ORNAMENTALS
- Anemone sylvestris
- Dicentra formosa
- Dicentra spectabilis
- Omphalodes verna
- Paeonia herbaceous hybrid ‘Lemon Chiffon’
- Paeonia lactiflora ‘Garden Lace’
- Paeonia lactiflora ‘Sarah Bernhardt’
- Paeonia officinalis ‘Nordic Paradox’
- Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’
- Rosa ‘The Poet’s Wife’
- Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’
- Rosa pimpinellifolia ‘Plena’
EDIBLES
- Malus domestica ‘Red Cinnamon’
- Malus domestica ‘White Transparent’
- Prunus domestica ‘Victoria’
- Pyrus communis ‘Pepi’
- Rheum rhabarbarum ‘Victoria’
- Ribes rubrum ‘Aili’
- Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’
FORAGEABLES
- Coming soon, with links to individual plant posts
- Coming soon, with links to individual plant posts
June 2024 Vegetable Garden Tour
One year later and here we go again! A video taking you around the raised beds to see what’s growing in this year’s veg garden. It’s been fun to compare how much has changed since last year’s tour. I hope to do one of the flower garden as well, after I clean it up next…
Six on Saturday | 22nd June 2024
Happy Midsummer weekend! With last week’s rains, several days of clear sunny skies and only a couple hours of twilight to call night, our garden has been growing at a breakneck pace. We are absolutely inundated with leafy greens at the moment and I have already started showing up to friends’ houses bearing whole lettuces.…
Six on Saturday | 15th June 2024
I am determined to actually do this on the proper day this week, yes I am! The clear weather today after a week of thunderstorms (some of our friends had localized hail!) made it a very pleasant day for photography. Sadly, I will have to wait until next week to share whatever I pick up…
Six on Saturday | 8th June 2024
The post discusses various updates on the garden, including the early blooming of Rosa pimpinellifolia ‘Plena’ due to unusual weather, a self-seeded lilac’s growth, and the neglected state of the Rhododendron ‘Helsinki University’. The author also mentions the spinach bolting and a visit to a nursery resulting in the acquisition of new herbs. The post…
Six on Saturday | 1st June 2024
This year’s SoS posts finally kick off after a lull, with the excitement of the first asparagus harvest, apple trees in full blossom, forget-me-nots adding color to the garden, and the first stinging nettle harvest. Despite setbacks like high temperatures burning up some plants, the vegetable garden is mostly planted and sprouted.
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…
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…
Six on Saturday | 25th November 2023
The snow I promised to photograph arrived this past week. Today was a clear and crisp and very brisk -7°C, so I crunched around outside in my biggest pair of boots to show you the current state of the garden. 1. Standard view of the veg garden, winter edition. The ground is frozen and it’s…
Six on Saturday | 18th November 2023
First post of winter, brrr! Our nights have consistently been dipping below 0°C now, though not very far below most of the time. Enough to justify a fire in a woodstove and candles everywhere, though! There are about six hours between sunrise and sunset at the moment, though that’s closer to five hours of usable…
Six on Saturday | 11th November 2023
It’s supposed to rain for most of this weekend, but I’ll be ducking out during the lighter portions to harvest what I can because winter officially begins for us next week. The nighttime temps will be consistently below 0ºC, the snow will fall, and the ground will be frozen solid after a few weeks. I’ve…
Six on Saturday | 4th November 2023
So this has been an eventful week, though perhaps not one I’d like to repeat. I came down with a rather unpleasant virus at the end of last week which lasted well into the beginning of this one, keeping me from participating in Halloween events with my students. I also lost my voice, so I…
Garden Inventory | Ribes rubrum ‘Aili’
Before moving to Finland, I’d never met a currant bush of any sort before. The most common ones in gardens only grow in temperate climates, so they were never really an option in Southern California. Even in the rest of the US, they’re not as common as other berries — even though the federal law…
Six on Saturday | 28th October 2023
A year and a month ago, I shared a weekend project where I added shelving to our root cellar which had been sitting unused under the house for a good couple of decades. Since I’ve finished storing most things in the root cellar this autumn, it seemed a good time to catch up on how…
Garden Inventory | Rosa ‘The Poet’s Wife’
Finally, we have the third plant from my 2022 rose batch. I’m so happy that all three ended up being such healthy plants, allaying my fears about growing roses in cold climates. Why did it take me so long to get roses, after having so many in our garden growing up? A dumb mistake, really.…
Six on Saturday | 21st October 2023
Our first frost arrived this past Thursday! Maybe a little earlier than expected, but still within the normal range. All the tender plants and bulbs are either (1) sitting on a house windowsill, (2) safely tucked away in the barn to dry out a bit, or (3) already slumbering away in the root cellar. All…
Garden Inventory | Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’
