I got sick for a few days. The weather is too cold for this time of year, and I did not dress appropriately while working in the garden, which triggered (probably) a mild strep throat infection that would probably not develop in warmer weather. After a few days of being in bed, drinking paracetamol and elderberry tea, I might be finally getting better today – the throat pain subsided, and both teas started to taste awful. That is a peculiar thing – I strongly dislike the smell and taste of elderberry juice, yet I always try my best to keep a stash in my cellar. Because when I get sick, I get a craving for it. And once I heal, I start hating it again.
But before I got sick, I managed to harvest all the peas I sown two months ago.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I did not manage to do it all in one go; I had to spread the work over several days. It was approximately three buckets of pea pods overall, which my parents shelled in the evenings while watching TV.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I got about 4500 g of green peas from 500 g of seeds. About 500 g was lost to voles and drought, but 4500 is still a respectable amount that made the whole endeavour worth it. Now they are in the freezer awaiting further fate. We are still considering whether to keep them there and slowly use them in soups and foods, or to thaw them all and preserve them in jars.
And whilst I was sick, I was able to take a picture of a frequent visitor to my windowsills.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I hear kestrels chirping all the time, but they are not easy to take a picture of. I am very glad to see them. They are an invaluable vole predator, and if I could convince them to nest nearby, I would.
Here, cool weather feels like a distant memory.
Speaking of natural pest control, I just saw this amusing story (in Finnish):
https://yle.fi/a/74-20175084
Around July, Finnish people living or holidaying in rural areas often seek ways to avoid being attacked by horseflies (which are less ubiquitous but more annoying than mosquitoes). This year, some Finns on social media have promoted the idea of crafting a dragonfly decoy and planting it on your hat, to scare off horseflies. This method is not scientifically tested, there’s only some anecdotes and common sense reasoning suggesting that it might work. The visual effect is hilarious.
The story includes three short video clips -- the second one shows how to make the dragonfly decoy, while the first and last one are reporters lightheartedly testing the method (quite literally) in the field.
In the first video, reporter Anna-Mari Vuolle reports no horsefly bites (only some sightings) while harvesting wild berries, but notes that the results are still inconclusive. She then goes on to joke that the decoy seems more effective in scaring off other (competing) berry-pickers.
In the last video, reporter Ari Hursti hangs out at a bucolic location -- but it turns out he somehow chose a place that has hundreds of actual dragonflies hovering around. Therefore, the fact that he encounters only one horsefly is also inconclusive. He mentions appreciating the sight of so many dragonflies, though.
There’s also quotes from two Finnish insect experts. One of them is Jukka Salmela, from the regional museum of Lappi in northern Finland. He reportedly answered his phone for the interview while being gathering cloudberries at a bog. That’s some extreme “Summer in northern Finland” energy.
@lumipuna, the wonky weather these last years is driving me mad. Either it is blisteringly hot and dry, so nothing grows, or it is so cold and wet that nothing grows. It was this way last year, too. We actually had temperatures below 10°C a few nights in July. Essentially, we now had the weather we were supposed to have in April, and in April, we had the weather we would need now.
Interesting thing about the cloudberries. In CZ, they only grow in small populations in the Krkonoše National Park, and they are protected by law. They are a post-glacial relic. I have never seen them, and I cannot imagine having them grow in quantities worth collecting.
Cloudberries aren’t much common here in southernmost Finland, either. I once found a few berries at a small suburban bog near Helsinki. As a teen I visited Lapland with my family at just this time of year, and found some cloudberries and big sweet crowberries of the arctic subspecies.
In the north, peat bogs cover much of the land, and there’s usually at least some cloudberry present, but high-yielding sites that are good for commercial harvest are only found here and there. Cloudberries are quite expensive on the market because of the limited supply. If you’re a local and know a good site, you can make better hourly earnings by picking cloudberries, compared to bilberries and lingonberries which are common everywhere. The commercial harvest of these two, and often also cloudberry, is nowadays usually done by seasonal migrant workers from Thailand. As one might guess, human trafficking investigations are occasionally popping up in relation with companies that organize this work, and legal regulation of the berry business (which relates to both gig economy and roaming rights) is trying to catch up.
Nomnom nom
My peas are long gone. As you know, my garden is just for fun, so the peas are just for snacking and recuperating the soil. But I’m expecting our first figs this year!
That photo of the kestrel is wonderful.
I used to live in a neighbourhood with resident kestrels but a never got closer than about 5 metres.