Transplanting

September is the time here to start moving plants into and out of the ground.  Our yard has lots of open space that we are attempting to reforest, and living in the country, there are a lot of things that nature (and neighbors) offer up for free.  My latest obsession is taking cuttings from my favorite trees, like vine maples.  This one is full of roots and ready to move into dirt...

Hens and chicks from a friend....

A rhododendron from a neighbor...

...and vine maples from yet another neighbor.

There is also a bed of cobblestones along the back of our property that have become borders and a fire-pit.

Fallen trees become borders, or are given away to neighbors for firewood.

Now I'm off to prune 45 Douglas firs, my favorite gardening task of all!  

Hetki mennyttä, hetki tulevaa

This week I'm going to visit a moment in the past... and another one in the future.

One afternoon in November 2008 I got my daughter from preschool and we walked to a nearby beach with these pictures in mind. It was two weeks before her sister was born. Can you sense the solitude, the stillness, the heavy clouds? Two weeks later everything was white. We welcomed the new family member in the darkness of an early winter morning.

Here we go again, only this time a good deal closer to Christmas. This may get extra exciting.

Recycling

Now is the time in Oregon when it starts raining and doesn't stop until May.  This time of year leads to organization of the indoors!  Remember the re-purposed kitchen cabinet from last week?  It's done, and now holds all (ok, some) of my art and craft supplies!

The fabric is from....Ikea!  I was lucky to have some leftover paint from another project that matched!

This is the best feature of all....I just roll it wherever I want it to go!  No more hauling boxes in and out of the closet!

Ystävät

Friends. I wish I had more time for you. It's just this stage of life. In Finnish they call it the rush hour that lasts for years. Ruuhkavuodet, tiedäthän.

Friend, thanks for stopping by! Please leave a comment if you're in the mood! Voit vallan mainiosti kirjoittaa suomeksikin!

I see we are posting regularly again, so now you can look forward to hearing from us every Friday. Something happened to our counter, so just when we were about to hit 1234, we had to remove it. Oh well, we will just have to come up with another good number to do something special at! Does anyone know where to get a good counter?

Routine

Living with a teacher means that September brings me back to a kid-centered routine.  I also get to do whatever I want to do all day, which is pretty nice!  This week we made pancakes...

....and I decided to re-purpose this cabinet from our old kitchen that I found in the shed.

The boy looked up at the sky and saw a baby in the clouds...he wasn't able to tell me exactly what looked like a baby, but I wondered if he has seen things in the clouds before.

And I got this shelf out from a closet and consolidated all of the tiny piles of toys in the living room.  Why didn't I think of this before? The closet is a mess now, but better that than the living room!

Parhaiden joukossa

Newsweek recently rated Finland as the best country in the world, and the most interesting aspect of that compliment being offered to us was no doubt the way Finns responded to it. What followed was a lively public discussion, with some going to great lengths to prove that it certainly can not be the best, and others pointing out the excessive modesty typical of Finnish culture, or low self-esteem, or disability of being proud of oneself... all of which makes accepting a simple compliment quite a complex matter.

Since it's a cross-cultural blog we have created, let me be diplomatic and say Finland is truly among the best countries in the world. And as far as my life is concerned, Naantali is among the loveliest towns in Finland. And this town museum, pictured above, one of its most enjoyable places. The girls and I stopped by sometime last summer. There is a small rose garden outside.

So in conclusion, does that make this place one of the best places in the world? Maybe my world.

August days and nights

This week I am posting two completely unrelated photos.  The first is of the big dipper over our house.  I spent two nights out on the deck watching the Perseid meteor shower this August trying to catch a photo of a meteor blazing across the sky.  I saw dozens of meteors, but the picture just didn't happen.  But I did enjoy some contemplation in the pitch-black moonless nights listening to coyotes yelping on the hill!

My other August endeavor was trying to preserve a fraction of the fruit on my neighbor's plum tree, which had quite a bumper crop this year.  We made spiced plum jam, orange plum jam, rum plum jam, and dried plums.  I don't think we even succeeded in taking any weight off the branches!

Maljakon olemus

One evening in June I was intrigued by the essence of a vase. And a platanthera bifolia.