My flower gallery

For a lazy gardener, who loves perennials and draught-tolerant and even heavy-rain-tolerant summer flowers, this gallery of flowers blossoming in our garden isn't bad. I didn't count how many buckets of water were carried during the seven hot weeks.

 

And some more...

 

 

 

Just the two of us

On Friday, the 1^st of August, we suddenly noticed that the house was empty. No kids, no noise, no shoes in the porch. Finally, we had one evening alone, just the two of us. We celebrated that by a ‘kräftskiva’ (crayfish party in Swedish).

We ordered ready-cooked crayfish from Ölander, who is farming them in an old limestone mine. In previous years we have managed to get large, jumbo size crayfish, but this time they had only medium-sized ones. The night was tropical and we ate late at night when it was already dark. Simple garnish included toast, mayo, dill and – the most important – Linie Aquavit schnapps. In addition, we had wine, Mudhouse Sauvignon Blanc.

 

The next day, we got visitors from Mexico. JD’s cousin and his wife who live close to Cancun spent two days with us. We made very typical Finnish summer food, smoked salmon with Siikli potatoes, herb dressing and cucumber salad. I had picked blueberries and for dessert, we had vanilla-blueberry cake according to a recipe by Kinuskikissa found on internet.

Smoking fish on a grill

This summer we bought a new smoke box that can be used on a grill. It has proved to be handy. You add some wood chips, a small twig of apple tree and juniper plus three lumps of sugar in the bottom, put the fish on a rack above it and put the lid on. Then you put the box on a grill and close the cover. A two-kilo salmon needs approximately half an hour to cook, get the smoke flavor and some color. We even managed to cook 4.7 kilos of salmon in this box when we had 14 dinner guests. That took a bit longer time. Very delicious!

Water games

When the temperature stayed above 25 degrees four weeks in a row, the only thing to do on the island is swimming and water games. We had five small kids and almost ten big ‘kids’ at the house and all escaped down to the beach, and the water was also warmer than ever, 24-26 degrees.

JD bought a new toy for the bigger kids, a plastic vessel to be pulled by the boat. Sam and Emma could also try with their parents. I was pulling little Ollie from the jetty, he is 4 years old and couldn’t take the ride with the boat.

 

Unlucky and lucky dudes

It is always sad to see the bad luck of animals. Last week we saw a dead woodpecker, seagull’s broken or damaged egg, and an old common toad who couldn’t move and had dug itself a whole under the rhubarb leave.

We also saw some very lucky animals: one evening when we were all having dinner on the patio, Rob saw three deer eating raw apples in our garden. They are already so used to people that our dinner didn’t bother them. Only when I walked closer to take a photo did they run away. So I didn't catch the moment. Another huge miss was when I saw a large bird, probably sea eagle, flying just above my head with a pike in its claws.

Hanna’s herbarium

Hanna, 12 years, had a task from school to collect a herbarium of 20 plants during the summer. One day we collected altogether 30 plants, which she pressed under newspapers and dried. I found an old herbarium with nice green covers at the Fiskars Antique Market for her.

Once the plants were dry, she attached one plant on a sheet a white paper and made small name labels for each plants.

Easy seafood

Tanned and tired after the day at the seaside, we grilled tiger shrimps (imported and bought frozen). That was fast and easy. They were simply served with rice and ready-made chili sauce. And strawberries for dessert, naturally.