Four weeks ago it looked like this here.
Now its been 5 – 8 degrees ever since then and raining the whole time. No change in sight at the moment either. The way things are going I don’t know if we will get to do much skiing this winter!
Have even had to start raking the leaves off the lawn again and do some other cleaning up in the yard. It is much easier when it is under 30cm of snow and no-one can see it.
Autumn is already here and the vege garden is almost empty again. All that is left now are the parsnips.
Summer was long, hot and dry and the radishes fell victim quite early on along with the strawberries. But with a bit of watering we managed to get quite a crop of some things.
The courgettes started off well and we ended up with many more than we could eat from just one plant. Also the gherkins went nuts. We had a couple of rows of them and ended up more than we could possibly handle. In total for the summer there was probably over 20kg and we managed to preserve only about 10 – 15kg out of that. In the end we had to pull out all the plants to stop them producing any more…
But the amount we have now should last us a while. We have jars and jars of pickled gherkins, sliced and whole, and a couple of different gherkin salads.
The carrots were a bit stunted and many were rather odd shapes, but what we could we froze (or grated and froze).
The latest crop were the pumpkins. I had hoped for a couple of pumpkins, but we ended up with few more than that!As I mentioned the parsnips are still in the ground. I think the row closest to the pumpkins was a bit overwhelmed and probably don’t produce much. But the next row looks quite promising. I think they will have to start to come out in the next few weeks.
As for the pumpkins we don’t know what to do with all of them. Hopefully they keep for a while, but one has already been sacrificed to pumpkin pie, some will go to pickled pumpkin (we have a couple of 5 litre jars :-). As for the rest, who knows…
In the future we might have to invest in a maakellari or earth cellar. For a 1000-2000 EUR you can buy the parts to build a room just at or slightly below ground level and then cover it in dirt. If it is covered enough it will be insulated enough to stay above freezing in winter and cool in summer. We just need one big enough to hold all the fruit from those trees :-).
And one last thing about the carrots… beware the little carrot people 🙂
We have been up early lately and walking before breakfast. To fit it in before work it requires getting up about 5am and at the moment that just happens to be about the same time as sunrise. At the moment, sunrise is getting later by 2-3 minutes every day, so soon we will be walking in the dark. But still, it is nice while it lasts, especially with the weather over summer.
The road we follow during the morning takes us around the lake and through fields of grain with the sun rising over the lake.
And that early in the morning there is almost no one around, even the wildlife is still sleeping…
No so much going on with the house or garden at the moment.
A few weeks ago we picked up some more plants for the flower garden, but apart from that there hasn’t been much to do, just clean up a few things and watch the grass bake in the sun.
The summer has been extremely dry and hot. The official rainfall figure for July was 3mm, but really we haven’t had anything significant since late June till now. During the whole time it has rained enough to wet the ground about three times that I can remember. The daily temperature this period has been at least the low 20’s, but for most of July it was regularly much hotter in our yard.
The lawn dried up several weeks ago and the ground is baked solid. Mostly all that is growing now are the weeds. I have only had to cut the grass twice this summer and that was just to keep the weeds down. The vege garden needs constant watering to keep going, but we have already lost our radishes. The carrots look a bit small still, so they are probably affected by the lack of water too. The fruit trees also need to be watered every few days and it seems that the pear sapling is suffering quite a lot.
The garden has generally survived though and the pumpkins and courgettes are growing wildly as are the gherkins. The carrots and parsnips we will have to wait and see.
The garden and the patio are both mostly done now.
We finished off laying the paving stones a couple of weeks ago and last week put in the wood surround. A week ago we got the first of the plants for the garden and today we picked up a few more plants and have now filled in most of the garden. Picked up a few bags of sand for between the paving stones. Managed to get about 2/3rds of the patio done today. Last weekend also started filling in around the edges of the patio with dirt to bring up the grass level a bit.
