not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...
(because i killed them.)

not much daylight to shoot photos in, nothing much to photograph. a lone squirrel has taken over the duties of disturbing my sleep, making its nest in the unfinished portion of the outer wall, trying to eat through to the attic by the sound of it. every day at noon it starts. would be good to wake up by noon, were it not that my current bedtime is five AM, and for my need of desperate amounts of dreams.

there is more snow each day, and i haven't managed to clear it off anything beyond the front steps, even though it's only fluffy snow. doing the dishes was already a huge effort, especially since i'd really let things pile up. i wouldn't mind a lump of coal from santa, if it meant i could burn it for energy...

bought beer cheese, which is a perfect companion to pecan nuts. i don't know the brand, because my slice only displays the likeness of a rather handsome gentleman, but it says bier käse and is lovely. and really, i mean it with the pecans. both benefit from each other.

last night i was in the middle of making this entry, when the electricity went. not from the whole house, but no fuses were blown either. i tried changing a couple anyway, but none of them even matched the combination of heat on but lights off in the living room, and lights on but heat off in the kitchen and hallway. at first i wasn't sure whether the radiators in the living room (which is also my bedroom at the moment) were working or not, because the have no 'on' light so i started to prepare for a very cold night. hot water bottle in bed, extra blankets and a hat handy, i also nailed a blanket to the entryway between the hallway and me, where there is no longer a door. by the time i was done, the computer had started to hibernate and to recharge i would have had to go sit in the kitchen, which was by then very, very chilly. reminded me of ireland, kind of...

well, i went to bed early, and did not fall asleep for hours, thanks to the mice again. it's my third week of not sleeping well, and it's starting to show. after four hours of sweet slumber i was startled awake when the electricity went out altogether and back on again after a few seconds. the fusebox makes a really loud sound every time that happens, which is often enough. anyway, that happened a second time after a while, so i got up and found the electricity back to normal again. what a mystery. i thought it was the mice. now i think it was a poltergeist or something. although, at times i'm not sure there is a difference between the two...

the box i use to catch the nuisance has lasted me 21 years of my own mice as well as the wild ones, an orphan baby squirrel and countless other critters. until the other day when i walked by and said good morning to the latest catch, then looked closer because it was surprisingly quiet and calm, and well hidden... or long gone through a hole in the roof. it's plastic so no wonder, but this supermouse was the first one strong enough to hang from the lattice top long enough to actually gnaw through it. and i slept through all that noise, which is telling.

well, i mended the damage with foil tape (super handy and inspiring! stay tuned for crafty stuff because how could i not make something shiny and seasonal from it?) and another visitor has stayed inside since. no more trapping from now on, though. poison baits have been strategically placed. i wanted the solid chunks so that the mice will have to eat it on the spot rather than make little stashes of blue oats all over the place. they seem pretty hungry, too, judging from the fact that all of my succulent rootings have been eaten, so i'm hoping they'll stuff themselves and drop dead on the spot and not linger too long.

i've been busy with beets. loving the stripey ones, especially. i made a casserole, started a ferment and even planted the tops on a plate to sprout leaves. a butternut squash was also involved and there's a little left over. i also have a lone grapefruit that is starting to overstay its welcome, so a recipe is formulating in my head to make a lemon curd -inspired spread from them, with rosemary maybe... we'll see. the four egg-whites in the fridge aren't exactly holding their breath to become a lemon meringue pie, anymore. i can't find my beater. it's somewhere among my boxed-up life, like everything else.

not only did i throw this face out into the fresh snow today, i placed an order for poison also. things are getting out of hand and i have reached the limits of my lenience and sympathy. i wish there was another way, because even the blue oats won't solve the problem of sleep deprivation soon enough. i still have to listen to them running about inside the walls and the cupboard, eating the bait and dying, even. an ultrasound device to deter them from entering altogether sounds good, but apparently they don't work unless the frequency is such that even humans have trouble being in the same space. with my hypersensitive ears, not a tempter...

so, i am still in a foul mood, and glad to see november go. this whole year has been a disaster, so lets just get it over and done with, shall we, december? not that i have anything to look forward to in 2013. i don't even like the numbers in it, all white and yellow and orange... like a fried egg. that's what it looks like in my mind.

the day has been a flurry of snow, finally, but somehow bleak and dark, almost like living inside a giant vacuum cleaner's dust bag. the wind comes from the east, which is so rare the trees look all wrong, bent in an odd direction. i don't think i will do anything for the rest of the day besides sulk and eat peanut butter fudge.

we have another winner, a trip to the woods richer. and two more mice, at least, in the house already... i'm starting to sense a problem. in short, i can't sleep and their using my loaf pan as a toilet is not cool. what do i do?

this is where i have left the two, a sheltered spot with lots of nooks to hide in, and plenty of food sources. i wish they would all go there on their own. i can't bring myself to take the blue oats approach, but i doubt i can ever house-train them either.

