Defending territory against seagulls

We arrived at the island on a sunny Friday evening, there were three of us: JD, my youngest son who is a law student and had a spring break and I. The weather looked nice and warm, the sea was brillant, but the wind was icy.

I didn't have to cook dinner, as JD had brought sushi from Helsinki. And then we had mämmi for dessert. A great combination:)

The sun, lack of snow and some plus-degrees had made the first flowers of spring, anemone hepaticas blossom a couple of weeks earlier than normally. Beautiful blue flowers.

And the early birds – seagulls and Eurasian skylarks had arrived, too. They say that it’s one month left to the summer when you see skylarks.


When I was sitting on the bench on our jetty, a seagull tried to scare me out of its territory. Every year, a seagull builds its nest on our jetty, and that’s not a good idea, we need to destroy the nest. Funny, that they never learn. This time I tried to warn him early enough, waving on the jetty with a red cap on - trying to show him that this is our territory. Let's see next weekend if I succeeded.

As the sunny weather continued on Saturday (with cool wind), it was time for me to start garden work. I am the only one who likes gardening in this family, and I enjoy the physical exercise and being out-of-doors as much as possible. JD stayed inside surfing car models and my son was in the basement playing horror games with virtual friends.

We had hired a local man to cut trees last autumn, and he had burned the smaller branches in the garden. So there was a big pile of wood ash. I’ve heard that ash is good fertilizer. So I shoveled ash under black-currant, red-currant and gooseberry bushes, apple trees and a flower bench. Let’s see how this magic works… I also raked dead leaves, so that after a couple of hours in the garden I felt like having been in a gym. The rest of the day I was lazy, sitting in the sun, and even took a nap inside.

Sunday was rainy, doing good to the garden. I was mostly inside, and made meat-macaroni casserole (lihamakaronilaatikko) in the old style for my boys.