Thursday, May 10

 

 

Yesterday, we bought some cider and celebrated the arrival of summer, knowing that we would wake up to a public holiday. Today we woke up late to a public holiday. I suspected that we should probably refer to it as Ascension Day.

I started the day with an hour-long walk. I listened to a variety of things, including Bruce Cockburn, Darlingside and Philip Glass. The day heated up even more as I walked so that I wished I had shorts on by the time I got back home.

After brunch we went to Plantagen to buy flowers and bulbs. We spent several hours tending to the garden.

While we wander the garden Sunshine lies there sometimes, sleeping, sometimes rolling around, and sometimes watching us. I photograph him in the garden in the rolling-around phase. He watches me and rolls backwards and forwards until he suddenly stops, stretches and falls asleep again.

Irma noticed that Plantagen has a one-day-only yömyynti that starts at 18:00. At 18:05 we will stride through the door looking for all the night bargains. We will not find many, although we will not return home empty-handed.

Most Finns have decided to treat today as the first day of a four day weekend, but we cannot, because we both have things we need to at work tomorrow. Irma has hundreds of small but vital tasks she needs to complete before she goes to New York on Monday, and I have to supervise getting Irma’s two websites online so she can show them when she arrives in New York.

We will go early to bed without bothering to watch the second semi-final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. We saw Sara Aalto get through to the finals on Tuesday.