April 25th 2012

I think officially for me today this has been the nicest, warmest, absolutely beautiful day in Espoo. The sun is out. We only had to layer once to go out. I took some pictures of the shops that are around us right now. They have varied since we have been here. I love the location where we live. I have always thought it would be fun to live above a shop, so that everything is just right there. The long winter has made me appreciate the warm weather we had today even if it is only 11 degrees(52 degrees F). I am so excited to go exploring this summer and see all that Finland has to offer.

This is taken from my balcony. They have put out seating now since the spring has officially arrived. It's a little sandwich shop called Picnic, it's a little sandwich shop.

 

This is the view from the other direction. The little stand down there is selling strawberries, blueberries and green beans. The store behind it is Stockmann. Very nice department store. It also has a grocery store. Very expensive. Just window shop here mostly. haha.

Growing a jungle

So as a family we have decided that we are going to plant a balcony garden this year. We decided to start growing indoors first because it still gets pretty cold outside at night (oh and during the day. haha). We have about 5 books about gardening that we have collected over the years and we finally began to thumb through them. About 10 minutes later we realized that we have no clue about gardening. So with a lot of seeds and faith we added dirt and water. Over the weeks we have seen our mini jungle form and have been so excited about it. I realize now that we have over planted and am so sad to have to sacrifice some of these plants so that others can grow. I am so excited to have our mini garden and will update the progress for it. We have started it inside because it is still cold outside, but hopefully it will warm up soon.



This is our little strawberry plants. Which I didn't think I was going to see because the seeds were so itty-bitty , but they surprised me and started to sprout.




It is now November 15 and our garden has not really bloomed but it does have determination and that is why I have not given up on it yet.

We did get a mini green pepper. Some mini tomatoes. If there was a contest for best mini garden I think we would win. :)