garden – Page 4 – frans goes blog

Terrace and pergola project finished

Last summer, I wrote about our terrace and pergola project; and in May this year I mentioned that we are continuing with the paint layers next. After that, most of May and June free time was spent adding a couple of layers of paint to every surface of the construction. The rafters (or laths) supporting the transparent roofing were painted while still on the ground. The transparent roofing was made from Icopal Fastlock Uni — a strong polycarbonate sheet material, which has UV filtering top layer and a 10 year guarantee. However, I think “Fastlock” is a bit exaggeration on the fixing mechanism: it took a couple of days of dedicated pushing, pulling and nailing to get the thin, 20 cm sheets connected and then solidly fixed to the rafters. The outcome was nice, though. The roof looks pretty neutral (and it is a must in a climate like we have in Finland). Here are some photos:

Freshly painted terrace, doing some washing:

Fixing the “fastlocks”:

The finished terrace & pergola:

You can see the entire story of the project in photos via this link.

Pergola project continues…

As you might remember, I spent the entire last summer vacation building a terrace and pergola into our garden. As these things take their time, this job continues this summer, including some additional constructions to support vines and other plants. The entire thing also needs to be painted (you cannot paint fresh preservative-treated wood as it contains too much water — now, as it is one year later, it is possible). We will be using Valtti Non-Slip from Tikkurila for the floor and Tikkurila Aitamaali for the upper parts. More photos in Flickr:

IT in the garden

Lying in our garden swing, I can currently see six wifi access points — that’s urban nature for you! 🙂 Comparing LCD screen and paper (Luontokuva magazine), it is clear that traditional paper is still far superior when reading anything outside. The screen in AA1 is very good, but still very pale in sunlight. Wonder if e-ink/ebook reader screen would make a real difference to the benefit of IT? At the moment — closing this webtop and app is the best way to relax, so: enjoy the summer, everyone!

Autumn vacation

I have been spending this week with my family, after a few months of busy working and traveling schedule. It has been mostly raining (slowing down some of the gardening work), but this has allowed me to spend more time with my son (pictured). Luka is growing very fast, running around and learning new words and tricks every day. Glad we got these few days together to learn to know each other a bit better (last autumn, when he just had born, I was all the time traveling around the world, and promised to change the situation this year).

Visiting Admiral

This and the next two weeks are probably the busiest ones in entire Autumn term (at least that is what I keep telling myself — we’ll see). There are many wonderful things in this fall, too, including spectacular crop yield of mushrooms. Also, Laura’s work on flowering plants is starting to yield results, as this visiting Admiral also proves. Other regulars have included peacock butterflies (neitoperhonen) and Camberwell Beauty/the mourning cloak (suruvaippa).

Terrace and pergola project

This summer has mostly been spent in the garden. Our small terrace and pergola project proved to be much more extensive than I thought in the beginning. The part that took longest was making the foundations. It might be that we were a bit overcautious in terms of frost isolation, but it would had been shame if the entire construction would tilt to its side after the first proper winter. I think we moved more than eight tons of earth away Continue reading “Terrace and pergola project”

Summer started

After backlash of winter, this weekend is when we can officially announce that summer is back. Nights can still be a bit cold, but the sun is bright, skies blue and there is awful lot of garden work to do. (Had a little birthday tapas dinner out in the garden today.)

Spring arrives

This week there has been over 10C temperatures in Southern Finland, and the sun has been shining. Downside has been that there has been too much dust and other particles in the air. Our garden is also waking up, as the crocuses (pictured) show.

The makkara summer

The makkara summer
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Remaining true to the summer holiday spirit, I try to concentrate on the essentials, like taking photos of makkara.

Bumblebee house

Bumblebee house
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

My birthday present this year: a bumblebee house. With its small colony of “kontukimalainen” (wonder what that species is in English?) these busy new neighbours of us will hopefully take care of visiting all the flowers in those fruit trees and berry bushes. Search for “pörrinpesä” if you are interested in getting your own.