Saturday, July 21, 2007

Countryside on Two Sides

This is a rather boring post, merely accounting this weeks activities: visiting family and the Finnish countryside.

In the beginning of the week we (Tommi and I) visited my father and his wife at their summerplace Tomtebacka near Inkoo. The name of the place means literally an elf hill. If you're curious about the scandinavian elfs, check out what Wikipedia has to say about Tomte, "tonttu" in Finnish. Those are the ones that hang along with Santa Claus. (Since – in case you hadn't yet noticed – this is an educational blog about the Mysterously Beautiful Land of All Things Finnish.)

Here's a picture from Tomtebacka. I was fascinated by the blue and yellow flowers swimming in the neighbour's field. They are weeds so they should not be interesting in the least. You'll find a couple of more pictures here.

















To balance the week, on Thursday we drove to visit Tommi's mother and her husband near Hamina. There will be another picture gallery later – that is to say as soon as I have time to go through the 200+ pictures – from Kotka where we went to gape at some quite amazing ships.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

The "green things in the background" in your picasa album could be hops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops).
Lovely pictures :)

Saara said...

Oh, I think you're probably right! It is a climbing plant in the picture and hops are quite common as ornamental plants in Finland.

The Finnish name for the plant is "humala" which also means drunkenness, quite appropriately.

Leevi Lehto said...

They are hops all right.

Soberly,

Leevi (the Father)

Saara said...

Tänks!