my new housemates are yellow-necked mice (apodemus flavicollis) and as far as i can tell, they are a little larger than the wood mice we had in ireland, and they seem to be most active after midnight for a couple of hours and again from about five to seven in the morning. maybe they spend the time in between outdoors telling their friends to come check out the big, warm, cat-free house, i don't know...

what i do know is that my heart will break if i have to start killing them, and i'm depressed enough as it is. daylight lasts about a blink and i'm usually asleep when it occurs. most of it is shrouded in clouds anyway. i have no energy even for the simplest of things, let alone for figuring out what to do with my life. i can't really blame it on the darkness, though. this has been going on for years.

it's a vicious circle of hormonal imbalance. thyroid problems run in the family, but my tests always come out within the norm, therefore i am well despite my symptoms. proper doctors and treatments cost proper money that i'm not well enough to make. i know i should eat a certain way and exercise much more to even give myself a chance, but most of the time i'm just too tired to give a damn, and so it goes. to be regarded as a lazy, whiny person is, of course, always a bonus.

i am crumbling under the expectations to be normal, and to make matters worse, i'm not even abnormal in a generally approved manner. life for me is a dead end that somehow keeps on going, being alive is not at all the same as living. i yearn to be a part of something but i can't connect. i don't like people, not really. i try to, but things always go wrong one way or another. and even with friends i feel like i have to pretend so much it just leaves me exhausted and empty afterwards.

i read of a woman who thinks she is married to the eiffel tower, and while i think she's deranged, i also understand the appeal. if i could have my dream house, i'd be complete. i could just be inside, surrounded by beauty and balance, and need nothing more. were the house located between a forest and an ocean, it would be paradise. i will never have that, because i lack the can-do spirit that takes people from rags to riches and luck evades me, too.

this blog is also nearing its end. i am running out of picture storage and, frankly, the mushrooms look pretty much the same every year... rather than start deleting from the beginning, i want to keep the record this time. lots of things are coming to a close lately, it seems, and i admit i sort of envy them for it. but i'll keep on posting and pointing until i'm out of space...

for a week i had this little visitor running about in the house. clearly, she'd never heard of the term 'as quiet as a mouse' and i was awake most nights, or early mornings, rather. i tried to lure her with apples and peanut butter in vain, but it was popcorn that did the trick. today was the day of relocation, far, far into the woods.

she ate my special apple seeds and half of the honey melon ones, drying on the kitchen table. yet i kind of miss the mouse already. it was nice having someone around. i wouldn't mind if it weren't for the peeing and pooing and gnawing... but apparently, there is no negotiating with mice.

surely i won't be lonesome for long, this being a record year of them critters, or so i hear.

today i found some more cinder conk, a wee little morsel peeking out of a birch tree...

...and then thought to myself: "oh yeah, happy birthday to me"...

...and sat on the quay with turquoise hems fluttering

watching the seafoam picture show...

...with pinecones in pocket...

...as the sun shone brightly into my eyes from where it still manages to climb up to.

doesn't that tuft of fungi above look like candy? they were still so small i couldn't be a 100% sure whether they were growing up to be edible or not, so i left them, but soon found some good ones for soup, called hypholoma capnoides or conifer tuft. i was a little confused at first, because for years they have grown abundantly on the same spruce stumps, which are showing no signs as of yet, but the mushrooms now grow seemingly on the ground, likely on the remains of roots, scattered around the woodland. so when i got home i checked and checked, even though i am very familiar with them. that's mushrooms for you. always a bit mysterious.

it had been a while since my last foraging trip, i'm guessing a fortnight or so, but everything was the same despite the mini winter we had. birds had been having a go at the cranberries i was after, there were still many for me to discover, though. for those who think my cranberries look puny: it so happens that this smaller variety, vaccinium microcarpum is more common around where i live, even though the larger one, vaccinium oxycoccos, can be found as well. admittedly, even they pale in comparison to the north american cultivars. everything is bigger over there...

i got the standard raven fly-over, as usual. it is always so good to see them.
blogger/picasa insisted on rotating the photo for your viewing pleasure...

a sample of the kinds of paths i follow, in a mixed spruce and pine grove. i found some nice herald of winter waxcaps (hygrophorus hypothejus) somewhere near here. it was so quiet and calm i just stood still for a while, trying to become one with my surroundings. it was a bit darker and duskier than the photo conveys...

here is the very best part. the story of my enoki tree is not over yet! lots of small velvet shank babies found both on the stump and the trunk of the tree laying on the ground. what a relief. i should have known they grow on dead wood, since they can be grown on woodchips, (and the tree wasn't exactly alive anymore even when it stood upright) but i just had to worry... i got so happy when i spotted the orange dots from afar, i just skipped over and sighed an enthusiastic "oh oh oh!" (oijoijoi!). if the past is any indication, i'll be checking on them every day to see if they've grown yet...

october going on february, that's what this is. the sunshine pushed it to march, but the ground is still completely white, there was too much snow to melt it all away. and more fell in the afternoon. i took some wilted curly kale out for hares. i had nothing for the birds.

