Berry story

There has been news about how Finnish people just let the berries rot in the forests instead of picking them. Estimated 90% of the berries are not picked, although they're VERY healthy and full of vitamins and antioxidants. They're really so called super foods!

We have lots of different berries in Finland and while I was in Kuopio, I picked raspberries and blueberries from the forest and blackcurrants from my mom's yard. Later in the autumn it's going to be time for lingonberries and cloudberries.

Raspberries can be found from thickets, where it's rather difficult to move around. But blueberries grow in many kinds of forests and it's easier to pick them, just that your back might be hurting the next day :)

For the blueberries we (me, mom, Seppo) went to an island accessible only by boat.

Of course we wore the most fashionable clothes we could find! Notice our beltbags and rubber boots.

It took about 20 minutes to reach the island. It was a windy day, so the waves were almost big (scary!) but there were no mosquitos at all in the forest (nice!).

We found a place for the boat and Seppo tied the ropes tightly on the trees, so that we would be able to go home, too.

Earlier I said that picking blueberries is easy. True, usually it is, but this time we chose an island where we had to climb a lot to get to the blueberry lands. It was good balance training, especially when we came down with our full buckets.

So blue! So big! So free! This year the berries are very big and juicy and there are lots of them. In Finland everyone is entitled to pick forest berries anywhere for free but still most of the berries are not picked.

The views from the island were amazing. Combined with the soothing sound of wind going through the leaves of trees and crispy air, it felt very relaxing to be in the middle of nowhere :)

I picked about 3 litres of blueberries with my bare hands (mom and Seppo used "poimuri", kind of tool for picking berries) because I like to feel the berries and bushes. And when we came back, I made this.

Blueberry milk! The best dessert from my childhood.

Today I'm going to the forest again to pick some berries with Yi-Te Lai. Our Taiwanese-Finnish group isn't afraid of the promised rain for today!

Come Play Perfect

It's finally cold here and in the morning, after waiting 20 minutes for the bus outside my fingers were totally frozen. But who cares! Anyway it's much better to have cold outside than never-ending rain and dark clouds hanging above your head. On this kind of days I specially enjoy crispy plants under my shoes and the sound they make when I stomp around. I had plenty of time to do that while I was waiting for the bus again in the afternoon for 20 minutes. Waiting is nice if your mind is full of thoughts and you have crunchy plants near you. (it's all about the attitude)

Today morning was crowded in the mobile library. Imagine a bus completely full of elementary schoolers. Most of them are pushing each other and giggling at sex books. There are 2 long queues and rising voices are demanding us to first make reservations for Simpsons comics, then renew all loans, borrow new books and show where are Goosebumps and Ella books.

So hectic, but so great.

Rest of my day I leafed through books of local school library. So cute old editions of Winnie the Pooh or Robinson Crusoe! Also (too) many religious stories made to look like proper adventure or fairytale books...In my opinion it's not appropriate to have "secretly" religious books in the library for young children to read, especially if the stories are full of preaching against nonbelievers. I just wonder who on earth decided to have those books in the elementary school library in the first place?


Lately I've been enjoying knitting, baking, aerobic, singing, games and sleeping. It's amazing how couple of free days can revive your body and mind completely! Tomorrow I'm going to sleep until 10 and pack my stuff and have a tiny journey.

Bis bald! (gr8 german l33t skillz!)

Waiting for

My first tiny small flax flower! My other plants don't seem to be comfortable in my terrace (but I can't blame them, I also don't feel comfortable there!) so they are not making any flowers. I had to take a photo of this beauty, though!

This week is nice. First of all, my much loved friend Hyeyeon is coming to Finland next week! In fact she arrives to Helsinki on Sunday and spends the night at my uncle's place, but on Monday she'll be here! So happy so happy so happy so happy! I took 3 days off next week, so I can spend time with her and all our common friends. Warning, lots of photos incoming...

I also don't have to wait for the bus to get to work this week, because I can get a ride from our summer worker, my friend Tuula. Yay!

And my evening meal is (hmmm...was...) the best ever! Bread with avocado paste, organic pear, mysli, liquorice and sweet coconut chai tea :)

Also today at work I got one visitor I didn't expect; my ex-boss! She just wanted to know how I'm doing and we talked almost half an hour about life. What else is there to talk about :) It was so nice surprise, I felt warm the rest of the day. I also carried and removed so many books that my hands are hurting...

