Spring Flowers

One of the things that's really surprised me is how different the weather is here.  Now I realize that sounds completely moronic, and I don't mean that I wasn't expecting unfamiliar weather here--I'm in the far north after all!  It's more the little things that get to me: the constantly changing wind directions, the lack of rain in this green environment, and the timing of the seasons.  The whole idea that it wasn't consistently above freezing until mid-April and that there still weren't leaves on the trees in early May.  Even in hard Irish or Jura winters, we didn't face that.

In the last 2 weeks we've had another of those changes that has stunned me.  When Debbie and Todd were here the first 2 weeks in May, Todd took the picture below of the walls around the city of Tallinn in Estonia.  There was the slightest hint of green on some trees, but many who weren't sheltered were still sticks.

If you knew where to look, though, you could see the signs of spring coming.  A few days later we were wandering around downtown Helsinki and, for the first time, we saw both daffodils and tulips together.  (BTW, do tulips always bloom after daffodils?  I thought it was the other way around, but it sure hasn't been here.)   It's funny how that affects you after such a long winter, but even now just looking at the pictures makes me smile.

We also saw this other flower that looks like some type of lily but with the flower facing downwards rather than upwards or sideways.  It seems to be a pretty common spring flower here, but I haven't a clue about what it is.

These pictures were taken on May 10, and certainly when we headed up north we went back to the twig look, but by May 17 when they left the trees here had decent sized leaves and all the grass had greened up.  Now the weather is absolutely gorgeous, in the 60s & 70s during the day and high 40s  and 50s at night.  I have, of course, resumed residence on the porch on the weekends.

In other words, from winter to summer in less than a month.  I don't know if I could ever get used to this.