Month: December 2023

Six on Saturday | 9th December 2023

I’ve been waiting later and later every Saturday before writing these posts, hoping that I might snap a picture of something that will make its way into the collection. It’s made a little difficult by the fact that I can only take pictures on the weekend since it is dark when I leave the house and dark when I come back during the week. Today’s sunrise was at 9.33 with sunset at 15.18, with usable light being something less than that. That’s still luxurious compared to the northern part of the country, though, where they saw their last sunset on November 25th and won’t see a sunrise until January 17th. Yep, for nearly two months, the newspaper just prints a date for sunrise instead of a specific time.

1. Snowy viburnum berries that the birds haven’t gotten to yet. They already polished off the ones on the older shrub, but this is a newer plant and the berries are kind of hidden by surrounding branches.

2. A bargain amaryllis I got with my spring bulb order. I think three stalks are coming out of it! Hopefully, it will bloom in time to be on the table for Christmas dinner. I wonder what color it will be?

3. Cascading cymbidiums blocking my view of the veg garden over the winter. One’s white and one’s light pink. They really *really* need repotting after they flower this spring, pretty sure I’m going to have to cut them out of those pots by then. They seem happy, though, so that’s good.

4. I always thought staghorn ferns were these dainty things, more difficult to care for than other plants. This one, however, barely asks a thing from me and is increasing in size so steadily that I’m starting to think it might need a bigger pot. It doesn’t seem to have any issues with the lower winter humidity, either, while the Boston fern next to it has once again started to shrivel. Mental note, humidifiers must be brought out this weekend!

5. A Tale of Two Pothos. These two pots are only separated by a few feet and receive the exact same care. The one on the left is a pot full of cuttings taken from the one on the right, which just up and shriveled last month. I need to take it down and figure out what to do with it since it looks like it’s not actually dead but just extremely unhappy. It is the first plant that I got in Finland, as a cutting from a friend when I moved here more than a dozen years ago. It has managed to come back from looking worse and having been horrendously neglected, so I’m still holding out hope.

6. Finally, the resident furbeasts. I might as well draw the angel wings and devil horns on these two. The one on the left is not interested in plants at all, barely leaves floor level unless it is to attain lap level, and just likes to keep us company. The one on the right is the reason all of my larger plants, fish, and other small animals reside in my office instead of the house.

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!

Six on Saturday | 2nd December 2023

I was going to skip SoS this week since I’m still catching up on reading the last couple of weeks’ posts from everybody and didn’t think there was much to share out here other than more snow. Yet here I am again because I realized that I’ve never tried documenting winter in the garden before and even if I do nothing more than post pictures of the snow getting deeper, it’ll be useful for looking back on for next year. So here I am, with a garden that is growing a prolific layer of snow if nothing else! I also apologize to those of you who will get random late comments in the coming days.

1. We hit our lowest temperature so far this past Tuesday, -13°C. It might reach that again tonight, but it’s been mostly hovering in the -5°C range the rest of the time. I was going to walk around and see how the cutting garden was doing, but the snow was so deep that it started getting into my boots, so I’ll probably have to strap on snowshoes next week if the weather keeps up. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get good photos of animal tracks for next week at least!

2. A closeup of snowy plum trees.

3. Little feathered friends are constantly coming and going now that their favorite winter cafe is open for business. The first to arrive after a refill are usually the fearless tree sparrows (Passer montanus). There’s a family that builds its nest in the eaves above our front door every spring, so we hear cheeping babies whenever the door opens. They’re so used to us that I’m not surprised they don’t flinch at me coming over with a camera on the other side of the kitchen window.

4. After I stay still for a while, the great tits (Parus major) usually arrive in a mob and start pushing each other about because obviously, the seed that’s already in their friend’s mouth is always The Best One. One particularly cheeky one had a staredown with me for a good several seconds!

5. The shyest of the bunch are the blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus). They’re also the smallest, so tend to get pushed around a bit in the frenzy. They manage to get in there when the others aren’t looking, though, and get their share. I also put up tallow balls on several of the trees, so that they have different places to eat if the main feeder is too crowded. I hope that we’ll get a few more different birds this year — I’ve seen one with a bit of red come by in past years but haven’t figured out what it is yet.

6. With darkness arriving by 4 PM, we’ve got plenty of hanging lanterns outside. The candles last two evenings if I time it right and look pretty flickering from various points in the night.

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!