Avainsana: nature

Quick one

julkaissut Nokisuu

This is just a quick post because I realized that October is ending and I haven’t written anything since mid-September.

I have been busy at work but as the school’s here have a so-called Fall leave in mid-October and my workplace is a school so I took the week off.

As DH didn’t have leave I went to summer cottage with eldest and youngest son. We managed to get the cottage warm even thou I forgot to take newspapers with us. We had nice time, went to sauna on both nights and managed to do the couple of things we were meant to; turn the row boat upside down and put locks on the barn doors.

Me and DH need to drive there once more since I forgot to close the fireplace dampers… Don’t ask how.

Then I took youngest son to Stockholm by ferry and it was nice. We had good food, ate breakfast at Mr Cake and visited our fave shop Scifi bokhandeln in the Old city. We also visited the Stockholm City public library’s main building which is very pretty.

About Mr Cake, if you’re familiar with the name Josef Fares or Fares Fares, Swedish actor and director brothers, Mr Cake’s owner Roy Fares is their cousin. I must say the Fares’ brothers movies are quite funny and I think Fares Fares was in the Westworld too.

Now we’ve turned the clocks towards wintertime and darkness approaches in other ways too.

I wonder what will happen with Twitter so I made myself an account on mastodon.social. You’ll find me there by this alias too, as I’m everywhere with it.

Here’s a pic from last night. My friend and I did a short roadtrip to seaside and Tammisaari and enjoyed the views.

Halfway through August

julkaissut Nokisuu

So I’m back in the city and work too, it begun last Monday and I’ve been so busy with everything.  Youngest one’s school begun on Thursday too.

The cottage weeks went quickly and I enjoyed time with my eldest and youngest son and Sirius. Middlest son visited for overnight as eldest picked him from the city and then gave him a lift to the garrison which is an hours drive North from the cottage. I did some foraging in the forests and picked berries and mushrooms. We had some encounters with wildlife, i.e. bats, and one day we drove to Jyväskylä to meet my cousin and one of my local friends popped by for a coffee. Very relaxing and nice two weeks.

Here at home besides work I’ve been busy sewing masks for myself to use in public transport as it was finally recommended by the authorities. There’s still a lot of people not wearing masks.

I’ve also been washing laundry from the cottage and also from the clearing I did here at home. I’d still go through my clothes to see what to put forward and what to keep. I have less clothes to wash now as middlest son is in the army, he used to change his clothes so often that the basket was always full.

On Friday evening I had coffee date with my friend and we decided to visit two art museums in Helsinki which was nice. The other one has great cafeteria, so after the first museum we then decided to have dinner at this one and checked the exhibitions too and afterwards had coffee and cake. It was nice to catch up with her too.

On Saturday hubby went to buy us more firewood and it was a bit hot weather to put them into the shed later but I love doing outdoors things in good weather. Today we watched middlest son give his oath via live-stream so now he is finally a conscript and not a rookie. Usually they get a vacation after the oath but these days the vacation is postponed still two weeks. In his speech the general said they haven’t had any of the boys sick with Covid19 since spring which is really good.

I’ve finished knitting a scarf, I finally got more yarn on Tuesday. I visited my dentist and afterwards went to my hairdresser and as I had a spare moment I did a quick visit at the yarn shop near her place. Oh and my dentist suggested I’d get braces as now my back teeth are getting too much pressure so I’m going to have a consultation made in mid-September. There’s always some moneypit one can throw her earnings.

This is about all from me for now. Pics in instagram and read books in Goodreads on the right side sidebar.

These times

julkaissut Nokisuu

On Friday I cooked some sort of tian, a Provencal veggie dish I found by accident when googling something else. I used eggplant and zucchini and it was so good! I also read ”Everything I never told you” by Celeste Ng on Friday and it was really great. I loved her novel ”Little fires everywhere” but for some reason this was better imo. I also finished listening to ”Patient man” by Joy Ellis, read by Richard, today and it too was very good.

Yesterday I was a bit down. One of my best childhood friends had her 50th birthday and we couldn’t celebrate them. We’ve known each other since we were 9-y-o and their school’s all pupils came to our school for the school year as their new school was getting built and on one of the first gym classes she asked to be my pair and now she’s eldest son’s godmother.

Since there’s no celebrations during this time me and some of our mutual friends gave her together a gift card for a pedicure and a bunch of flowers delivered to their house and it was nice to surprise her. I also sent a greeting card from our family.

My friend is  working as an X-ray nurse in the pandemic hospital which I must confess makes me a bit worried. I’ve also been a bit blue since on March 27th it was the 5th anniversary of my mom’s passing and this is always sad time for me.

Luckily we had good weather during the weekend and yesterday I made a 90-minute walk in the woods (and my legs ached all night), heard finches sing  and later helped youngest son to cook us dinner and dessert since it was his HE homeworks.