There is one nice girl who always comes to the library just before closing time almost every day. She likes to be the last customer and talk with me about birthdays, books, friends. I can somehow see myself in her, I was just like that when I was in elementary school :)


A bit of mudding and never-ending undead turning now, my beloved Conquer (also known as) Ivan from Canada is also coming to visit me in the end of August. Last time I caught him before he fainted on the floor after too much sauna, maybe this time I'll finally save his whole life! Und meinen Gurth (also known as) Vladimir treffe ich auch im August :) Wunderbar!

Truly green

Yay! I finally finished my green green sock (just one...) and the colour is so amazing! It took me 2 months to knit this one, it's just sad that I don't seem to have enough free time these days. I've been reading a lot and of course that time is away from something else. But during juhannus (basically this weekend) I'm going to start knitting the pair for this. Did I already say how much I love the colour? ;) It looks as green as the nature at this time of the year, just more tropical somehow...

When I woke up at 6, it was raining and less than +10 degrees. When I looked outside my window at work, it was raining. And when I decided to go to local hypermarket in the evening, it was still raining. So when I went to the shop, I looked this "cool" (that must be the reason they didn't ask for my papers in local liquor store, no-one under 18 would come to the shop looking this stupid):

It felt like an adventure to walk to the store looking like a ghost. I also kept seeing this boy with red umbrella wherever I went...Thank you Juha for not waiting for me :D




Tomorrow I'm going to cook malesian vegetable curry and bake vanilla muffins with thai basil. True Finnish juhannus food! I bought real English cider to drink with them, because Finnish ciders taste like artificial flavourings. Let's see how Cox apples have been turned into cider by Thatchers and pears by Maguires. Organic white wine is also good especially during hot summer days, so this bottle is going to stay in fridge for a long time...

Speaking of organic, I received a huge parcel from Germany today. It included my BDIH natural cosmetic stuff that I'm using on my sensitive skin. I ordered shampoos, shower gels, moisturisers, cleansers and tooth pastes and paid a lot (I got so many products I'll use these for at least one year), but the prices of these products are half as expensive in Finland. Germany is truly the paradise of all natural and organic products! The webshop I used is Beauty Center Europe, and everything worked well also this time.


The ultimate saviour of my red and flaky (rosacea) skin is this product below. Redness disappears when I use it and I don't look like I have any makeup on, because I don't like makeup stuff. LilyLolo has a stupid name, but it comes in a nice package and works, so who cares about names.

My plants are growing and I have 3 days off! Next week is going to be horrible, only 2 people working in 2 shifts...But I'm not going to think about it yet. Have a nice juhannus you all and enjoy it the way you want to!

Tired & happy

My beautiful plants! I have one big sunflower growing outside and my new plants inside are kodinonni (happiness of home in English, I don't know the real name :D) and muratti (ivy). They're both so small and beautiful! Also my seeds are becoming plants quite fast, and I thought I was late :) Growing something just gets you back to the basics.

I had 2 visitors last week, Luppa and Tuula. Luppa seems extremely bored and Tuula totally surprised. Both had also other feelings during their stay in Joensuu.



I read two excellent books last week and I want to recommend! Maarit Verronen's Normaalia elämää (normal life) is a collection of short stories (couple of pages each), which make you think about the world and how normal something really is. Maarit Verronen is one of my favourite Finnish writers, her style is minimalistic and you just feel there's something behind the words.

And Ursula...Do I have to say more! Lavinia was once again so special experience that it's hard to put into words. I've studied Latin in high school for 3 years and we talked a lot about cultural history in those classes as well. This was kind of missing part of those classes! We always talked about Greek and Roman heroes (men) and how culture was at that time(basically through the eyes of men). It's easy for me to imagine strong women living there too, but too often they're excluded from the history unless they've been intriguing mothers of imperators or just beautiful.
Anyway, this story filled that gap and I read it on one day...I sat outside in the sun, inside on the sofa, in sauna, in the toilet, in my bed and just read.

Now I have Obama's Dream's from my father waiting to be read during juhannus (midsummer festival), because I don't have any other plans. It's going to be raining and cold anyway, so what's better than staying inside in an empty city and letting your eyes move from row to row...