Pipeline for land

Russia is planning to build a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. Now some Finnish businessmen are trying to use project as a way to get Karelia back from the Russians, "Finnish Businessmen Using Pipeline as Leverage in Karelia Question".

Both my parents was from Karelian Isthmus and had to leave their homes in 1944 when Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union after the Continuation War. I've only visited Karelia once with my mother and that was in the mid-90:ies at a Homecoming Day at mother's home parish of Muolaa, but I've always been aware of how much the loss of their homeland meant to both of my parents. Now they are both dead and I can't ask them if they would like to have Karelia back or not. Somehow I believe my father would like it, his home parish was close to the present border between Russia and Finland and his youngest brother lives within walking distance to the border. But I'm not as sure if mother would like to have Karelia back, the places where she grew up were very changed and there was only the steps left of the parish church and we couldn't find any traces of her childhood home. The land itself, the buildings and fields also looked a bit dilapidated and I would guess that it would need a lot of money to get it back to what it once were. Then there's also the question of all the people who now live in Karelia, who have moved there after the war and have lived there for more than 60 years. They are ethnic Russians and it's not certain than they want to become Finnish citizens, what would happen to them, a new displacement of people? Almost all of the Finnish citizens was evacuated when Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union, and who was born in Karelia before the wars are now in their mid-60:ies and older and it's not certain that their children and grandchildren wants to move back to places where they never lived.

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My garden

A pretty pink spring flowering plant

Photos from my allotment garden

My cats

Dani and Ninni together

Added my Yahoo 360° blog here

Well, now I have imported my Yahoo 360° to Multiply. I managed to get everything with me, even if I had a small scare as I couldn't access my Yahoo-id first, but then it went well.

As you probably know Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo 360° on July 13th, and I don't want to loose the blog entries I've posted there, so I decided to merge them with my Multiply-blog. It's one less blog to keep up to date as I also have two Swedish blogs, one is a Garden blog at: Nattugglans koloni - it's about my allotment garden and what's happening there, and the other is Nattugglans funderingar - a blog about this and that in my life. With one less blog I hope post here more often, even if I believe it will be my garden blog that I will be writing in mostly during the summer months. 

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What a difference a day makes!

Spring is finally here, today has been a real spring day with a sunny sky and it's such a difference from yesterday. I was out for a walk with my cats and the sun was shining and I noticed that the crocuses in my neighbours garden have opened their flowers, yesterday I didn't see any of them. There's lots of them, a very dark purple on the outside with a paler lilac inside that fades to almost white closest to the stigma. I like crocuses, they are lovely and so cheerful when in bloom. The snow-drops have been in bloom for a couple of weeks now, so have the winter aconites. I love all the colours of the spring flowers.

I took all three of my cats out, first the two older cats and allowed them to run free in our inner yard and they were wild, racing round and trying to climbing up and down the trees. Neither of them getting very high up, just to the first branch and then jumping down again. When the two of them had had enough of fresh air, I took the youngest of my cats out, for the second time and this time without the support of an other cat. It went well, Sindra didn't mind the leash and walked around and checked the bushes and so on, but I could see that she must have been a bit nervous as the muscles in her hind legs was shivering. We weren't out long, just five minutes or so and she was relieved to get indoors again, to familiar grounds.

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Winter's here

Well, it seems as if I did my winter shopping in time as we got our first snow fall yesterday evening. When I woke up this morning there was a light snow covering on the roof-tops and on the grass and all the puddles was covered with a thin layer of ice. The temperature was just below zero degrees Centigrade, so even if we have had a lovely sunny day, the snow on the roofs that's in a shadow are still white.

I went for a walk with my cats this afternoon, they like getting out as there's always so much to see and smell. Today it was just a short walk, because especially the boy isn't that fond of the cold.  The girl doesn't mind the cold that much, as long as it's not raining as she doesn't like to get wet. It it's raining she won't get out at all, while the boy doesn't mind a walk if it's just a drizzle, but it it gets any heavier he too wants to get indoors as quickly as possible. I have to say that they're quite different to what they like and dislike and they have very different temperaments, still they are (most of the time) good friends and they do like each-other.

Until now we have had a rather mild autumn, there's been a few frost nights before this, but the days have been quite warm and I noticed during the walk that there still was flowers on the rose-bushes. Now I think what's left of the green leaves and flowers will soon be gone, I noticed that those plants who had resisted the approach of winter until now had began wither away. It makes me a bit sad, even if the trees stretching their bare branches toward the sky makes one notice their shapes much better than when they're green, there's not much colour around during the winter. That's even more true when there's no snow on the ground, then it's only different shades of browns in the grass and the trees, a few evergreens here and there and if the weather is cloudy, a muted shade of grey covering everything. 

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Winter shopping

I've been trying to ignore the fact that the winter is closing in, but today I felt I had to go and do some shopping for the winter. I'm not that fond of shopping, well, unless it's for things like books, garden seeds, cross stitch design and kits or fabrics. That's not shopping, that's pleasure even if it just adds to my stash. There's so much I want to do, but don't have enough for all my projects.

Well, I did find a new pair of winter boots, they were the right colour (brown), and they will get me through this winter at least. I dislike black and at least here it's a bit difficult to find shoes and boots in any other colour than black. It's the same with a lot of clothes too, especially during the winter, there's a lot of black clothes and as I'm not going to buy anything black I'm usually just browsing and buying nothing. If I find something it's either the wrong colour or if the colour is right I don't like the model or the size is wrong. That's one reason why I like shopping for fabrics, both for clothes and for things for the home, such as pillows, drapes etc. Then I can do exactly what I want, in the colour that I want.

I also visited the local garden centre and bought two amaryllis (hippeastrum) bulbs and some paperwhite narcissus bulbs. It's getting high time to plant them to get them ready for Christmas. I love amaryllis flowers, especially the small-flowered kinds and nowadays there's so many different kinds to choose from. The ones I bought will be apricot and lime green. I've began to like lime green flowers more and more and apricot/peach/pale orange have always been a favourite of mine.

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