Fair-y frenzy

I did think I'd spend more than two hours at the Helsinki Spring Fair. It was my first time, and it was interesting but rather different from what I expected. I thought there'd be more stuff for small-time gardeners, tools and such, and opportunities to buy e.g. soil, border stones, yard carpentry work and so on at a discount. I expected a heavy presence by Plantagen and Bauhaus, selling houseplant gear, garden furniture, and decorative features. Instead, it was mostly manufacturers' booths featuring power tools, outdoor jacuzzis, entire log cottages, and presentation pieces showing entire small (extremely fake) gardens of unimaginative design. There were half a dozen booths where you could buy plants, and they were very crowded. Flower shops sold tulips, scillas, daffodils and other typical spring plants at prices higher than your average supermarket.
Mr Thumb and I had a good time, though, even though we're not in the market for a jacuzzi larger than our bathroom and sauna combined, or a stone patio, or a robot lawnmower. We looked at solar panels for the cottage (... and I'll talk more about that later!), found out that there are incinerating toilets with the heart-breaking brand name of Cinderella, and laughed our arses off at those jacuzzis. I mean really, one of them was fake marble! :D  I'm sorry now I didn't take a picture.

Nice plants, nice water feature (which to Mr Thum looked
like a mortar shell), nowhere to buy such water features.

This one I want. This is awesome. 

This might be a nice thing to put in the middle
of the lawn in the back yard.

This is what the turf bricks that make up the
flowerbed now falling apart must have
looked like when brand new. 

Mr Thumb bought me tulips, once I had gently hinted that I
wanted some. I subtly said: "Buy me some of those tulips."

Bulbs, roots, things... I may have lost it a bit.
Also, I have no idea at this point what it was I bought :D 

I'll leave you to simmer in anticipation a bit longer, waiting for the post about that cottage...

Planning the back yard

1. This planter-y box will be dismantled in the spring anyway because it's falling apart. The plan now is to empty much of it and put in tulip and daffodil bulbs for spring colour, and move the last plants in the spring.

2. The planter at the back of the yard will be mostly emptied out. I'm thinking rhododendrons; or maybe move the hydrangea in the front yard here.

I had a tentative plan (a more long-term one) to take out the planter altogether and move the deck here, but it turns out the ground under the existing deck is basically just rock and any grass would just slide off eventually.

3. This is the back of the planter box. There are creepers here that aren't actually allowed to creep up the wall, because it's not our wall. Any solutions would be welcome. I'm considering suggesting to the Powers That Be (and I have no idea who that actually is - the housing association?) that we be allowed to put up a free-standing screen or something and only attach it to the wall at the upper end.

Mind you, the previous owners had rebelliously screwed in supports...

Planting stuff

Suddenly my Facebook feed showed me a link about garden planning (in Finnish) with the rider "August and September is the best time to plant perennials". Why thank you, yes, I think I will buy some more plants this season... Anybody got a spare 2000 € I could have? Also, could someone distract Mr Thumb while I quickly run to the shops?

I have plans, yes, I have such plans...

Marketanpuisto, part deux

Myself, Mr Thumb and younger daughter S went to Marketanpuisto together. Everybody played Pokémon Go, and I and Mr Thumb admired plants.

Bonsai birches!

This looks just really great, the rhythm is good and somehow the plants showcase each other. 

I'm thinking of filling the sunny side of the fence with peonies in the future. These were awesome.

Grey alder with tufty leaves (alnus incana f. angustissima, hapsuharmaaleppä). Love it!

This just looks really good. Much better in real life than in the pic :/

Clearing the raspberry block

Today I've mostly been digging in the garden.

This morning I decided that this was the perfect day to move one of the raspberry bushes so that it wouldn't block access to the garden gate (once get a proper garden gate, that is). What made it perfect? Well, the fact that I was inspired to. Nothing in this household happens by design; if it's going to happen at all, it'll be ex tempore.

The gate corner before work started

 There was sooooo much soil and roots and soil and rocks and soil. Gaah.

I'd got to this point when H showed up and asked where I was planning to put all that soil. I made like I knew what I was doing.

 The hawthorn hedge on the other side of th fence keeps invading our side. The crabapple tree (just out of the picture on the right) has roots everywhere. Lucky thing H and his manly muscles were there to sort out the worst. The biggest root we cut was as thick as my wrist, but there were lots of finger-thick ones.

Together H and I lifted the whole bush with as much of the roots intact as possible; unfortunately not much of the root system made it, hardly any bigger ones at all.

After that H's wrist decided it wanted no part in these fun games, so I went on alone. At the end of the day there was actually too little soil rather than too much, so that worked out all right.

Now the gate corner is only waiting for the new gate to be put in! We'll also get some more stones for the path.

Dead things, or Should v. want

I'm doing my best to follow my new, self-valuing guideline "if it's dead or it otherwise stinks, just get rid of it", and attacked the greensplosion flowerbed from the previous post. I took out most of the phlox stalks that stuck out among the alchemillas, partly because they were catching the wind and bringing all the other plants down with them but mostly because they just looked out of place there. I trimmed the left side of the bed until it's nicely separated from the next one and the front until I could see the edge of the grass. I didn't have the supports to prop up the long stalks of the other plants. I'm still considering whether to keep that bed as it is over this summer or whether to pull everything up now.

Before

After

Fixin' in up

What search terms do you even use to find out whether and how thoroughly you're supposed to clean the flowerbeds in the spring? I went for "kukkapenkin siistiminen keväällä" ("tidying flowerbeds in spring") and the second hit was titled, appropriately, Kukkapenkin kevätkunnostus (fixing up your flowerbeds for spring) which gives a good overview. (1) The first hit was to an article warning people not to do it too early or too thoroughly or you'll ruin your garden, true to the Finnish mentality of never do anything in case you screw it up.

We went shopping on Saturday and bought a pressure washer, some deck cleaner and tinted wood oil. This is why:

The deck isn't in great condition and needs to be sanded and oiled. The fences could use some cleaning, too, but I have no idea if using a pressure washer on painted wood would just strip the paint off.

(We think this might have been a gate originally, but it certainly won't open now and there are bushes and things on both sides.)

I'm all fired up now to start cleaning things, but of course I've promised to take our resident Horsey Girl to the Tampere horse fair today and Firstborn rides along to visit her friend.

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(1) I find my materials in Finnish because it's likely to produce more relevant hits than English. There "may" be some gardening stuff in English that's more relevant in, say, Surrey or California or South Africa than it is in cold, dark Finland with its acidic soil.