Pink pots, poppies and a pine marten

Two extra holidays around the weekend made our stay on the Island a labor camp. Our boys Hank and Yaffa had spent four days in the house during the week, treating our patios with wood preservatives and doing some garden work.  A farmer living near-by fetched the big piles of limbs, twigs and reed. I arrived with JD on Thursday evening and JD’s sister Rose on Friday.


Tools for the sauna job

I had planned to give a new look and feel to the old beach sauna, a log cabin built some 20 years ago. First I had to clean the sauna properly with a special detergent. Then I took the benches out (quite a job), and removed resin from the logs (there was plenty of it allover) with a sharp tool. Unfortunately it left white spots after resin removal. Then I polished up all the surfaces with a grinder. This was dirty job, dust allover and quite a noice.


Smoky black sauna after waxing

Sauna walls before the treatment, resin

Then I covered the floor and the stove carefully, and treated the roof, log walls and sauna benches with black wax (Tikkurila, Supi Saunavaha). This all turned out to be a 3-day job. I enjoyed it, the weather was nice, birds were singing and the sea was great.

After all the time and effort, black nails and cuticles, the result was luckily what we wanted, a smoke-black sauna. Next I have to find a wooden 'mat' and some new sauna textiles before Midsummer.

Pink

After many years of strong colors in the flower pots we decided with Rose to have pink flowers this year. We planted pink geraniums, petunias, lemon thyme and million bells in many pink shades mixed in long pots.










In addition to all the summer flowers, the pink bushes, such as honeysuckle, azaleas and rhododendrons were blossoming.

So did the poppy, gorgeous three flowers. We have only one old poppy plant. I have tried to grow more from seeds without succeeding.

Pine marten

The range of animals observed in our garden increased by one – on Saturday morning Rose saw a strange brown animal with a large fur tail and long nose, with a size of a small dog, snooping around on our patio, then loping across the lawn.

Obviously it was a pine marten (never seen before!).  Hopefully it's not going to settle down on our yard.

I discovered a little bird’s nest with three 1 cm dia eggs behind the house. And plenty of mouse poo while cleaning the beach house.

Picanha

JD took care of cooking while I was busy with the sauna and Rose helped him. On Saturday he bought new potatoes and strawberries at our favorite farm, grilled veal picanha and I made a quick salsa from chile, tomatoes, cilantro, garlic and lime. As a dessert, we had strawberries with a crème from mascarpone, crème fraiche, vanilla and lime.   On Sunday, the dinner was simply left-overs, 'pyttipannu'.