Weeds taken over

I had a short stay with my son on the island, just one night, to mowing the lawns and check that the newly planted flowers are doing well. Weeds taken over the lawn! Millions of dandelions everywhere, actually very beautiful. It's amazing how much a plant can grow in one week! My son Yaffa spent several hours with the mower to get the grass look like grass (he was paid for the job, otherwise would rather play some games in the basement..).

It was +23C, sunny and as hot as in the best days in July. Had to protect skin from burning. The first summer day!

I made a light salad for lunch, some lettuce, cherry tomatos (unfortunately from Spain at this time of the year), basilika and buffalo mozzarella with dressing of virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, Herbamare and black pepper. Tasted summer!

After the lawn was done, apple trees looked fantastic - the buds had just opened and the trees were in full blossom. That view you cannot miss, it lasts only one week. It was a pitty that we had to leave for Helsinki early in the sunny afternoon.

Lizards and bats woken up

Another peaceful weekend, just JD and I, in the big house. Finally the sun started to warm up all those apple, plumb and cherry trees waiting eagerly in bud. It took only one sunny day for the first white flowers of the cherry trees to pop up.

Leena Törmä, an artist living in Turku, has made this garden statue.

I worked with some flower beds, but most of the time just enjoyed the sun and warmth, just like the statue in my garden. Besides me, there were some other creatures in the garden bathing in the sun, a lizard (viviparous lizard, sisilisko) and I also saw a copper brown blindwarm or slow warm (Anguis fragilis, vaskitsa) moving slowly through grass. Yäk, to me it is a snake, although I know that it doesn't do any harm and it has been placed under protection.

In our house, somewhere above the living room window and under the roof, there lives a colony of bats which are also under protection in Finland. So we have the pleasure of enjoying them flying around in the evenings. This weekend the bats had also woken up from their winter sleep to find something to eat. Luckily they are small and not vampyres - anyhow a bit disgusting.


Lamprocapnos spectabilis (särkynyt sydän) almost in blossom



Last tulips (tulppaani)



Still spring

Bad weather on Saturdays continued. The wind was blowing hard bringing showers every now and then. It was too cold to do anything in the garden. This is unusual at this time of the year. Anyhow, I went to my usual walk to the forest.


Oxalis acetosella

Some new spring flowers were trying to blossom. There was Oxalis acetosella (ketunleipä, käenkaali), which is edible and has some vitamins. I remember eating it as a kid when we were playing in the close-by forest. 

 

Then the first pink wild blueberry flowers had appeard in the forest. There's plenty of wild blueberries on Kemiö Island, last summer we picked several tens of liters of them. 



Bloody dock

In the garden the Bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus; viinisuolaheinä) surprised me. I bought it last summer as a salad and then planted the rest not used in the salad. I thought that will die in the winter, but it is perennial and doing well after all that snow and frost we had last winter. There's also plenty of stinging nettles (Urtica dioica; nokkonen) popping up under the bushes. I decided to make a nettle soup on Sunday night, the first try ever.

Sunday, the second in May and Mother's Day, was luckily sunny and +13C. I spent all the day out of doors, planning what to do with the flowers and herbs during the summer. The men came to install the pier that was taken on the shore for the winter, so now we are ready to welcome the summer (except for the boat, which will be brought in June). Actually, there's a lot of things to be done in the house before we'll start the summer. Our upstairs bathroom is being renovated and that brings a lot of dust allover. There'll be a lot of cleaning before the holidays can start.

The first edible greens

Saturday 5th May, 2012 was a rainy and quite cool day. Not much to do outside in Kemiö, therefore JD (my beloved husband) and I decided to go to Salo for some shopping. There's a marvellous shoe shop you can't miss, Zapato, selling beautiful Italian shoes and recently more and more clothes as well. So JD went to look at grills while I spent an hour trying on dozens of shoes. Unfortunately, no shoes of my size (41) that I would fell in love with right away, but couldn't leave the shop without buying a black jacked with smocked sleeves.

In the afternoon, the rain stopped and I went to check the beach.It looked ugly: some strange foam had landed the coast. Can it be nitrogen from fertilizers flowing to the sea from the fields? Or just foam caused by strong wind...

I had planned to make parsnip (palsternakka) puree for dinner and luckily the first lovage  (lipstikka) had grown big enough to season the puree.  

Lovage (lipstikka)

 In addition, I made some steaks (from organic grown beef) and for the sauce I  found a box of funghi porcini (herkkutatti) in the freezer. I fried some mild onions in butter, added the mushrooms and poored some cream and let them cook for 15 minutes. The sauce tasted perfect - thanks to a spoonful of Sherry Oloroso. We had a fairly good dinner.

On Sunday, it was a great sunny day and you got a feeling that summer is finally coming. I had a long walk with Nordic sticks in the surrounding forests, keeping the eyes to the ground in case the first gyromitra esculenta mushrooms (korvasieni) had popped up. None yet.

Sunny, warm day (+15 C), however, the wind from the sea was brisk. The birds have now returned from Africa to make their nests on the Kemiö island (which is the hottest place in Finland most of the year).
The grass is green, hepaticas and the first garden flowers are in blossom. I saw the first yellow brimstone yesterday above the daffodils.

Some herbs pop up already in my small herbarium, but have to wait until the next weekend to make a parsnip puree flavored with lovage. I had a change to taste it last May in Champagne, France, and it was delicious.