GARDEN LIFE vol.1

(flower photo alert)

As summer comes we spend pretty much all free time at the farm and we let the back door stay open to extend living out to the garden. Everyday life elsewhere, perhaps but here only for those short sweet summer months.

I stocked up on flowers and pots at the start of the season as usual.


Hello hanging strawberries-to-be!

 So beautiful, aren't they?


And things that I have planted, as well as others generations before me have, pop up one by one. So many colours, so many prety flowers.

 I had Eddi build me these growing boxes. I planted herbs, salads and other greens in them.

And the cats tried their best to sabotage it all, by hopping in and out of the boxes and making a mess.
Let's just say the order I put the seeds in are no more.


Cauliflowers waitinig to be planted outside. I hade some sunflowers coming up too. But they fried in the mini greenhouse when it got real sunny outsisde. Ooops.

 I also have a set of tomatoes and chilis sitting on a bench by a sunny wall.

 It's a goddamn water circus every day (not to forget all my indoor plants) and I dread going away as I know no one else will remember to water them. But I like having a lot of plants around there and every now and then get to enjoy a home grown tomato too.


We had Dag's three year birthday outside party in the garden as well.

This was a few weeks ago now already, when it was still cold(er), but we were lucky enough to manage the party right on the only day it was warm and sunny during those weeks.

The pram park. I actually don't have so many friends with kids so this was an unusual sight. People have been busy the past year!

Dag's favourite colour is red. Preferably everything he wears has to be red.

Evenings are for barbecue, and as usual the guys are at it with their burgers and sauces.


And come night time, my solar lit fairy lights go on.

But it is still so light they are merely there just for the fun of it. But come August with it's warm (hopefully) and dark evenings they get to shine to their full potential. I might hang up a few more still...

IT'S ALMOST MID-MARCH ALREADY

...which means summer will soon be over. Because that's the way it goes you know. Fast.

Oh well hello there! Yes I am still very much alive, although it may seem a little too quiet over here. With all the work, hanging out with Dag, puzzling babysitting around for my work as Eddi is abroad because of his work all the time and when at home out on the farm because the older boys go to school there now and I'm kind of living part-time in my car due to all the going back-and-forth between homes and jobs and gigs and rehearsals plus the pilates training I am studying I have a pile of posts stacked up that will soon be too old to post anyway.

Well that was a long sentence. But it pretty much describes how things are for the moment, in the way it was structured. A highly energetic mess. But, here are some thing's I've been up to the past week as my phone and Instagram saw it:

We have started our own recurring club at Mascot -

The first of Rubies Klubit was last Friday under the theme 'Abstinence'. It was a really good night!

(The last shot is from the curtain call at the end of the night that I took from our golden gogo-boy's Instagram, orginally taken by JBM.)

Go ahead and like our page to find out the dates for the following ones as we set them!

Then I head over to Turku to perform at a Women's Day celebration event. Here's a shot from out small backstage as well as one of dragqueen Miss Divet performing before us and our huge mirror in our hotel room.



Then I came back home and by yesterday spring had arrived for real! I'm tempted to say the classic "finally" but to be honest it's pretty early and apart from that magical Christmas week winter was not that long or cold or white but seemed to pass rather quickly this time. We took a walk outside and it was warm. I feel all my shoes starting to wake up from their winter sleep and making small sounds in the closet already.

Also yes, that is how my son keeps putting his glasses on, constantly.

Later then showed up to the dinner table dressed as a sailor.

4 x RANDOMS

I had big hair.

These cherries defied winter and are still hanging in there.

Dag on one of the wood horses in Tapiola. I rode them too as a kid, but back when there were many of them in different colours. Many were also rather high. Not safe enough for today's standards I think.

And then I wore a little animal print.

BY HIMSELF

Dag has for some time been approaching, and now definitely reached the age that most parents recognise; when he needs to try and do absolutely everything himself.

It is heartbreakingly adorable but can also be highly annoying at the same time, in those moments when you are in a hurry or really need to get things done.

Having two bigger (half-)brothers that are a lot older than him of course also pushes it, because he wants to do everything the same way. Plus the huge need to HELP MOMMY.

Dag wants to use a knife while eating. He has been eating with a big fork a long the time since he does not want to be the only one with a spoon in the table and baby cuttleries is hard to hand to him when the whole family is dining. THE BIG ONE. (I can then have the tiny fork.) But he's quite skilful around the kitchen already so he can handle a lot. (He actually managed to peel some clementines rather well the other day. And once he had done one he wouldn’t stop. TO MOMMY he says and pushes a whole one , warm and rather well worked-on, inside my mouth so he can go on peeling a new one for himself.)

And then he's cleaning the table. When I was washing walls and doors the other day it wasn’t as successful as the floors were very wet after him “helping out”.

And when we go grocery shopping he has to, really has to, put everything in his little cart himself. The whole world will fall apart if I am the one to put it down or even. god forbid, put it in my cart.
Well as a parent you develop lots of ways to innocently trick your child, and so I have developed a system for secretly moving some items into my cart as we shop along. Altough sometimes he outsmartens me too, as surprising and random things might show up at the cashier.

But shopping - he has a lion-cap that he shopped himself! ("The Lion Cap" has to be said with a rrrroaring sound when you say LION.) Sort of. We were at the mall doing some errands when Dag showed me he wanted to visit this one accessory shop. Um, OK. Then and went right to one shelf an pointed at the lion cap and said THAT ONE. I was not raised as a child that got everything I pointed at, and so will Dag be,  but in this case I had to give him the hat that he surprisingly enough must have spotted earlier and remembered!

As it was father’s day yesterday (over here) I will end this post with a pic of me and my father thirty years ago. Like Dag (or, Gad as he says)  in a mini dirndl!

SMALL RED ADDITIONS

Dag's room. The one we've been working on only for about 14 months or so. And with working I mean not setting my foot in there apart from hanging up curtains there once in March, doing some occasional messy sewing and storing all my show-suitcases in. So he's still sleeping in our bedroom and playing all over the living room. In fact the whole flat has looked like shit not been too nice looking the last year. I'm too busy with everything and all the free time we spend at the farm. But as autumn always is my kind of new year I have actually done something about it; I've been organising my paper work and such to get it out of that room end elsewhere and started moving some of Dags things into the old study! Step by step, toddler steps.


We got him some basic wood furniture from ikea and pimped them up with some red. I still had some red spray paint left from when painting the heels on my boots red last winter, and coated the legs on the stool (that will work as a night stand) and the knobs on the chest with it. Quick and very painless!


The cat lamp has also finally found a real home. (And soon someone will even live in there!)

THE PLAY KITCHEN

I got Dag a play kitchen!

I fixed it up in town during summer while the rest were on the farm. I bought hooks and a (shower-) shelf with suction fastening to hang stuff on and make the module more like a kitchen.

Dag loves playing with it. Or in it, whichever way you prefer.

Food tasting.

I have to try it too.

Dag got the vintage tin cups and -plates from his friend Pieter in The Netherlands.
The pots and pans and soft veggies and fruits are from Ikea.

The lettuce also doubles as a football on occasion. (The feet of the chairs made great goals.)

I  guess it will be dinner time soon!