Being first time home owners there are a lot of firsts that come along. Today I pruned the entire hedgerow that lines our small front yard, a first for me and a surprisingly good workout too. I had to stand on this stool to reach the top and there were a couple of times I almost fell into the hedges. I was happy to see that after an hour of working the hedgerow looked much more tidy than it did before – and no big gaping holes in the hedges either (I was a bit worried about that)!

Next we’ll have to buy some twine for the vines next to our front porch,  they have grown very tall very fast and are now creeping along the wall. The hedges and the vines seem to be the only plants flourishing on our yard, our flower bed is looking quite sad. I’m hoping that next year we’ll be able to focus more on the yard, this summer it wasn’t in our budget. What about you, have you been working in the garden lately?

Most of the weekend it rained, now the sun is thankfully out again. Today I planted these little plants in a hanging basket on the back terrace. I hope they enjoy their new home.

We’ve spent two afternoons working in our tiny backyard. We made a little flower bed and planted some flowers, we’ll plant some seeds for more flowers soon. The weather here has been amazing, so warm and sunny. This evening Minna baked simple butter and sugar buns, what a delicious end to a lovely relaxing weekend at home. How was your weekend?

Most of our tiny garden is still covered in snow but in the kitchen little flowers are already growing.

I like to take little cuttings from the bigger succulent plants and try to make new plants – sometimes it works, sometimes I just end up killing the little things. The little one in the white pot is one I cut some time ago and it’s doing well, so just the other day I planted two more. Let’s wish them luck! Have a lovely weekend – I hope it’s a sunny one!

I’m so sorry about the lack of posts in the past two days, life got the best of me for a while there. It’s been so grey and dreary outside this week that there’s no light to take nice pictures, so here are two images I took a while ago, I hope you like them! I found that tiny succulent plant (in the white pot) from a new interior decoration/flower shop we have in town, Pioni Living. They have the most beautiful plants and flowers so if you live in the Oulu area you should definitely check them out!

I’ve recently found out that when there’s things to think over, when there is stress or worry, nothing helps me quite like listening to some good music and tending to houseplants. I also like to buy new plants (my newest purchase is the plant on the right in the image above), it feels like things can’t get that bad when you have a new lovely plant to tend to.

Today I re-potted most of our houseplants.

I love the way they look and the way the soil feels in my hands. I already feel much better now.

What do you do when you are dealing with stress?

I’m sorry about the blog being so quiet this past week, things got really busy around here, but we should be back to normal starting next week. And look out for a little DIY project sometime soon!

It’s the end of the summer and you know that means harvest time. Even our little minitomato plants on the windowsill are producing tiny red tomatoes.

We found this little steel tray at a trift store last weekend.

During the summer we have observed our sage pots closely. The sage, or should I say “sage”, that we planted first (in the white pot) looks totally different from the other one (in the yellow pot)! It has long stem and small leaves with sleek edges. The real sage has much larger leaves that are furry and have round serrated edges. There hasn’t been much other kind of action in the “sage” pot, but lately small new leaves have been peeking the air next to the “sage”. And the new leaves look just like the real sage’s leaves! This is very bizarre because all the sage seeds are from the same sachet. Apparently there were one or two stowaway seeds among the sage seeds.

Today I took the “sage” pot and looked and smelled the leaves of the unknown plant. Katja told me to pull off the “sage”. Once I grabbed the stem and pulled, the whole contents of the pot followed. The alien plant couldn’t be removed without dismantling the whole dirt clod. So, we decided to leave the “sage” in its place because it looks quite nice as it is. After I put the pot back on the window sill, I noticed a strong scent of something familiar. I smelled my fingers. Oregano! Alive and kicking oregano! Yeah, it can be something else too, but it sure smells like oregano. We’ll let the “oregano” be and grow in the sage pot for the rest of the summer. In addition, we have observed that oregano seems to be stronger plant than sage.

Update: Title of this post got an indefinite article.

Look what we have here! Our very first tomato from our little minitomato garden on the kitchen windowsill. It’s so tiny and cute!

Happy Friday to everyone and to all that celebrate mid-summer (or Juhannus as we call it here in Finland), have a safe and fun weekend!