Sinikka's snippets

Finland and travelling, a woman's life, cultures, languages, photography plus family recipes

Category Archives: Life


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I love flowers

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I am late again for the weekly photo challenge – RARE. This is what the beginning of the school year does to teachers! You get distracted, only focused on lesson plans, and catering for hundreds of students each day. Everything else goes on a back burner for a while.

Nevertheless, I wanted to post this for last week’s challenge. We witnessed a gorgeous miracle in our garden one rainy morning. At the beginning of summer, my hubby had purchased a hibiscus cheap on a sale, and planted it in a flower plot. It stayed green all summer but showed no signs of doing much else. We more or less forgot all about it. Until, this one morning, one beautiful, beautiful red bloom had opened, and we noticed several other buds on it. It’s been producing one new bloom almost daily now for over a week! Really rare for us.

Can’t resist posting a few hibiscus flowers from our trip to Hawaii in February 2015. Contrary to the cold north here in Finland, they grew naturally in bushes there and were so common that we kept seeing loads in all different colours every day.

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The Finnish obsession of berry picking

I will have start by apologising – this is going to be a rant! Why would I complain about such an honourable activity as picking berries? Nothing wrong with berry picking as such. I, too, believe it’s wonderful that we have this free, fresh goodness at everybody’s disposal in Finnish forests. And yes, even I think that more people should make the effort to collect their own and get the benefit of fresh air and exercise as a bonus.

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However, what I have started to object to this summer is people using picking berries – or rather not picking them! – as the weapon to accuse one group after another of being lazy. Actually, it all started last summer when the Finnish media was plastered with headlines about a 14-year-old boy, later dubbed as “bilberry Oscar”, who picked 350 litres of bilberries in the forests and earned quite a sum of money. A commendable achievement, of course! Just google the name Oscar Taipale, and you’ll see loads of articles, all in Finnish unfortunately! He was soon hailed as the perfect role-model for other teenagers who do nothing but sit in their room in front of the computer screen! All youngsters, the praise went on, should be like Oscar, and get the entrepreneurial spirit early on! He was even mentioned in our President’s New Year’s speech to the nation as the model young citizen:

During the late summer and autumn, I followed the big story of young Oscar Taipale about tiny berries. Oscar made good earnings from picking hundreds of litres of forest berries. I too was delighted by the idea of a boy picking berries from bushes and inspiring his friends and many others to do the same.

Please, don’t get me wrong. Naturally, I appreciate and support what Oscar did. I have absolutely nothing against him or his enthusiasm. What I’m against is suddenly saying that everybody should do the same. After all, aren’t we all individuals endowed with our own free will and freedom of choice about what to spend our time on, or direct our interest towards?

Then come this summer and the incredible craze with Pokémon Go. Suddenly all the youngsters (and even people as old as I!) are walking around chasing after these monsters in an augmented reality mobile game. Woohoo, finally something was addictive enough to get everybody up and walking long distances every day. How great is that! We should be nothing but pleased. But no, this won’t do! It wasn’t long before some wise guy expressed his besser-wisser opinion in one of our biggest national daily papers (sorry, only in Finnish again) how young people are totally wasting their time with silly, useless Pokémon, and should be – yes, you guessed right! – picking berries and mushrooms in the forest. SERIOUSLY!

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Finally, yesterday I read another opinion where the writer disagreed with researchers who claimed that poor people can’t afford to eat healthy food, by accusing those less fortunate people of laziness because they didn’t spend their days out in the woods to pick free food for themselves! What on earth next? I guess somebody will come up with the idea that we teachers, who have been blessed with an enviable, and totally unfair if you ask most Finns, free summer should be sent to the woods to save Finnish economy!

Why can’t you just let those who want to voluntarily do it, and really enjoy it, roam the woods and do the picking? I don’t mind spending half an hour to pick enough for one bilberry pie but no more, thank you very much. The mosquitoes like me far too much, and I get too hot and bothered trying to protect every inch of my skin with protective clothing. Anything longer than that would be pure torture for me.

