Cold but beautiful

The Finnish spring this year is as the best of movies star blondes: cold but beautiful.

At long last

It is spring, almost summer, after a long cold April. The garden is waking up and there is something new to see every day.

Coldest spring ever

This morning I started to put the new summer flowers in pots. As I started to take them out of the bags, I noticed that almost all flowers had frozen during the night. It seemed that the foliage was mostly still ok, so I potted the plants anyway. Now I hope they have energy to flower again.

White on!

I'd love to have white flowers in the garden but the problem with them is that they don't die so prettily. Luckily there are exceptions to the rule: tiarella cordifolias (rönsytiarella in Finnish) and anemone sylvestris (arovuokko in Finnish). Tiarellas like shade and anemone sylvestris thrive anywhere.

First of many

Paeonia anomala (Kuolan pioni in Finnish) is the first paeonia to flower in spring. I have many other paeonias as both I and my husband love them. Let's hope for sunny days when the paeonias are in flower as their heavy flower heads can't take any rain.

Time for lilacs

If there were a lot of flowers in the apple trees, there aren't any less in lilacs. Both violet and white lilacs flower in abundance this year.

Sitting pretty

You have to grow apple trees just because it is so lovely to sit under them!

White is overrated

The garden needs a lot of colour in strong spring sunshine. In the shadow blues and whites are ok but for the sunny spots you really need to add some colour.

Like everybody

I know there must have been thousands of photos of apple trees flowering this year. No wonder, they have never flowered as much so I also wanted to save a memory of this extraordinary sight.

Playing chess

I love fritillaries, especially the violet ones as the beautiful chess pattern shows well. The white ones are really just white, the pattern is too light to see.

Flowers and sunshine

Even though the winter was really wet, all my tulips survived and now there is more color than ever in the garden.

Romantic dreams

The root clippings of peonies don't look much but you just wait and see! Come summer, these will provide the most romantic flowers ever, pink and white and fluffy. Or not...you never know with root clippings, it might go all wrong and the roots will wither and die. But at the moment I am hopeful...

Incredibly green

You gotta love poppies! Never mind if it is below zero during the nights,the poppies just keep on growing.

Things you forget

As there is no snow anymore and it is rather warm when the sun shines, we put our garden furniture out today. I also put out all my garden decorations and flower pots. I had no idea that I had so many pots! At the moment only lilacs survive outside so the pots will stay empty for a while. When the summer really starts, I am gonna get pelargoniums, maybe some fuchsias and some summer hydragenias.

For a moment it felt like spring

Yesterday was a rather warm day and the crocuses finally opened up.The flowers are really small but in spring any colour is appreciated.

Yellow fever

If yellow is not the new white, at least it is the new turquoise. I've seen a lot of yellow in blogs and magazines and this kind of created a need to get me some, too. I found two yellow pillow cases from H&M home and got them for our sofa. Spring is here!

Cherry blossom time

We have three cherry trees and this year they are flowering as never before. I dug out all the weeds and put gravel around them last autumn and I guess this is my thanks. You are welcome, my lovelies.

Eat it up

Flowering fruit trees are a treat. Even if you don't manage to pick up the fruits before the birds, you'll get to enjoy the spring flowering and the fruits don't look half bad when ripening. The damsons (kriikuna in Finnish) were the first ones to flower this year. We are still waiting for the cherry and apple trees to start. Our cherry is a late one and it flowers with white flowers that are quite similar to those of damsons. I'd love to have a cherry with lovely pink flowers but I think our windy yard would be too cold for them so I'll make do with the white ones.

Backyard memories

Once again, I bought summer flowers early in the spring to get some colour to our yard. The Easter daffodils are still looking ok but I guess I have to change them to some new flowers soon.

When I say red

Can't be much redder than this...I just love the colourful tulips, they are a lovely sight after all grey we have had to suffer during winter and early spring.