To mysteries you’re anxious about

Sunset 1

Sunset 2

Sunset 3

Here is the last set of photographs from Midsummer's Eve, sunset time.

(Posting title is from the poem Time as Memory as Story by Simon J. Ortiz.)

He looked like a boat

Fire

Boats

Here are two more photographs taken on Midsummer's Eve. Watching the fire from boats is a tradition for many, I think I have seen the same boats and people in this place year after year, rowing from the other side of the lake to join the festivities.

(Posting title is from the poem A Boat by Richard Brautigan.)

Much mirth and no madness

Boats

Smoke

Fire 1

Fire 2

Here is a second installment of photographs from Midsummer's Eve, watching a bonfire being set up by lake Pitkäjärvi. We were having picnic by the shore, and luckily there were few mosquitoes to bother us.

(Posting title is from the poem To Mistress Margaret Hussey by John Skelton.)

If I had not forever, if there were time

Blue

Red

Path

Boat

I finally managed to go through the photographs taken on Midsummer's Eve a week ago. Here is a kind of prologue, walking with the children to lake Pitkäjärvi in Espoo to watch a fire being set up. It was rather quiet on this side of the lake, although evidence of generous consumption of alcohol was of course visible and audible.

(Posting title is from the poem Midsummer by Robert Fitzgerald.)

With the taste of fruit on our lips

Yellow

Road

It seems that I'm just too lazy to start processing any of the newer photographs, I'm now more than a week behind. In any case, here are photographs taken at Petikko 10 days ago, today I was there again with my daughter, eating blueberries and wild strawberries and being eaten by mosquitoes.

(Posting title is from the poem Have You Eaten of the Tree? by Paul Hoover.)

Liste! now the thunder’s rattling clymmynge sound

Campanula patula

Birch

Aspen

The weather forecast promised a thunderstorm for today, with some serious lightning, rain, and wind. Here in Helsinki region I didn't notice anything like that, but elsewhere Finland got a lot of thunder and storm: over 25,000 lightning bolts and winds up to 30 m/s.

I commuted by bicycle today, and will do so also tomorrow. Since the beginning of May I have got 1061 km on bicycle, which is quite a lot more than last year, despite the bicycle being broken for half a week. But that isn't much, a colleague has got 2444 km so far.

(Posting title is from the poem An Excelente Balade of Charitie by Thomas Chatterton.)

Who is to say the rose is greater than the thorn?

Flowers

Spiraea

Drop

Lupin

We have +30 °C outside, and I'm quite hot after the bicycle commute. Hot and tired, I should say. I'm still posting photographs from Tuesday last week, these were taken at a nearby playground where I went with my youngest daughter during evening.

I'm sorry but the photographs from Midsummer's Eve have to wait, I just don't have the energy to go through them right now.

(Posting title is from the poem the weather is hot on the back of my watch by Charles Bukowski.)

It’s such a silly thing to do

Blueberry

Ferns

Red

White

Lamp

I'm still very much behind in processing the photographs from Midsummer. These photographs were taken a week ago at Petikko where I went for a walk with my daughter in the evening. It is remarkable that blueberries are getting ripe already, more than two weeks in advance of the normal.

And to whet your appetite, you see below a thumbnails view in Aperture of photographs taken on Midsummer's Eve. But I'm not sure when I'll have the energy to go through the photographs. The weather is quite hot today, and I was a bit too eager when commuting by bicycle today, going a bit too fast and getting tired afterwards.

(Posting title is from the poem How I Quit Sucking My Thumb by Bruce Lansky.)

I’ll hang it from a tree!

Lichen

I was planning to go through the photographs from the long weekend, but it so happened that there was a lot of other things to do today. Thus here is a photograph taken on Sunday a week ago at Nuuksio, when it was rather wet.

(Posting title is from the poem Turn Off the TV! by Bruce Lansky.)

There was a dream within a dream and inside

Waterlily

Linnaea borealis 1

Linnaea borealis 2

Wet

Aquilegia

Here are more photographs taken in Nuuksio last Sunday, which was a rainy day. These were taken while walking back from lake Hauklampi.

It so happened that the memory card got full, and I had to delete some of the older photographs to make room for some more. I had put a 2 GB memory card to the camera instead of the usual 8 GB card, and hadn't transferred the photographs to the computer for several days.

