First snow

First snow fell down tonight here in Helsinki too. Our new family member Meggie didn't mind it at all. Kinda nice in my opinion too, makes the world slightly less dark.

 

Snow at Nurmijärvi

Last day of November. In Helsinki, some sort of wet sleet is coming down, melting when it hits the ground. But 30km north, at Nurmijärvi, it was snowing.

 

 

Last hour of daylight

We had another beautiful sunny November day. We went out walking around the fields of Haltiala and Vantaa river, saying hi to the cows bathing in the last rays of sun, and watching a bunch of magpies have their meeting in the top of a couple birches.

 

 

 

Windy Sunday

Sunday was really windy here. Actually, as I learned when I got around to reading the news, it was classified as a storm, "Eino". Apparently Eino has caused a lot of havoc (in the Finnish scale, which is really nothing compared to the storms of the "big world", e.g. at the Philippines or the twisters the U.S.), cutting of electricity from a couple hundred thousand households due to fallen trees etc. It was the worst in Eastern Finland; I here only noticed the wind pulling my car and the flags in front of Ikea blowing sideways.

 

November sunrise and full moon

November is mostly rainy and gray, unless we already have snow on the ground. That is, however, quite rare here in southern Finland where the snowy winter time usually begins around Christmas. Sometimes mother nature surprises us, though, and last weekend, and even still yesterday, was fully sunny - those few hours of daylight that we get.

On Saturday I happened to be on the road when the (1 day short of) full moon had just came up, the sun still setting on the opposite side of the skyline.

 

So, yesterday morning I walked down the stairs, at approximately 7:20, to the view of sun rising behind the houses, making the world a bright orange.

 

Ice art

Leaves on the hood and windshield of the Mercedes, frozen into the icy swirls created by the nightly freeze after a rainy day.

 

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

 

Decaying frosty leaves

Another frosty morning today, after a week of rain. Leaves have started to decay, but today they were covered with frost. A couple of oak and buckeye leaves have found their way to the the otherwise birch and maple leaf ridden sidewalk by our house, from trees a little way down the street.

 

Morning moon

Two days ago, I woke up to my alarm, put on my house coat and started down the stairs, as usual. I lifted my eyes jp to our skylight, and I sawthe moon lurking behind the tall fir trees not far from our house, and a little bit of ice gathered on the window. Just see for yourself, behold, the not-so-good-quality photo. My hand was not exactly steady in the early morning...

 

A f ow it is just wet. Though the sun did come out for a while today. But still, everything is wet.

 

Frost

It's been below zero again the past nights. Yesterday morning we had no sun, and it actually snowed a bit in the day time (though melted as it touched the ground).

 

This morning we woke up to a frosty sunny day, the night's freeze having been enough to freeze the water in some garden containers. The colorful leaves on the deck and lawn, and the tall salads and that last flower standing were glistening in the sun.