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I’m fortunate and grateful to have friends who happily bring us a bucket of bilberries or lingonberries they have picked every summer. They are delicious, full of important nutrients, and taste heavenly on our breakfast porridge all through winter. I really love all Finnish berries. But honestly, enough of this blame throwing! Berry picking is not the universal solution to every possible problem on earth!

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Road to the summer cottage

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Having a summer cottage is very common in Finland. There are thousands of lakes in our country, and long seaside coasts and countless islands that people have found loads of beautiful spots by water where to build theirs. The best places are in the middle of nowhere, with your own peace and quiet. That’s why, to get there you usually have to travel on smaller and smaller roads, or possibly go by boat for the last stretch. As for the cottage, the more basic and rustic, the better if you ask me. No mod cons, thank you!

This narrow, twisty dirt road through the woods to my grandparents’ cottage by lake Saimaa in eastern Finland is only a couple of kilometres long, but always seems much longer as you really have to drive slowly and carefully. The road is not properly maintained, suffers damage every winter, resulting in holes and exposed stones. Luckily, there are seldom other cars driving in or out, as there is absolutely no space for overtaking!

The best way to do this last bit is to walk, like my daughter in this photo. I have travelled this road all through my life. The woods around are full of juicy bilberries every summer, but unfortunately also elks and sometimes even bears! My older brother owns and looks after the cottage now but I visit when I can find the time for the long journey. So many memories!

Weekly Photo Challenge – NARROW.


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My pelargonias

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How I love summer, the lazy, warm, sunny days! And, of course, the blue skies, white clouds and all the greenery and flowers everywhere. A riot of colours!

This year, “the cherry on top” has been my pink pelargonias (or geraniums?) in the balcony boxes. They’ve kept blooming, faithfully through heat and rain. And demand so little care really. I’m not much of a gardener, the balcony boxes and some pot plants are about the only plants I invest in for the summer. First time I tried this type flower, and will definitely do the same next year. Well worth it, don’t you think?

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Wild and perfect

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Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

That was an extract of Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Peonies’. Got up close with these wonderful flowers this summer, with a macro lens on my camera. Wow – what a lot of intricate details inside them! And so sensual, don’t you think!

Weekly photo challenge – DETAILS.


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Le temps des cerises

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Through the kitchen window, I saw a cheeky squirrel feeding on the first ripe fruit of our cherry trees today. The other day, some blackbirds were at them, too. Looking more closely, I could already see many of them devoured by our animal friends. Familiar story. Before the cherries get ready for picking, it’s usually the birds that come in great flocks and peck the lot! Interestingly, the cherries seem to be well ahead of time this year. Last year, it wasn’t until the middle of August that the trees were heavy with the red fruit. Must be the effect of a much warmer June.

Last year was exceptional, though. There were considerably more cherries than usual. In addition, it was a very good wild blueberry year in the forests, and they were ripe at the same time. There were speculations then that the birds were happy with the forest berries and left people’s gardens alone. And I was happy, managing to make several jars of Amaretto-spiced cherry jam. Looks like this year I should be pleased to get one or two, if that! Oh well, such is life. Nice sight, against the sun-lit blue sky in any case.

Weekly photo challenge – LOOK UP.


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Choco

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Old Mr Choco, the kooikerhondje, will soon be 15 years old, which, if I’m correct, in human age is equivalent to over 100 years! Poor boy is already totally deaf and is on a lot of medication for various problems but is still happy enough. Choco was first bought as a companion for our dear friends’ two young children, who kept pestering their parents to get them a dog. The idea (as usual!) was that the kids would take care of it, learning to take some responsibility for a live creature at the same time. But as these stories often go, it was the mother of the family who ended up being the caretaker in the end. The kids have long since moved away from home but Choco is still there!

