This view is from Kangasniemi by the lake Puula. Late July.
Monthly Archive for July, 2008
This is the first landscape (seascape) after returning to Finland, taken at the tip of Porkkala peninsula. Of the mainland, this is the closest point to Estonia and only about 37 km from Helsinki centre. The area was leased to the USSR during 1944-56. This is a great place for observing migrating birds–something I am not specialised in. A few days after taking of this picture two Estonians swum across the Finnish gulf, starting from here.
A couple of days before our return to Helsinki our friends took us for picking cherries near Livberze, south-west from Riga.
Here is one more landscape from Kapsede. The cost of heating has grown very much during Latvia’s EU membership. I’ve earlier shown you glimpses of the central heating system of the school and its surroundings (here and here). The system is outdated and will have to be replaced by something else. One proposal is a plant that would be producing electricity from (I hope I got this correct) corn waste. As a side product the faculty could offer heating to its neighbourhood – possibly noise and smells too. The plant would be located somewhere within this panorama. In the village the discussion about the plant is heated.
During the nights, if someone is not boosting their out of date techno, we hear the dogs, cranes, owls and tree frogs discussing. A bit later into the summer and it’d mainly be the crickets.
Half-way through renovation I had to acquire a battery driven drilling machine. It came bundled with a vacuum packed football–for a reason unclear to me.
Name of the place, Kapsede (prolong the first ‘e’), means the place where the dunes sat down. Long ago this was where the Baltic Sea was flushing its surfs. Now the sea is about nine kilometres away. The road from the former important harbour Liepaja to the now more important Ventspils follows the protected ridge of the ancient sea shore. Kapsede is within Liepaja’s immediate reach, yet truly countryside. Liepaja Metallurg’s chimneys are still pouring red smoke though the plant only runs at a fraction of its Soviet time powers.
We have been busy refurbishing Ausma’s kitchen, hence the silence. Under three layers of wallpaper we discovered the Russian Blue, variations of which always seem more like green to me.
Here is the salad recipe I earlier promised:
- green spring cabbage sliced thin
- a bit of grated carrots
- oil
- citric acid
- salt, sugar
- mix and squeeze well
- let stand for a couple of hours