The last photograph shows Aquilegia which were growing at the yard where I had parked my card. By that time I was rather wet, because my jacket had got soaked in the rain and there are leaks in the seams. The wetness was bothering me and so I didn't have enough energy to start deleting photographs from the memory card to make room for Aquilegia photographs.

(Posting title is from the poem The Screen of Distance by Barbara Guest.)

The world as water-garden

Twigs

Pile

Cloudberry

Hauklampi

Rain

Waterlily

Here are photographs taken last Sunday in the north parts of Nuuksio wilderness area, going to lake Hauklampi which I had never visited before. (There are other lakes with the same name, though.)

As I wrote in the previous posting, I had to try twice to find the lake, but the second try was successful, thanks to the sun which occasionally was visible and helped in orienteering. By the lake were some raw cloudberries. It started to rain in earnest, so I didn't spend much time there.

(Posting title is from the poem Waterlily Fire by Muriel Rukeyser.)

Where love dissembles itself as landscape

Posts

Red

Bell

Daisy

Fern

It was raining last Sunday afternoon, but I decided to go for a walk in the Nuuksio forests, to lake Hauklampi south of lake Saarijärvi in the north parts of Nuuksio. While driving there I realized I had left the compass home, and debated whether I should go somewhere else, to a place known beforehand. But then I decided that getting lost wouldn't be a big risk, as I had the map with me in any case.

However, there were thick clouds above and it was raining, occasionally heavily, which meant that there was no reliable information of the compass direction, and the map I had with me wasn't really an orienteering map, showing only the coarse features of the landscape.

I started walking anyway, trying to locate myself via the big features, such as hills and rocky cliffs. But the landscape in this part of Nuuksio is rather intricate, and finally I got confused, thinking that a particular cliff was another, and the path going below it was another one shown on the map. In addition, part of the cloud cover thinned a bit, and I thought that sun must be in that direction, even though in reality I was 180° in error of the direction. And after a half-an-hour walk I found myself near where I started walking, rather embarrased.

However, at this point the cloud cover started thinning in earnest, and sun became visible, so I decided to try to go to lake Hauklampi once again, using the sun in orienteering. And this time I managed quite well, going up and down hills, directly to a hill where the lake was visible.

I didn't linger long by the lake, as it started to rain again, and the map was getting soaked even though I tried to protect it inside the jacket. Getting back was easier than finding the lake, so I didn't get lost again.

These photographs are from the farm at Yli-Takkula where I left the car at the parking place. I'll post some more photographs later today.

(Posting title is from the poem The Lost Land by Eavan Boland.)

Less your laughter, that I love

Juniper

Dactylorhiza maculata

Dragonfly

I'm still posting photographs from last Saturday at Vaakkoi, where I went walking with my daughter. It was a good day to be in the forests, +20 °C, so it wasn't too hot, and wind which kept the mosquitoes away.

This weekend we will have warm weather, up to +22...+25 °C, which is quite nice for Midsummer celebrations. But the Finnish tradition of alcohol consumption together with other habits (such as using the boat or swimming when drunk) practically guarantee that there will be some not-so-pleasant news items during the weekend.

(Posting title is from the poem A Celebration of Charis: I. His Excuse for Loving by Ben Jonson.)

I studied the folds in your jacket

Waterlily 1

Waterlily 2

I have been thinking about getting a new jacket for walking in forests, since my current one, an eight-year-old Berghaus Gore-Tex jacket starts to be close to finishing. The front zipper is broken, and even though I can keep the jacket closed with buttons, it is not quite the same.

There is a lot of wear, and even though the jacket still mostly keeps the rain out, some of the seams are leaking. And Gore-Tex has the problem of keeping the moisture inside when the weather is humid and cold, and that doesn't feel so good, even though usually in rainy weather the jacket is rather good if one moves slow enough not to get sweaty.

I'm not sure whether I should buy a new Gore-Tex jacket, or try something else, something more breathable. One choice could be a Fjällräven jacket, made from G-1000 fabric.

Another thing is the form of the jacket. The Berghaus jacket was just about perfect, long enough to keep the back warm even when carrying a backbag, with two side pockets protected by flaps, one front pocket inside, a hood which can be hidden inside the collar, and so on.

There are a lot of choices in jackets these days, but few seem to be such to suit my needs, to have a pocket for a camera, another for a map and a compass, and a third one for a mobile phone and keys.

(Posting title is from the poem After the Auction, I Bid You Good-Bye by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.)