We spent Midsummer at our friends’ cottage last weekend, and it was so sweet to watch Choco loyally follow his “mother” around wherever she went, such as keeping guard on the jetty when she went swimming, as you can see in this picture. Not for a second did he fail to keep a watchful eye on her. Even when she visits the loo, Choco is there, patiently waiting outside the door! Gotta love him! We were just wondering what he might have been able to do, with his already weak heart, if there had been an emergency in the water.

Even though this friend of mine keeps saying that it’s getting quite expensive and troublesome to look after her canine partner now, with all his different age-related ailments, and that she’s tired of his coughing and walking about every night, which disrupts her sleep, I’m sure there will be quite a void in her life for a while when partner Choco finally goes.

Weekly photo challenge – PARTNERS.


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Over the rainbow

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high
There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby

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What serendipity! Last night, soon after I’d read this week’s photo challenge topic – CURVE – I looked out of the window to see a very strange, yellowish light all around. It was around 10.30 pm, and the sun was getting lower to set after 11. Summer solstice won’t be until Tuesday next week, and Midsummer at the end of next week, so we haven’t quite reached the longest day of the year yet. Although we do have almost the “nightless night” phenomenon here in southern Finland, too, you’d still have to travel north to Lapland, to enjoy the midnight sun next week.

Going out on our balcony, I noticed this huge rainbow in the sky. It wasn’t raining at the time but it had rained on and off through the day. Another strange thing, apart from the unusual lighting, was that the rainbow just stayed there for over half an hour, only finally fading away after sunset. Other people posted wonderful pictures of the full arc, seen in different parts of our town, but I only saw one end of it, stretching over the side of the balcony – hence, the slightly wonky angle of this photo.

I wonder if anyone found their pot of gold last night!


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Pure enough

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For me, the first connotation with ‘pure’ is to do with food. Here in Finland many people have never stopped cooking from scratch, preferably with local ingredients. This give our cooking a refreshing seasonal variation, due to our climate, with long, cold winters and very short growing seasons in summer. You get used to having certain ingredients and dishes only at certain times of the year. Also, in recent years, so-called ‘pure’ restaurants have sprung up, which typically serve ‘raw food’, salads or raw cakes, for example. I tend to associate ‘pure food’ with organic, local ingredients and home-cooking, not necessarily raw. The most important thing for me is that I know where the produce comes from, can trust the producer, and cooking it myself, I know exactly what goes into it. This for me equals ‘pure’.

Home-grown summer vegetables would be really nice but in our tiny town patio “garden”, in front of our home, we can’t obviously grow a lot. One thing that thrives there, though, is rhubarb. It’s always reliable and grows beautiful, thick stems every year, no matter what the previous winter was like. And a definite plus is that it is as organic as you can expect, being surrounded by urban air. At least, no pesticides, no fertilisers, nothing chemical is ever added to the soil it grows in.

There is just enough to either bake a few delicious rhubarb pies or crumbles, or as in the last few years, make my own fresh rhubarb juice. Spicing it with a cinnamon and vanilla stick in the boiling water, makes it a delightful early summer drink that won’t stay long in our fridge before it’s all enjoyed by thirsty family and guests.

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Weekly photo challenge – PURE.


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Semantics

As a non-native English teacher, I love discussing the different meanings and connotations of words. For me, the first association of ‘spare‘ is in collocations, such as ‘spare time‘, ‘spare key‘, ‘spare parts‘ or perhaps ‘spare tyre‘. I’m also very familiar with its use as a verb, e.g. ‘I don’t have a moment to spare‘ or ‘spare me the details‘. I must say, though, that the use of ‘spare‘ to mean the same as ‘sparse‘ was totally new to me. I’m wondering if this is a more American usage as I’m more at home with good old British English? A good reminder, how you will never be finished with learning any language, even your own! This lifelong learning aspect is also an essential part of the beauty of learning languages, which I keep reminding my students of.

As for the picture I chose, I’m going with the meaning I know here. Sunday lunch time, at one of the most popular little restaurants in town, we were lucky to find a table spare without an advance booking. Or, actually, a convenient, spare slot in the busy booking schedule.

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Weekly photo challenge – SPARE.