We also installed an irrigation hose just under the surface since it is such a dry, hot, location. I think most years it will be quite hot there. I guess this summer is quite normal for here, if a little drier than normal. We have had 25+ degrees daily now for a few weeks and barely a sign of any rain. The grass is looking a bit bare and dead in places as well.
Last week, we started on the edging of the driveway with the leftover bricks from the garden wall. Looks quite good for a start, but needs a few more bricks to finish the whole edge.
Summer holiday 2006 is a pretty quiet affair so far. Mostly we have been at home, but we have a few things planned, a couple of which we have already done.
The others I’ll add here as we get them done. So this will be updated sometime.
Suomenlinna
We had planned to spend one day lazing around on the island fortress in the Helsinki harbour. Since it was looking like it was going to rain later in our first week off we decided to head there before the weather turned bad. As it turned out that was probably the worst day to go there as it was windy and mostly cloudy. The rain never turned up at all and was stinky hot every other day. We might go back again if we have time and the weather is better.
But anyway, it wasn’t so bad and we had a few drinks and sat in the sun (when it was around). And a nice sailing ship went past at the exact moment we turned up at the harbour channel.
Bengskär lighthouse
The lighthouse is about 28km south west of Hanko in the Bay of Finland. Hanko is about 120km south-west of Helsinki and is a major port. Most cars for Finland arrive here and many are transported over land to Russia from here as well (something like 300,000 last year). Hanko is the green arrow in the map.
Anyway, back to the lighthouse. It is a major tourist attraction during the summer with several boats visiting there daily. We had been planning on visiting there for a while now, but never seemed to make it. This year with such a run of hot weather we thought it would be good to take a break from the heat with a nice cruise out to the island and the bookings for Friday (7th July) were quite light according to the tour company’s web site. As it turned out, it was nearly 30 degrees in Hanko and it was stinking hot even out on the water. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky the entire trip and our “sensible” sea clothes turned out to be a sweaty mistake.
On the trip out there they supplied us with lunch (salmon soup) and there was a guide who a talk on the battles there during WWII, especially with the Russians. There are still shell casings to be found on the island and unexploded grenades have been found as recently as year 2000. In the lighthouse itself there are still marks from the battles with grenade marks visible on some of the stairs. Once at the island a guide gave another presentation on the island and lighthouse history from its construction in 1906. Originally three families lived there, which accounts for the large accommodation wing on the lighthouse. But now it is mainly a tourist attraction and includes a small hotel.
The island itself is nothing but a small group of well worn rocks with a lighthouse in the middle, so the couple of hours that we stayed there was definitely enough. It is easy to believe the story told by the guide, that when a six year old kid from one of the first families visited another island with trees for the first time he commented that “the flowers here grow very big.” They also mentioned that the island is swept clean during every storm, so if anything isn’t tied down it is lost. The lighthouse itself is built entirely from stone blocks and the tower is about 55 metres tall. It is possible to climb to the top, although the view isn’t so good since there really isn’t anything else to see from up there and there is wire across most of it.
Quite a few of those visiting on ours and the other boat had actually bought swimming gear with them and were sunbathing of swimming in the small inlet on one side of the island. The other side of the island was quite deserted with was a bit odd. The whole thing was only a few hundred metres from tip to tip.
After wandering around the lighthouse and the island for a couple of hours it was time to go back. The trip back was uneventful, and quite nice when you were out of the sun. As it turned out, we discovered that we had arrive in Hanko during the annual regatta. So that explained the lack of parking, but when leaving Hanko Friday evening we passed basically an uninterrupted stream of cars heading there. So the population probably doubled that weekend and it was just as well we went Friday and not during the weekend. Once we got off the main road it was an extremely quiet drive through the countryside home, but even at 8:30 that night it was still 28 degrees…
You can find more pictures in our online album. (Lisaa kuvia meidän kuvagallerissa).
Just in case you can’t find anything I reorganised the main English start page a little. I also discovered that the font handling was broken too in my style sheet. So hopefully it looks a bit better now, especially if you use ClearType.
