not all violets are for the picking

lessons in life.

lately it's all about picking and drying. i can't seem to help myself. these violets are not fragrant, but the way their colour concentrates into almost indigo just works for me. they'll be lovely in herbal infusion blends, just to look at. the odd one out in the picture is spruce flower. the air is heavy with pollen, i managed the record amounts from birch but now that spruce and oak have joined in, it's hard to breathe. rain was forecast but so far only a drizzle. i think we could all use a bit of a downpour, fauna and flora alike.

i made a small batch of pine shoot syrup, for the first time ever, and i have to say it is even more amazing than spruce shoot syrup! i'm pretty excited about it. i still don't have a candy thermometer, which is a damn shame, because pine lollipops would be a hit. as soon as i can afford a few bags of sugar, i'll be on a sweets-making bender, though. i have lokum in mind. in all kinds of exotic flavours. finnish delight.

half asleep

trying to imagine how a bat feels in its body, on its wings, about having a tail... what is it like, having skin stretch from your fingertips to the toes... or to be so completely suited for thin air...

when i dream of flying, it's like a soap bubble, rising higher and higher, carried by currents. very rarely like an eagle, soaring on my wings. never like a bat.

another pair of woollies, based on the 'stjärnblommesockor' pattern from the book toe up socks for every body. didn't much care for the original star flower motif, but the basic structure of this sock lends itself to all kinds of variations, it's a nice blank canvas. i made the colourwork pattern up, needing something simple in a repeat of four stitches. there was a good amount of initial trial and error involved, though. plenty of unraveling practice.

cherry blossoms opened today, along with spruce shoots and, well, mosquitoes. two quiet, warm nights without them. it was lovely.

have i told yet? summer's here.

cinder conk, cinder conk, cinder conk! 

i have looked three years for these.

enjoying my first cup of chaga tea now.

no, not another mushroom, but a misfortunate whiskered bat who had plunged straight into the rainwater barrel. and a very lucky one, because i happened to notice the odd waves of the water. i scooped the poor, soaked thing up and wondered what to do. hairdryer was out of the question, it would have fried up the little critter, so in the end i just patted the bat dry with toilet paper the best i could and let it rest a bit in a felted hat before the return home.

there's a happy ending, the bat crawled out of the hat all by itself (aided perhaps by a bit of encouraging poking on the skinny butt form me) and into the wall. i stayed a while to make sure everything was all right and a moment later it looked out again, at me, opening and closing its tiny mouth. of course i can't hear bat frequencies, but i like to think it was a thank you.

(myotis mystacinus)

after the rescue operation i harvested five huge rhubarbs and made some syrup. these young shoots give out the best red. for once i have a recipe to give as well. it's very simple.

SIMPLE SYRUP
2 dl water
1½ dl sugar
boil these in a frying pan until the sugar melts, then add your flavouring ingredient (it could be anything, and the amount is roughly as much as sugar, more or less depending on the intensity, availability or whim. i used my five stalks of rhubarb chopped up and some vanilla powder) and continue to boil on lower heat until everything thickens, about ten minutes should do it.

for those measuring in cups, i suppose a cup of water and three quarters of a cup of sugar, or any amounts with this ratio will do. if boiling in a pan, the water will evaporate slower, so you need more time. rhubarb tends to get mushy, so if i'm going for a clear syrup, i try not to stir too much and strain the chunks out. usually i leave it all in though.

i like to put this on top of turkish yoghurt or use it to sweeten quark. rhubarb is best eaten with dairy, to prevent the acids in it from consuming calcium from the body. so, ice cream works well, too!


these succulents are about to bloom, don't they fit today's colour scheme just so?

a ridiculous amount of greenfly on the birch, all kinds of abundance... forget-me-not is starting to blossom under the old rowan tree. we have lots of white ones, which i like a lot. they are one of the ingredients in my wild greens powder mix, lots of potassium.

i feel the same sadness as always, when summer is near. i'm holding my breath for autumn already.

the attic of our house. i was up there for the second time in my life this week. to get in, you have to remove a window with a crowbar, which we don't often do. some electric wires had to be rerouted, and i took advantage of the situation and climbed in. it's such a mystery place, in a way that it's always there but it kind of doesn't exist. thousands of rusty nails protrude from the small beams where the shingles have been nailed on. i'm in awe of the work put in the building process, every bit having been done by hand, form the felling of the trees to the carving of the beams (and someone made the tools needed themselves, too.) i'm convinced there's either a treasure buried in the sawdust insulation, or someone's bones.

we are on to the phase wood anemones, mouse-eared birch trees and stretching rhubarb of spring. today it is pouring down with rain so the green foliage should just about explode in a couple of days. i spent my last pennies on chocolate, pringles and ice cream. priorities checked. in all fairness, wild greens grow all over the place but there ain't a potato chip tree in sight.

