I won the second round

Last year the lily bugs harmed my lilies quite badly. This year I managed to destroy the bugs early on and now the tiger lilies are higher than me and flowe like never before. The lilies where here when we bought the place, I just moved them to the flower beds every time I created one. And now they are everywhere and I just love them!

Guardian angel

Concrete angel, heavy stuff! We got this angel from our neighbours and it has been guarding our garden ever since.

Colours galore

It was a beautiful day yesterday. The morning was really cold but it got a lot of warmer in the afternoon and the photo session in the garden was held in t-shirts.

Autumn colours

Heathers are wonderful in autumn. They don't much care wether it shines or rains and don't even be bothered by a bit of a frost.

For an easy life

You gotta love shrubs. They need no care and still look beautiful from spring to autumn. At the cottage I realized a bit late the lure of shrubs but at Vårkulla I have been the wiser and there are lots of shrubs and more to come. You just have to be careful not to include too many variegated ones as they might look a bit restless. But a few are just fine.

A thousand apples a day

There has been a lot of apples this year. Most of them are half eaten by birds / worms / rondents but some are quite beautiful. At least from one side they look perfect and make a nice picture :)

Warming up

It is getting a bit chilly in the evenings so we took the woolen blankets out of the closet and into the gazebo. At the moment we are also glad that we bought a couple of woolen carpets for the gazebo as wool is really warm under the feet (compared to cotton).

Time for change

My summer flowers started to look a bit sad. As there is still hope for a long and warm autumn, I bought new flowers for the back garden. The fuchsia is still flowering so it gets to stay for a while. In geranium pots I planted heathers - the green leaves of geraniums still look nice and the heathers bring colour.

Violets are forever

I can't believe it is the end of November - the violets are still flowering in our front garden!

Short visit to the cottage

All was well at the cottage yesterday. There was some snow when there was none at Vårkulla. The snow is good news as the plants will survive the winter better. Let's just hope the snow will not melt again - the worst thing for the plants is a wet winter! Its been a couple of difficult years already, now I'd like a normal Finnish winter.

Reconsidering the faith of the maple tree

As you may have noticed, we have large gravel areas in our garden. The autumn means a lot of raking as we also have a big old maple tree. I couldn't have guessed how much work this combo means. I don't want to reconsider the gravel as I just love it so it might mean that the maple is doomed. Well, not yet. Maybe I can take the about two months of work as the maple drops its leaves rather late and when they start to fall off, they all fall rather quickly.

Ready for the winter

I hate to have an empty yard in winter and therefore I try to leave as much of the decorations out as I can. I almost through the hydragenias away as they wilted but then I thought that they look rather good even when brown. I just hope the pots don't break during the winter.

I have bought some callunas for the winter as they look rather good even after they have frozen and melted again (thanks to cousin Tiina for the basket - baskets are great for the autumn as they don't gather water).

I know what you did last summer

Or at least I know what we did, we  shoveled (a lot of) gravel! Now is the time to enjoy the fruits of the labour - even if it is wet and cold, there is NO MUD in the yard.

Avoiding the inevitable

I have raved about the longevity of carnations before and here we go again. I bought these three weeks ago and they still were looking so good that I cut the stems and put them outside. If there won't be frost, they'll still be beautiful next weekend.

New flowers every day

My hanging fuchsia started to flower again! Not bad for the end of September.

Not quite autumn yet

The garden is still green and the summer flowers are going strong. I cut down the violets I had in pots in the summer and replanted them into the ground about a month ago and now they are flowering even better than before.

Lets hope for a long and warm autumn (and the shortest winter, ever!).

Damson fever

There is going to be only a few damsons this year. At the cottage there are none but at Vårkulla one branch bears fruits.

Grey area

Lichen looks rather glamorous when potted in a beautiful vase.

Cheap pleasure

Three for ten euros and the chrysanthemums were mine.

Survivors

Our back yard perennial border is infested by voles and one of the most terrible weed there is: campanula rapunculoides (vuohenkello in Finnish). I have tried to find something to survive both and these lovely rudbeckia laciniatas (syyspäivänhattu in Finnish) just might be an answer. I planted them on one side of the border and they seem to thrive. I covered the other side with old newspapers and on top of the papers I put bark in the hope of killing the campanulas. I plan to plant more rudbeckias there in next spring if I don't find other flowers that can take the competition.