The end of winter that is!!

Hello friends!

Waking to the early morning crash of possibly 1000kgs of snow sliding off the roof onto the deck terrace is a real eye-opener! Temperatures warmed through the day on Saturday to near 0c/32f. We took ourselves for a very long walk yesterday – I think it was longer than 3km, Pekka says not. I’m right though of course! 😀 Anyway, it was a long walk. We saw plenty of ice seeping from the bedrock alongside the roadway.  Sometimes, the icicles are white or nearly clear. Other times they are stained by the water seeping through dirt and become streaked brown. Other times the icicles are red-tinged from the iron in the bedrock.

These icicles are fairly small and short. Along the motorway where some bedrock is two or three stories tall the icicles hanging down are very dramatic and cover the entire sides top to bottom. The pathways along our walk were freshly cleared, and it’s a good thing we took our walk on Saturday mid-day. We weren’t home for an hour before it started snowing again.

We’re currently in what could be called, ‘weather-wise’ as the final throes of winter…at least I want to think so. Today the temperatures are once again above 0 and all the newly fallen snow of late yesterday has already become mush. Compacted walkways are now sheets of ice. I can imagine the roadways are really slippery now too.

The forecast looks extremely promising. Finnish Meteorological Institute says a warm trend for the next week or more, with temperatures above 0c and even as high as +4c! Wow. Lots of warm air gushing up from the south of Europe is bringing the thawing temperatures north. Just Friday it was -26c/-14f. I’ll take it!

There’s other news too! We are delighted and honored to once again have made the pages of American gardening magazine, Fine Gardening. You can read ‘read all about it’ by clicking either link

Kate and Pekka’s Garden in Finland

The article, Kate and Pekka’s Garden in Finland: Revisiting a growing garden, mistakenly cites Pekka’s last name as Schneider. For anyone who wasn’t sure, Pekka is NOT Mr. Schneider, but is Mr. Malmberg 😀

The Fine Gardening Magazine gardening community is amazing. The magazine is enjoyed throughout the world. We’ve been humbled while also being filled with excitement in hearing from so many wonderful people in response to our garden. The views to our VanhaTaloSuomi.com  have been astounding, even a week after the original story of 12 February was published. Thank you to everyone who has come to take a virtual visit to our southern Finland garden. You’ve made us extremely happy. Thank you for the wonderful comments on the Fine Gardening Magazine comment page as well.

Finally, we’d like to thank Fine Gardening Magazine for showcasing us again, and so many other wonderful gardens and gardeners through the years. The love of gardening is a passion that will enrich your life. It can at times, reward your hard work with hardship, but most usually the rewards will transport you with immense joy and satisfaction. Is it any wonder then why so many of us long to get back out there amongst our garden spaces so that we can once again be enveloped in the joy and wonder of new green stems poking from the ruins of winter earth. Or seeing the first blossoms emerge, as if they were the first ones we’d ever seen. Sometime later the hard work, blisters, and aching back will set us with a different mindset, but it’s temporary. Because I can tell you I’m longing for the little green stems poking up, the emergence of the first blooms as if they are indeed the very first ones I will have ever seen. 🙂

Take care friends! Until next time

❤ Vanha Talo Suomi