New Flower Bed

For many years we had a flower bed next to the wall on the sunny side of the house. After we had to replace the rainwater pipes about 10 years ago we have had no flower bed there. Not that i didn’t want one but everybody told me it’s not good to have flowers next to the wall. Maybe they are right but I like to them next to the wall around the house. That is how my mother had most of her flowers planted and how all my aunts planted their flowers as well.

I don’t think a small flower bed will make and difference so I told Leif I will make one. He volunteered for the work.  After 2-3 h I heard him shouting for me to come to have a look and to either approve the result or not. Yes, good enough, good job, thank you.

Today I planted the lily there. I hope it will feel at home there. That it will, even  if the summer is about to end, still make many new flowers way into the fall. Most importantly that it will survive the winter.

 

Mörri and Canelo

My half-sister with her husband, younger son and dog Mörri visited us on Wednesday. I today received an e-mail with these two pictures, taken by her son Leevi, attached. The day was warm, really, really warm. Before they left we all went down to the lake to let Mörri and Canelo swim. Of course it is a must to have a toy. The dogs loved it there. Canelo  worried Mörri would take his toy so he had to run like a mad man to not let it happen. I love the picture of Canelo. You practically are able to feel the speed.

Thank you guys for visiting us and thank you for the nice pictures 🙂

 

The Pink Lilies

Click on the image for larger view.

I’m glad the lilies that for some reason were broken down are blooming. I set up “my studio” on the patio 🙂 I used a tablecloth as background. I wanted to take similar pictures with all three cameras to see any possible different. When editing the pictures I realised it was difficult. It was cloudy in the morning but still there was changes in the brightness. Neither should I have moved the tripod. Unfortunately when I changed from one camera to an other I did.  I spent about three hours to set up for the shooting, to shoot the pictures and to edit them. I wonder was it worth all the trouble and time I used because after all I’m not any wiser. Well I’m not any wiser but it was fun.

       

Canon PowerShot SX230 HS

I bought this Canon pocket when I found out how expensive fixing the battery cover of my Olympus would have been. This PowerShot pocket now is my favorite camera because of the size and weight, weight about 220 g

     

Canon EOS 350D I like my EOS but am not using it very often because it’s so heavy, about 1300 g

     

Olympus SP-560 UZ this is the one with the glued battery cover. I think the Olympus is the best  one for shooting close-ups.

Fruit Salad

Yesterday in the supermarket I noticed a sign saying ‘ripe mangoes’. I have only bought one once and that was long time ago. I think it was not ripe as we didn’t like it. I decided to buy one and make a fruit salad. I also bought some green grapes, two bananas, one kiwi, the half of a cantaloupe and a tin of pineapple chunks.

So today I made the salad. Leif was not happy to find out there was no whipped cream, vanilla cream or ice cream with it ! After he grumbled and threatened to put sugar on it he finally tried some. It surprised him to find out it actually was delicious without any kind of cream or even sugar.  The salad was yummy and the mango really was good.

I read on the labels where from the fruits come. The mango is from Brasil, the kiwi from New Zealand, the bananas from Colombia, the pineapple from Thailand, the cantaloupe and the grapes from Spain. They have traveled a long way to end up to be eaten in Finland 🙂

Destroyed Lilies

 

When Leif came back from a walk with Canelo in the afternoon yesterday he came in and said have you seen your lilies. Why, what do you mean, of course I have seen them but not for the last hour or so. Well, he said, you better come out and have a look. There’s been someone doing some harm to them. I was out in seconds. Oh no ! Luckily it turned out to look more bad than it was.  One small pelargonium  pulled out of the flower pot. Two lilies pulled up with roots and all, three lilies and some of the fall phlox stems broken.

I now have the three broken stems in a vase. Two of them are the pink ones I was looking forward to see in bloom soon.  I hope the buds will still open.

 

New Lilies

I went back to the garden center today and the gardener told me this is a Lily Asiatic ‘Matrix’

Am I lily obsessed. I guess I am. I have lilies in five different colors. I love them, I love to photograph them. Last summer I was talking about buying some more lilies but for some reason I didn’t. Today we went to the vet shop to buy dry food. Quam’s on veterinary diet. On the way to the vet center we passed a garden center. I said to Leif that on the way back lets stop and go look for some lilies.  I was in lily heaven. So many beautiful lilies. I bought two kind of lilies. The red one above I don’t know the name of. I think I will go back there soon to ask for the name. The other one below is a Hemerocallis ‘Strawberry Candy’ (Daylily)

The label says it has a unique inflorescence. It flowers from May to October and is one of the most flowering perennials.  It’s blooms keep open for about 16 hours.  Each bloom flowers only for one day. It is a sun lover flower.  I will plant it on the sunny side of our house. I hope and wish it will like it there and stay with us for years to come 🙂

Onion Tomato Pie

Way too long since last time we had onion pie. For today’s pie I used my good old recipe just adding some sliced tomatoes on top.  I chopped some parsley and chives to sprinkle over it.  Forgot to use them !  Leif, once again, said he thinks it’s a sign of an old age problem.

Lilies – orange, red, yellow

Lily time !

I really had made up my mind not to take any new pictures of the lilies. You know I have, since I bought them in 2006,  been taking pictures of them every summer. I already have more than enough lily pictures.

Well, sigh, when I see them I can’t resist. It’s like a drug. I think I’ll take just one or two pictures. Then the next day there are more of them. They all look so beautiful. Maybe just one or two more pictures. Soon I realize I have shot about 20 more pictures every day they are in bloom. They bloom for 2-3 weeks.  

After a day or two of shooting the orange ones the red ones are in bloom.

Then comes the yellow ones.  Of course I have to take pictures of them too.

Now I’m eagerly looking forward for the pink ones to bloom 🙂

Blueberry Pie / Quismo 9 years

Last night while listening to music on YouTube I was, as I’m very often, browsing the net for recipes. I really don’t do any just like reading them and watching the pictures. It’s the same thing as when I still subscribed to magazines. As soon as the magazine arrived I looked up the recipes. Yet I rarely did any of it. So yesterday I was looking for some more exotic fruit recipes. Just happened to see some recipes with blueberries. Yes, oh yes, it’s blueberry season. I started browsing for blueberry pie recipes. After reading many different ones I found this one on a blog called Emmas Kök. The pie is a huge one with lot of blueberries. Very yummy ! Tack Emma 🙂

My handsome Quismo is turning 9 today. Leif said it was good I made the pie to celebrate Quismo’s birthday 😉 Well, Quismo himself is happy enough with his daily dose of chicken. I was at the pet shop, in the morning, buying both cat litter and dry food for Canelo. The young girl asked how many cats have you. I told her we have two and that the other one is actually turning 9 today. Ooh, she said, look, here’s small toy for him for his birthday. How sweet of here 🙂 I gave Quismo his present while Canelo was on a walk with Leif. Quismo was happy and excited and liked to play with the toy. Then Canelo and Leif returned. Canelo got excited. Way too excited. He took the toy. In no time, sorry to tell but, the toy broke !

Strawberry Cake

I was browsing the net for all kind of recipes yesterday. In the end I was just looking for strawberry recipes and pictures. Oh my goodness how many pictures of strawberry cakes there are. They all looked so amazingly delicious. I got so inspired that I wanted to go and make a strawberry cake right the way. As I had no strawberries or no whipped cream for that matter I decided to wait. Today, as soon as the stores opened, I was there to buy what I needed. I thought some chocolate on top of the strawberries would make the cake look nice but it turned out a bit messy as the kiwi slices were quite wet. Didn’t matter. The taste was okay 😉