The lottery of life

Our shop used to be the village lottery/betting dealer right to the closing of the business. So..of course we had to start looking for lottery/betting dealer (Veikkaus in Finnish) stuff. I would love to get lottery slips from the 50's/60's but I guess nobody has saved these as the dealers got new ones every year. Well, I am happy enough with the adverts we have found.

An apple a day

An apple pie in the autumn, just what the doctor ordered!

Don't give up yet

It's a bit chilly in the mornigs but after raking the leaves and deadheding the summer flowers it still looks a bit like summer.

Waiting for the postman?

Do you still send post cards? I usually get loads in Christmas so not everybody just sends emails or FB messages. We send a little newsletter, not cards, but we send it by post so it counts as a Christmas card, doesn't it?

We wanted to get a card rack for the shop museum and found one quite near us and fetched it yesterday. As I don't have any 50's/60's cards yet, these two had to do for the photo. The one with dogs is by my friend Kati, beautiful even after Christmas. The Abbey road one is from Moko.

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!

Clean up your act

People save the weirdest things. These old soap packages are from internet discussion groups and yard sales. The stand we found at the museum's attic. Maybe I should have saved some things from the eighties, but didn't. I was then a cleaning up freak and sold everything that had some value in flea markets and the rest I threw away.

World of wonders

This was a perfect summer for rhubarbs. They just grew and grew. I would have let them be but then there was a storm warning and I thought that the big leaves wouldn't survive the wind and heavy rain and so I cut the things down. My husband took a final photo of the rhubarbs when I (185 cm tall) was carrying them to the compost heap.

Coffee break

What to do with your old copper coffee pots when you don't have room for them in the kitchen? Well, you line the perennial borders with them, of course. I plan to store the pots inside for winter but I guess they would manage outside, too (providing my husband won't distroy them with his snow blower - he managed to cut a bit from our stairs with the thing so this is a real problem).

Just shut your eyes

These photos are not for a mimimalist. I used to be one but in the garden (and even in the house) there are now colours and lots and lots of flowers and ornaments. So no more black, gray and white for me.

I think I said a couple of weeks ago that the garden is at its best (at peony time) but I have to take my words back: the garden is at its best right now! On the other hand, I am still waiting for the tiger lilies to flower so the best time for the garden might be tomorrow...

Stayin alive

The white poinsettia I bought last october is still flowering. I put it in a bigger pot today, let's see if it will continue to flower or if it finally dies (as it should have, months ago).

Summer evenings

The garden is at it's very best after some rain. This July has been perfect for a gardener: it is mostly sunny during the day and late in the evening / at night there are some rain showers, not too much but just enough. The tiger lilies are gigantic and most of the other plants are thriving, too.

Waiting for the rain

Just in case there will be heavy rain today, I picked a couple of peonies and brought them inside.

Summer lovin'

There are lots of pink, white and purple flowers in the garden right now. They look wonderfully romantic. In a little while there will again be a lot of yellow and orange to spice things a bit, but for now I enjoy the pastels.

Straight from a shop

I don't grow potatoes as we eat so little of them. But I like old potato measures a lot and these two were a perfect find for the shop museum as they are from the 50's.

My kingdom

There is something of a little girl still left in me even if I'm now officially middle-aged. I just love everything princessy...Yesterday I found a Swedish princess coffee tin and the little booklet I have bought for the shop museum ages ago. And with anything with princesses, pink goes more than well.

Glory days

Finally the peonies and foxgloves flower, this is the moment I was waiting for!

Summer!

Even though it was rather cold when we woke up (10 degrees), I think it is finally safe to say it's summer.

Please wait

Our holiday starts after a week and the peonies are driving me crazy. I don't want them to flower during our work week! But what to do, the ones in the sunniest places are bursting into flower right now.

Every day is a museum day

We had open doors at the shop museum yesterday. A lot of people came and many also visited my garden which is at its summer best right now. Today my husband tried to fix our Opel Kadet and I did some gardening. To take a break we visited a flea market. I found some tins for the shop museum.

My husband bought a crowbar, I don't know how many we already have but as they say, you can never too be too rich or have too many crowbars.

Now's the time

I don't usually pick flowers for inside use but as there was talk about storm today, I picked some lilies to have a few in case everything falls down due to wind and rain. Thankfully the peonies are still in bud so they should survive.