Lots of work since the last entry. As I mentioned last time we had just got the sand (crushed rock actually) for the back patio. A few days after that we started leveling the area where the paving stones should go.
The amount of sand that went in at first had me wondering if we would run out before the whole thing was done. But it wasn’t necessary to put it in so thick everywhere. I had planned that it would be about 5cm thick over about 47 square metres and that turned out to be a pretty good estimate. Laying the stones was pretty nasty work, much harder than we thought and it seemed to go on for days. Carting them around the house in the wheelbarrow took long enough, but it also turns out that the paving stones are up to 5mm or more different in height. So it didn’t matter how level or smooth the sand was, many stones had to be individually set to get some sort of smooth surface.
So it was slow going for most of it. But the more that went in the better it looked.
Just as well really, cos we were getting pretty sick of laying those stones… That first weekend it was nearly 30 in our yard and we both had a head cold. The rest of the week it went down in bits and pieces.
This weekend we had visitors. Pia’s parents were here and gave us a hand with carrying the paving stones around. With the extra help the last part of the patio went down quite fast. Next up after that was the garden. The brickwork for the garden went up quite quickly, just an hour for the basic walls. But that dirt took a while. There is something like 7 cubic metres of dirt in there, or about 50 wheelbarrow loads. With Risto helping we managed to just under half fill it on Saturday. Sunday we had a bit of a rest, but after Risto and Lea went back home we managed another few wheelbarrow loads more to get just over half full.
Tonight after work we did another few hours and filled the whole thing and also finished off the brickwork.
Now we should buy some plants to put in it.
The bricks I mentioned last time arrived the other day and today we got about 3 cubic metres of sand as well.
There were two types of bricks, one for the raised garden and the others are paving stones for the patio. The brick for the garden are joined together in pairs and must be cracked in half to make the rough front face. I’m certain that the guy at the cement works where we ordered the bricks miscalculated the amount when I gave him the measurements. But we should have enough brick for at least one of the gardens we planned. The other one will probably have to wait a while. There seems to be plenty of the paving stones on the other hand, so hopefully we have enough of them.
We had a bit of help during the weekend, with Pia’s brother and his flatmate visiting. Unfortunately we didn’t have the sand yet, so doing the patio was out of the question. But we did get all the garden bricks split in half. They also cleared the small willow and birch trees growing around the driveway and helped plant our new fruit trees. The front looks a bit naked at the moment, but definitely a lot tidier. They also helped put the concrete ring and lid around the well head.
To plant the fruit trees we had to clear away some of the birch trees that were growing in the yard. We had tried to save several around the house when doing the building, but several of them had either died or were getting that way. Probably it was the increased ground level around the house that did it. But anyway, we cut them down and turned them all into firewood and mulched up all the branches. The holes for the fruit trees provided the dirt and grass to fill in the other holes. So the end result is that the yard looks a bit strange now and the fruit trees look tiny. It’ll probably be a few years before we get anything off them. That’s if the wildlife doesn’t eat them first.
Well, I don’t know if this counts as a entry for the house, but it is close enough.
We finally have our vege garden in. Might be a bit late for a couple of things, but the rest should be fine. Hopefully we will be picking radishes in just a few weeks. Had to build a rough fence around it to keep the local wildlife out as well. Hopefully it is up to the job!
Also we picked up some fruit trees a couple of weekends ago and those should be planted quite soon as well. Some of the original birch trees have died due to the new soil around them and we will take those out and replace them with the fruit trees. We three different kinds of apples, pear, cherry, and plum trees. Probably a few years before we get much from them though. That’s if the deer and rabbits don’t get them first though.
Ordered the brickwork for the back patio and raised garden last weekend too. They won’t arrive for another week or so yet though. Once they are in that means most of the backyard would be finished. Next there is just the side of the house and the driveway, but at least the driveway will probably be another year or so.
One of our previous additions has a new occupant as well now.
