Greetings to all!

September is a wrap.  It was a weird month as month’s go. Thanks to our crazy Finnish weather we were socked-in with near-daily rain showers for two weeks…geesh…talk about a soaking! I expect the Finnish Meteorological Institute to post something about all that rain once they get the data sorted. They do have the results of August available. Cloudy, yup ..that’s how I remember it 😉

Well, as we’ve proven in the past, we aren’t deterred by too much here. When there’s a job to do, we get to work!

Garden-wise, I couldn’t be more delighted. Plants from last year’s massive landscaping effort really came through! Hydrangea blooms were again outstanding and abundant. With a full year of growth on all the plantings they were even more beautiful this summer. It’s hard to imagine the difference only a year makes. We could walk easily between all the planted items last year, but that’s not the case anymore. Beds are filling in nicely, gaps between plants was adequate and we’ve avoided over-crowding which would have involved lots of extra labor having to relocate items. Whew! NOTE: planning ahead saves lots of effort later!!

 

The energy to tackle our side yard finally commenced into an all out assault to reclaim this area from disuse & neglect.

Cutting up piles of large tree limbs, (large pile left of shed below) restacking an enormous amount of firewood, rock removal (several hundred lbs each) plus all the smaller stones, etc., etc.

We even made a place for entry from the roadside out here which meant Pekka had to take out a tree, grade the approach and level the entire area. The crowning moment was when we took down an old shed structure which had previously been part of a chicken coop and livestock ‘yard.’ Cement flooring, laid for the chickens years ago had to go.  To get it out required a lot of hard work and brawn by yours truly. (I actually enjoyed this part of the job!) Using a heavy iron pike, I thrust this into the poured concrete floor several times throughout the entire area in order to break the concrete up. Who knew chickens needed so much concrete! All those gym workouts paid off (Athletic)!  Metal junk, old scrap, old garbage, concrete pieces loaded and unloaded at the Rosk ‘n Roll

Still more to load up and haul away. But man, what an improvement! Photo above shows the greenhouse WHITE, photo below as it now is BLACK.  We salvaged some of the walls intact from the shed structure because they are of such good quality…we were told the shed was originally constructed from wood salvaged from old piano crates!  Two of the side walls were of the piano crate wood…talk about sturdy stuff! wow.  Once the greenhouse roof gets dressed up a bit next year, I think it’ll be looking pretty darn good!  I’m going to work out a couple crafty ideas to make some ceramic tiles to decorate the greenhouse…more on that later.

 

There’s now a new pile of sticks to chip up, which is sitting just in front of that large birch tree in the photo above. One of these days the roar of the chipper should make easy work of that pile.  In the next week or two, with the help of one of Pekka’s friends – a large backhoe is going to roll through this area to collect the rest of those boulders, up-root a couple of stumps and level out a load of gravel for the entrance to this area from the roadside.  Eventually, it’s our plan to have garden paths and a large planting bed as well as a plan to develop the ‘courtyard’ area where the shed stood as possibly a small patio for use from the longer shed….and that shed would be completely renovated, repurposed for a lot of different uses. oh …I must have drifted off there…sorry.. 🙂

Along the roadside, this is the view now. Pekka and I got the stones in place, the dirt finally topped up, mulch to be added later. The stone work extends along the entire length of the roadside, and ties in with the larger portion we talked about in our last post.

Can’t believe we did all that in a week! Good weather sure makes a difference. We’re looking forward to our visit to Poland next April! There we can find a few exotic & unusual items to add to the growing list of plants, trees & shrubbery growing at Vanha Talo Suomi! ❤ ok…we're privately calling it Vanha Talo Suomi 'Arboretum'… I still have to file the paperwork to the Dendrological Society…ahem back to the post…

While sorting out some of the assorted wood piles, I came upon this piece. What a marvel mother nature is. I don't know what made this or how but it's remarkable and lovely!As I said, things are really looking great!  Autumn is really closing in now though, leaves are falling by the hour. Night’s are getting chilly, sun is rising so much later and setting so much earlier…let’s see how much more we can get done out there while we still can!

Pretty soon wood smoke will be wafting in the air, rosy cheeks, and hearty meals…thank goodness I have an almost endless supply of applesauce put away! The apple harvest was much smaller than last year’s bumper crop – but still so many I’ve run out of apple ideas, do you have some suggestions or favorite recipes??!!

We’ll be doing what we do – and hope whatever it is you’re doing it brings you happiness & satisfaction!  Thanks for dropping by to check our progress. Until next time ❤  Happy Autumn!