This Austin rose, from the same January 2022 batch as ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, struggled a little starting out but has made up for it over the past year. Aesthetically, it’s probably my favorite out of the three, though it’s a close race since they have all been charming in different ways. Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’ (ruusu) is…
In a Vase on Monday | 16th October 2023
A mixed vase this week with something old and something new. The white dried hydrangea is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ (I asked the person who planted it this time to make sure since Google was giving me too many different options), and the new little pink blooms underneath it are Hydrangea paniculata ‘Living Angels Blush’. Some…
Six on Saturday | 14th October 2023
Here’s a trip outside my garden, for a change of pace! This past week, we took a field trip to Turku to visit the Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum. It is a small section of the city with 18th-century wooden buildings preserved as a historical museum and a place to demonstrate traditional handicrafts. While there were no…
Garden Inventory | Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’
The very first David Austin rose I bought was ‘Fair Bianca’, back when I was in Southern California. It was a small perky shrub, happy to live in a stoneware pot in our very sunny front yard. Although that garden had towering hybrid teas and extravagant floribundas growing along most of the walls, ‘Bianca’ was…
In a Vase on Monday | 9th October 2023
It hailed overnight yesterday. That’s not to say that we’ve had a frost yet — it’s been chilly at night but not quite cold enough to upset all but the tenderest of tropicals so far. The temperatures have been fluctuating like crazy, though. The hail melted as soon as the sun rose, but it was…
Six on Saturday | 7th October 2023
These pumpkins are not from my garden. I purchased them from a local farm and they are now sitting in my classroom, waiting to be turned into jack-o-lanterns by my students later this month. I’m including them because they are such gorgeous pumpkins and I wanted to have some on this blog, even if my…
Garden Inventory | Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’
Alright, storytime! So not far from where we live, there’s an island with three nuclear power plants. The government has been conducting research projects there to find uses for the heat in the wastewater as the cooling system circulates it out of the plants. After all, we’re five degrees of latitude from the Arctic Circle…
In a Vase on Monday | 2nd October 2023
I was going to skip today because of so many repeats, but realistically, I only have a few more days to post before I’ll be forced to skip for lack of materials. So here we go! Two small bunches next to each other because I don’t have a big squat vase to fit all of…
Six on Saturday | 30th September 2023
The great thing about doing garden work once autumn fully sets in is knowing that places you tidy up will stay relatively tidy for a while. When you’re out there pulling up all the dead plant material and come across some weeds, you can just tell them “Y’know, can we just… not?” and they’ll usually…
Garden Inventory | Pyrus communis ‘Pepi’
Pyrus communis ‘Pepi’ (päärynä) is a pear tree originally bred in Estonia, so it does great in our cold winters. The fruits are abundant and ready to harvest pretty early for a pear — usually in early September. I’ve read that this is a smaller variety and that pear trees grow slowly, to begin with,…
In a Vase on Monday | 25th September 2023
I seem to have ended up with mostly single-species vases this week, but that’s down to there being lots of big statement stems appearing in the garden. No complaints about that! ‘Bizar Dutch’ gladiolus, which came in a completely mislabeled package but was quickly identified with a Google search. Thank you, internet. I really do…
Six on Saturday | 23rd September 2023
It’s been a gentle September, a couple of chilly nights aside. With the mellow temperatures and increased rainfall has come an amazing mushroom foraging season. The late autumn mushrooms are appearing earlier and the late summer mushrooms are still out in droves, so that I can’t walk from the house to the garage without coming…
Six on Saturday | 16th September 2023
Autumn activities are in full swing this week! We had a cold snap two nights ago, hitting a low of 2°C, so there was a lot of mad scrambling to get all the houseplants back inside that evening. Next week, we will officially start dipping below 10°C most evenings, so it is time to start…
Garden Inventory | Malus domestica ‘Red Cinnamon’
I’ve had this post in drafts since the beginning of summer, as one thing or another kept my attention from working on it. That’s often how I feel about harvesting this particular apple tree as well, because it ripens in the first weeks of September, just when it gets harder to find any time in…
In a Vase on Monday | 11th September 2023
A small vase update this week, but an update nonetheless. I’m particularly happy with the first arrangement because I’m getting the hang of balancing flowers so that the heights are a bit more layered! More oranges and reds appearing, as if I needed a reminder that it’s autumn. Two white-tipped ‘Holland Festival’ dahlias, the first…
Little Blue and White House 