i don't wear nail polish but just saw the perfect shade today, browsing the cosmetics section waiting for the bus home. if you could turn me into a color and put me in a bottle, that would be it. i even remember the name and number, so impressed was i. l'oreal color riche #608, luxembourg garden. i wouldn't buy it, mainly because i don't do l'oreal but also because i never have a chance to do my nails and i hate the way polish feels, it makes my fingertips cold and pulls at the nails (mine are quite curved so it feels like edges are rising up). but my o my how that hue hypnotized me. it was a subtly shimmery, grayish-tealish blue, so wonderful.

this blog gets so earthy all the time, yet i am not solely about moss and pine needles. i'm quite into dresses and shoes, for example, mostly vintage though but i'm no stranger to H&M either. i go nuts over flavours and fragrances. i own more washi masking tape than anyone should. i want to bring these things together somehow, or more so, or something like that. i'm getting a bit bored with just pointing things out, even though this sharing is important to me.

but right now i have socks to knit and snooker to watch. i know the result of the match but it's still captivating.

*) do you see the same animals as me? 

art nouveau trunk damage, shiny green beetles, all day treasure hunt in the woods. i really needed it, made me somewhat relaxed finally. i don't think i've been more at ease since my return from the dream island.

i was thinking what a luxury the forest is, right there — my therapy, gym and shopping spree all in one, for free. i try not to take it for granted, but i can't help it, in a way. it's always been there, although changing, and i have grown up exploring it. i keep on growing into it, learning and discovering new things each year. the forest is the one thing i can rely on. it provides. it entertains. it protects.

for how long, that's another matter.

found a lot of them today so here's one more false morel photo...

*) badger, llama and cheetah

more brain mushrooms. it's a good year. today i cooked up a spaghetti sauce with them, and frying in butter did make all the difference. i get it now. before i just thought it's supposed to be such a tasty mushroom, so i always made risotto to enjoy the pure flavour that wasn't really there. this was different. so good...

recipes of my cooking have been requested, but i find it difficult. my meals happen so haphazardly, like the other day when i was weeding behind the sauna and accidentally unearthed / broke off a tiny asparagus bud, the size of a moth cocoon, which i initially mistook it for. i brought it in, chopped it up with a clove of garlic and a couple of nettle shoots, boiled it all up with a whisked egg and added some white miso, probably some nori flakes on top, and that was my soup for lunch. or the falafel i made with the leftovers of that false morel risotto from the last post, nettle hummus, and canned bean + frozen peas mash,  where i added an egg, breadcrumbs and rye flour until firm enough to form into balls, breaded them in some spiced up breadcrumbs and fried into golden deliciousness in olive oil.

even this pasta dinner happened before i knew it, i thought i was going to use the leftover breadcrumbs to batter and deep fry my mushrooms, but all of a sudden i was making sauce instead. and since i put a bit of cream into it, and the stovetop was still warm, i steeped lemon peel in the rest of the cream for a while before whipping up yet another batch of caramel sauce, this time lemon & clove (ultimate combination!) with a dash of cointreau. i realized i had accidentally bought wrong kind of sugar, though. i meant to grab a bag of cane sugar, which is so much better for caramel and syrup than beet sugar, which is the norm in finland. beet sugar makes caramel gooey and it tends to crystallize in syrup form. i'm under the impression that cane sugar has more minerals in it, too. unrefined, of course.

the herbs on top of the dish are the first chives and parsley springing up from the ground. the parsley was so tiny it felt silly to even pick it, but it's supposedly an antidote to poison (hence its appearance next to almost any dish, as a reassurance to guests) so i wanted to add some just in case.

the cold winds from the sea didn't keep me from heading out to the woods in search of false morels. i found six, one was quite big. they are not easy to spot, but it helps to know where to look, in sandy pine groves, where the earth has been disturbed. so many things kind of look like them, though...

...like poo and pine cones, for example.

i cooked my deadly fungi in plenty of water, twice, in a well-ventilated kitchen, to get rid of the toxins before making risotto with them. they smell nice while boiling (when you're not really supposed to be sniffing them due to the evaporating nerve toxins) but the taste is really rather plain, even though these are considered a delicacy by some. still, i like the treasure hunt and the ritual of preparation. maybe some day i'll learn how to get them to turn out tasty.

wish me luck with the fermentation, i started little batches of sauerkraut, and beets with garlic & cloves. wild greens are sprouting up everywhere, today i picked goatweed, forget-me-not and fireweed. i have wild ideas about fermenting everything.

all of a sudden it's may.