Avainsana: outdoors

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.

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.