been burning lots of tea lights this fall... mostly in the essential oil lantern, but some nights also for added warmth. i'm trying not to turn up the heating until absolutely necessary, hoping to develop some tolerance for cooler indoors, too. not that this house ever gets crazy hot, but it's nice and cozy compared to irish houses. it's the dampness that gets me, there, though... but i miss it every day nonetheless.

i'm sitting in the kitchen for a change. usually i can be found either on my bed or the sofa in the living room. but it's warm here now, because i baked a cranberry-sourcream pie. ate about a third of it already, it's so damn good. i heartily recommend adding ground almonds to any pie crust, it turns out so much more flavoursome. i used part rye flour and part rice flour, too. so tasty.

the colour of the filling would have been amazing had i puréed the berries and mixed them in, but i love the contrast between the tart globules and the mild, sweet, creamy stuff while eating. it's just two eggs, 200 grams sourcream and (vanilla) sugar to taste, blended well.

i really wish i could hand out slices through the screen...

not bad for first snow, not bad at all. but if this is one of those instant winters that actually stays, i have to say i wasn't exactly ready. lots of unfinished yard work, and this white stuff really gives an extra edge of challenge into finding those cranberries now...

but i love how everything is different, especially inside my head. lighter, calmer, quieter...

went 10-pin bowling today, something i haven't done in years. i used to be okay-good back in high school, but in the meantime could never find a fitting ball on the rare occasion of bowling, so i thought i had gone sucky. today i won. no strikes but a couple of good spares, which lifted my spirits. it's all in the ball. if i could have one custom-made, who knows, i might be a fine bowler. i also love bowling gear, vintage shoes especially, and ball bags.

i had forgotten to recharge my camera battery and didn't realize i had another with me, so there are no photos of the rainbow of colours on the lane. some of the balls are so beautiful, iridescent and pearly. there was also a bright double rainbow in the sky after a quick shower, impressive against a mass of grey cloud. i managed a shot at my gelato, though, lemon and raspberry, which makes up for the losses in the colour department today.

there will be some soreness tomorrow, i fear. bowling employs surprising muscles. but it also opened up something between my shoulder blades that has been jammed for ages. i can breathe better now.

halla visited. in shady areas, the frost stayed throughout the day. it was my cue to head out to the cranberry bogs. mushrooms were thawy and moss crisp, it really is getting colder here. first snow can not be far in the future... i will be needing more woolly sock layers in my rubber boots the next time, the water was ankle-deep and very chilly. still, there is nothing better and nothing that smells nicer. cranberry picking is the most sensual foraging of all. the berries are hidden in the vines and sphagnum moss, they need to be carefully sought and pried out, their hue is the most tender of all reds... i am always at my most content when cranberry-picking, most at ease with myself and in touch with something greater, something very feminine.

dusk fell fast and i didn't have time to find very many berries, but the light was wonderful, even the sunset had a reddish hue, not because of my berry-picking, i know, but to foretell the rain. my camera battery died on me just as i was about to document it all. maybe next time...

i did, however, capture into a photograph that favourite sound of mine, the double plip-plop in the rainwater barrel. that was lucky.

a different kind of weekend. nostalgia for (sonic) youth mainly.
spiders are for ever, though.

there is a white-tailed deer in this picture, but it's blending in very well. i saw a few on my walk this evening. dusk is a lovely time to go out, i should do it more often. it comes earlier each day, too.

a doe with a calf, easier to spot...

blueberry leaves have gone pale and almost seem to glow in the dark... the darkened woods are quiet and comforting. as is a sip of homemade apple-cranberry juice laced with gin. and bowls of noodle soup.

there's been lots of days like this and this...

our house looked like this when i came home today. dad had pared the wall down to the old log frame. if i was doing the renovating, the old boards would go back up after insulation and repainted in authentic red earth paint. dad has other, more convenient and economical ideas and ways of doing things. i get to use the old, red boards to make bat-houses, though.

i got my new passport and OMG! best passport ever! i was delighted with the snowflake-embossed cover alone, then looked inside and flipped, literally. the pages are a flipbook animation of a running moose! i can hardly contain myself, it is just so up my alley... on the reverse pages are pictures of other finnish animals. an otter, a frog and a hedgehog, to name a few. whoever designed these features, which of course are there just to make counterfeiting difficult, is my idol. i wanted to show my passport to every passer-by and utter "look! have you seen?" even my own face looks more amused than smug among all that awesomeness. i can't wait to travel now...

ireland is back on the horizon ever since i found out it's possible for me to get my benefits while staying abroad. now it's really only a matter of finding a roof over my head for a few months. i hope this means my tide is finally turning.

other nice things arrived in beautiful packages. silk socks from japan, a bowl with a forest on, moisturizing hair spray... i need my little things of beauty. the hair moisturizer, for example, i bought almost solely because i think the packaging is super cute. surely it will be useful in the cold, static winter months (unless i am in ireland, where lack of moisture is hardly going to be a problem) and i like that it can also be used on skin. it smells of apples, too. i can see why it's a winner.