The apple crop looks OK, but there is some kind of spidery thing affecting not just the trees here but also in the garden in Espoo
We still haven't figured out which trees are which, it is such a shame that we didn't keep records when we planted them.
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Went for a walk through the forest, where it is cooler than down on the field. Zelda found the first of this year's bilberries and they are good for eating. I picked enough to have with some strawberries tonight (we got some vanilla ice-cream from the new Deli Tukku in Pojo).
Our mökki is situated in the hazelnut zone and we are lucky enough to have masses of them in our forest. In the areas where we have cleared pine, spruce and birch, we have hazelnut growing quite vigorously. The trees produce nuts but I've never seen any ripe enough to eat. I assume that the season is too short, or maybe the squirrels eat them all. Today we had some visitors and one young Finnish lad was really pleased to find a hazelnut tree for his summer school project. It is traditional in Finland for 7th graders to compile a specimen collection of native wild flowers and trees during their summer holidays. It usually involves parents and grandparents too because it is impossible to find all the plants in one location or indeed during the same week: some flower in late May, others in June, July or August. I think my boys had a list of about 100 plants and they had to collect a minimum of 40 from the list. Each plant has to be pressed and then stuck in a book, giving all the information concerning where it was found: location, date etc. I remember bulrushes being very problematic. We had to use the canoe to reach them (we have some here in the pond). As pressing bulrushes is nigh impossible, we left them to dry before sticking them in the book (lots of sellotape). The teacher told Stefan that when she eventually got round to marking their projects, his bulrush had exploded and she had millions of seeds flying around her house for ages. We planted the Red BIrch last summer. It is doing really well, barricaded behind a steel wall to keep out the sheep, the deer and anything else (lawnmower, kids...) The leaves are an amazing dark red colour and when the tree gets a bit bigger the bark will be bright white. Update 7th July: we have rebuilt the protection around the red birch and added a windbreaker to protect the tree from the winds that funnel up the Pojo fjord. Several years ago we bought two red oaks (Quercus Rubra) from the botanical gardens in Turku. Turku is located inside Finland's oak zone (and so is Raseborg)! We planted them between the cabin and the curly birch plantation but unfortunately one of the red oaks was destroyed by small furry mammals who like to burrow into the roots of trees and nest there. The other tree is looking quite spectacular: the leaves are a beautiful shape and have a red tint against the blue sky. "Tractor" was his first word... They've been clearing fallen trees in the forest. Quite a few came down during the storms. The tractor is a 1961 Volvo Buster 320. Same tractor, same driver 2005! And here on the Avant loading pine logs onto the trailer. (The Avant is from 2003, Made in Finland, near Tampere).
The forestry commission is nagging people to clear fallen spruce. Apparently they harbour a fungus called Heterobasidion parviporum (white-rot fungus) which is held under control while trees are alive but when a tree falls and dies these pests multiply exponentially and can infect healthy trees which become infected at the base. Or something like that (I need to find out more). The crux of the matter is that they are going to start fining people who don't clear dead spruce. We bought an ash tree (Fin: lehtosaarni) at Tahvoset's open day - just because we don't have an ash tree anywhere. Ash do grow in southern Finland (especially on the Åland islands and throughout the archipelago) but we don't have any at all. Planning to plant it in a sunny spot out of the wind up at Rosendal. It's a bit of a gamble. Wikipedia: Fraxinus excelsior. All weekend the echoing call of cuckoo has resonated over to Ovantrask from Rosendal. The call sounds closer than it is. Just when you think he's taking a break, he starts up again (apparently only male cuckoos actually cuckoo). It can drive you nuts if you're out gardening all day. Or cuckoo. The hill above Rosendal, which we cleared the winter before last, is named Kukkuubackaskoga on the original deeds - kukkuu is the Swedish-Finnish word for the call of the cuckoo ("gök" being cuckoo), "backa" means hill and "skog" is forest. So it would appear that cuckoos have been driving people crazy around here for a couple of hundred years! |