When the sun is setting, between dusk and darkness, there is a moment when the light turns blue. And the world stops for a heartbeat.
Transition day: laudry, unpacking, preparation, cleaning…
One of the biggest disappointments of becoming an adult is that you don’t magically know how to do things right. For example, packing for a trip.
Or folding a fitted sheet.
There’s something special about a summer cottage sauna. Wood-heated, with water scooped from buckets to wash, it’s wonderfully old-fashioned and impractical. It smells like… summer.
My mum wants to build a modern sauna. We all understand it would be infinitely more practical – and object to it with our last breath.
Washing rugs on the summer cottage pier was fun as a child. Mum would throw buckets of water on my feet as I scrubbed as hard as I could. I still love the smell of Mäntysuopa (pine soap).
As we cleaned the wendy house today, the girls tried the traditional method of cleaning a rug.
Their comment was a dry, “Clearly kids in the old days had a different way of having fun”. Apparently, it was hard work.
The best purchase of the summer – if you ask the girls – has been the massive, almost 5m-long swimming mattress Ukki ordered.
It easily holds both girls standing up, so, wearing a life jackets, Alanna and Kiara have been allowed to push it almost to the middle of the lake by themselves. This is, of course, infinitely cooler than doing it with an adult. Ukki even towed the girls and the mattress all the way to the other side of the strait.
In the deep, the mattress becomes a platform for jumping, diving, kicking, pushing and generally messing around in the water. The best game, naturally, is trying to stay standing when the waves from a passing boat rock the mattress.
Great fun and a great way to build even more confidence in the water.
Now we just need to figure out where an earth to store a thick, 5m mattress for the winter.
In Finnish forests, the flowers tend to bloom early and only briefly. Season is short, so this time of the year, forest are mostly a sea of different greens.
Mushroom season is starting, tho, so it’s worth keeping your eyes on the ground!
Alanna and Kiara both love stories about how people used to live in the old days. The concept of “the old days” is still quite fluid – anything from the 12th century to the year before they were born. Anything earlier than that is simply ‘a very, very long time ago’.
We have never explicitly tried to teach them history, although we do enjoy a good museum. But if they grow up understanding that ‘right’ ideas and ‘proper’ behavior change over time, maybe they will be less likely to dismiss new ideas and different ways of doing things.
But mostly they just find old toilets funny.
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All images from Urajärvi Manor and its beautiful gardens.
There is a beautiful narrow strait just next to our summer cottage. It used to be a protected fish migration route, so no building and no fishing were allowed. I think the regulations have changed somewhat, but parts of the shoreline remain untouched.
As kids – maybe 14-17 years old – my brother and I would occassionally take the boat there for a swim. The strait is so sheltered from the wind that the water was always several degrees warmer than anywhere else.
Some friends become family, even if you only see them occassionally.
It was less than a year ago that Alanna was genuinely surprised to learn that ‘Auntie Maria’ is not actually her aunt (in the real meaning of the word). She knew Maria was not my sister, but “she feels like family”. Fortunately, as Maria is Alanna’s godmother, we were able to establish a link close enough to enable her worldview to remain unchanged.
‘Auntie Maria’ lives in the UK, so it’s a rare treat to have her over, even if only for a brief visit. A walk, a drink, a loooong sauna and a few good conversations later, we have recharged the friendship enough to last until next visit – whether that is in a a few months or a few years.
Best friendships don’t require more than that.
Playing games in the evening is as much a part of the summer cottage holiday as the sauna.
When I was a kid, we played cards with my parents and grandma, mostly Marjapussi and Lupaus. We still occassionally crack open a deck of cards, but we have expanded our repertoire to include all kinds of card and board games. My brother has become our game-finder-in-chief, so we usually discover approximately one new game every summer.
It’s not easy to find a game that works. There are usually 7-8 of us, with very different intrests and attention spans.
Deciding what to play can sometimes take almost as long as playing it.
Today, I have officially surpassed the number of days I managed in my previous 365 challenge, nine years ago.
Still posting.
To mark this momentous day, the weather turned foul with high, gusty winds and intermittent rain.
The perfect occassion to go frisbee golfing with family. We will enjoy the summer, perkele!
Blue Moment 