloe veras with their funny tall flowers that grow sideways on the hills, canarian pine trees and such.

 

On the west and south side, the mountainsides are bare, with some shrubbery, different types of cacti and the occasional palm trees growing here and there.

 

Flowers in Las Palmas

Visiting my mom in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria for a week, I took a stroll in the blooming courtyard of her appartment complex.