Wild life edition

Apart from enjoying things just around the garden there is of course other things to be seen, either by the board walk or from the car passing to and fro the cottage.


Some kind of watery plant mysteriously swinging in the current


Little fish that gather up by the shallows each summer


Oops! It was gone


A geese parade


Then they took to flight


Funny how they don't crash into one another


Then there were only four swimming past the power plant


They just kept on swimming


The following day they flew past training hard to strengthen their wings for the autumn emigration


Closer by a group of ducks


Young fly catchers also were in training flying around for short distances and perching again quickly on tree branches


or the fence


Driving to town I saw a group of elks (amer. moose). Here is a young bull.


The farmer is perhaps less happy with these guests enjoying his crop


Here my more domestic wild life are having a bit of a tussle during a cooler evening hour


This is how they look in the daytime. Here included is little Vilma from the neighbours, who's staying with us for the week.

Flowers and Flies

It's in the heat of summer and HEAT is the right word this year. That and drought. I'm yerning for some rain but it just keeps passing over the middle of Finland. Luckily at the cottage we have a 65 metre deep drill well into the granit rock so it has never yet dried up. In fact we were told that we are drinking ice age water. Well it is cold. Colder than refridgerated water anyway.

But due to frequent efforts in watering hundreds of litres every night we have managed to keep most of our flower borders ship shape. The lawn has had to be sacrificed.

Anyway it is a time for being lazy during the hot daylight hours. Sitting in the shade of our veranda mostly glaring into our garden pond and all that's going on around it. I could have called this post life around the garden pond too but of course we have lovely blooms all around the place. Not only at the back of the house.

As always I do not only enjoy the flowers but also all the insects buzzing around these blooms of joy. Photography is about as strenious as I can get during this continuing heat wave and that means loads of photos. Even then me and the dogs have to go and get frequent dips in between allthough waters that are 24-25 degrees don't much chill down.

But let's not make this into a novel. After all it is a picture blog.

Lilies











African Marigolds













Pansies






Excuse my dress code. This is all what one can wear these days.

Roses







Chrysantemums





Dahlias











Sedum

















Mixed borders and rockery












Bone chewing dogs in the evening




Posing for mom




A bit of my little town garden too




A family gathering celebrating 50 years of cottage life


My nephew - the barbeque master

Burning love





Butterflies















Dragonflies


Practically impossible to get a picture of a dragonfly in flight. Hence this one is not sharp either.


This one nearly became a victim of the pond skaters


It had strength to climbe onto the edge though and the wing looks damaged but it managed to fly away after a while.


This one kept chasing butterflies but always landed down by the pond after a small flight


Such beautiful creatures up close


Perhaps a little frightening too

Other insects




This time of year wasps are fascinated by all sorts of small holes. This one is investigating between the cobbles by the pond.


Bumble Bees are just interested in the flowers all summer long






A grass hopper had landed on the curtain


A little green thing


Another green thing had met its fate in the pond


The pond skaters are the keep clean agents, ie. the vultures of the insect world


Here a fly is about to become food but it actually managed to crawl out of the water.


An exhausted bumble bee was not so lucky


It caused a regular feeding frenzy


I found it quite fascinating (in a morbid way) to view these dramatic events

Lets end this long parade of photos with a few more of our garden beauties that I don't know the english names of






















To wrap it all up just a picture of what the drought is doing to the trees




Luckily not all trees and shrubs are shedding their leaves. Thus some little shade are provided for the dogs too.