Today I sorted the old cook books and recipes in kitchen self, it’s been on my to-do-list for ages. Did you know that in the 70’s it was recommended to cook pizza with liver or European cisco (fish)? I didn’t throw those recipe books to the bin yet, I’ll keep them as a curiosity.  Later me and hubby changed the cactus’ dirt and pots which has also been on the list quite some time.

There was an article about Finland’s stockpile of supplies in NYT if you want to read. There’s an old joke which goes: ”What does Sweden have Norway and Finland don’t? -Good neighbours” (neither Finland nor Norway appreciate Sweden as high as they could, sort of sibling rivalry).

Tomorrow I’m going to work for a few hours since my workplace health care is in the neighbouring house and I need to go there for some bloodworks (thyroid). Hubby will drive me there and also collect which is nice.

 

 

Sunny Sunday

julkaissut Nokisuu

This afternoon I and hubby drove to Porvoo, a small town nearby. My mom and before her my granny used to live there and they still reside at the old cemetery there as does my grandpa and auntie and my mom’s granny. I never met my grandpa and my granny’s mom, I only know them from pics and stories.

Porvoo is an old town dating back to 14th century and the cemetery is also one of the eldest in Finland. Porvoo has also been significant in some historical events here in Finland, i.e. when Sweden ceded Finland to Russia.

There’s also a very nice candy factory called Brunberg in Porvoo. My granny used to live pretty near their factory and nowadays they have a candy shop in the historical center. Of course we went first to see if the shop was open and it was! Very good for them and not so good for my diet 😀

On March 27th, next Friday, it’ll be four years since my mom died. As we drove past her flat I watched the windows and it made a bit sad. I took some pics of the cemetery, there were some gravestones I hadn’t noticed earlier. In the soldier’s grave section the large wooden cross is made by a Finnish-Swedish artist Lennart Segerstråle who at some point was my granny’s tenant and we have one painting by him (which I should probably take to be valued one day), he had given it to my granny as a thank you gift.

Near the cemetery I noticed a large (I mean huge) glacial erratic rock I had never before seen, mainly because we usually go there from the other side and when I was a kid there was so many trees there one couldn’t see anything. The rock is called Näsin kivi and you can see some pics here. It’s so large that they’ve built steps and a viewing area on top of it so we climbed there and I took some pics of the river and city centre.

Tomorrow I’m going to work. Hubby said he’d drive me there and my boss said she’s going to talk with me about the possibility for me to work from home, there’s things after all I could do in the net. I’m quite content.

 

Old fortresses

julkaissut Nokisuu

Yesterday I made another outing and decided to check on the old fortresses we have in the neighbourhood.

They are part of a string of defence fortresses cut into the rock in the 1914 when Finland was still part of the Russian empire. They were built just before the WWI as Germany declared war against Russia and never used. Now they are grown full of trees, there’s all kids of junk and kids (and teens) love to play in them. Hubby used to play in them as a child in the 1970’s and he says they were quite unsafe. Some that are located near residential areas are often used as compost for garden waste which is a disgrace.

The first one is actually pretty near to our house (around 500 metres) and on the way to kid’s school. The others are on the other side of the school, about a mile from my house and I just had to take a pic of the murals too.

I hope you enjoy the photo journey 🙂

In da woods

julkaissut Nokisuu

Yesterday I felt pretty good after a week indoors so I decided to take a walk. I’ve been feeling a bit nauseous in my head probably because of the hospital medications still so I haven’t done any long walks.

I’ve lived around here about 5 km radius all my life except first 6 years when we lived in the city centre and yet there’s still places I haven’t been to so I decided to tackle one such place and headed to nearby sandpits.

The sandpits were created in the 60’s when the big building fever hit and sand was needed for concrete for the blocks of flats. Those apartment houses were later inhabited by country people moving to city workers and the suburb was one of the most seedy in whole Helsinki and still the people there are suffering of more unemployment and less education than other areas.

But back to the sandpits. When I was a kid the sandpits were a no-go, they were full of dirty water, kids had drowned there and they were full of old cars and other junk until in the 90’s they were just used as a park but still not a very favorable place to go to. In 2018 both Helsinki and Vantaa decided to do something since the area is on both cities concern and the residents wanted more possibilities to outdoor activities there. The water was tested and the pits were cleaned of decades of junk thrown there and now there are three small ponds for people to swim and enjoy beach with firepits and one pond is reserved for dogs to swim. They are very popular on hot summer days and since you can’t park your car there people walk or bike which makes it safer.

On the other side of the ponds is a small forest and swamp which is a conservation area and I walked through it and enjoyed the firs and pines and moss. I was quite alone even though one of the busiest highways is  just about 500 metres away, you can hear it very well and there’s also the candy factory where I emerged from the woods.

After breathing the forest air deeply I walked home, all in all I walked about 5km and an hour and when I got to our street Sirius was on our neighbour’s roof and I asked her to come home with me and she did.

The last pic is from this morning as a blue tit was teasing her and she dropped one of the flowers from the windowsill.