From yesterdays walkies in the forest behind Mum's neighbourhood.

@lerxst There's been some -40C this year, up north, but it's been consistently quite cold (-20C to -30C) for so long that the energy costs have gotten higher than they should be!
I am not looking forward to the snow melt, when all of this is going to turn into miserable brown slush

@weezmgk Oh yes, winter sounds! (Thank you for sparing all of my cookies!)

One marked difference to Finland: There's no mountains anywhere, and even the highest fells are like dinky little baby mountains, after the Ice Ages scraped the mountain ranges into little rock nubbins

One more, why not. I don't think it's very special as a photo, but it is a very quintessential view of a normal little forest in Finland, and thus perhaps of some interest.

There's this Finnish thing, where you might gaze upon the most beautiful pool of water in the deepest of wild, untouched Lapland, fresh water glittering in the sunlight and teeming with fish, its shores lush with berries and forage, and when a cartographer from the south comes in and asks you what it's called, to put it on a map, you say it's "Onpahanvaanlampi" or "well it's a pond, innit" in Finnish, because it is just a pond, millions like it...

I watched a video once, where an immigrant was like "Fucking STOP it, Finns, it's wonderful! What's wrong with you!" because apparently we're just. Not suitably appreciative?

@sinituulia I think it applies to a lot of countries though. You don't appreciate the beauty of what you see every day because it's just... normal to you.

@sinituulia You got used to it

@missmelanieh True! But we also culturally generally don't talk positively about anything, unless we're boasting to a neighbouring town or something, to show them up... It's in very limited circumstances where you're "allowed" to consider anything of yours special or wonderful!

@sinituulia Sounds rather British - we have a knack for understating things.

@missmelanieh It's very similar, yeah. We do love British humour, too, all the old classics like Faulty Towers, Jeeves and Wooster, and Keeping Up Appearances and such have always been wildly popular. I haven't owned a TV in almost 20 years so I don't know what people watch now, but... It's something we innately get and enjoy

@sinituulia Explains why I feel an affinity with Finland as well. There is just something familiar about the way we seem to think about things. I really need to visit at point.

@missmelanieh Very Finnish knee jerk reaction I had: "Ah, well, I don't know if there's anything to see or do here, might not be worth so much hassle..."

Yeah. Anyway. A lot of people seem to enjoy it here! Maybe eventually they'll even manage to get that continental Europe train connection going, like they've been talking about for decades... Just try not to come here during the the loska season, when the snow melts and it's miserable!

@sinituulia the midwest US is also a glacial plain, at least between the Rocky Mountains and Appalachian chain. I've seen snow twice since coming to Australia in 1996. Once was able to build a snowman. It melted an hour later. Snow didn't crunch!

I would visit snow occasionally- it can be lovely as you showed in Finland- but I am ok without slush that squishes into my shoes!

@missmelanieh @sinituulia When I lived in London and took a train elsewhere in the UK I used to be awestruck with the views*, but no one around be was similarly impressed! I've learned to appreciate Finnish nature in a different way after that.

*Sure there were bits that were *literally* rubbish, but the more north you went the more gorgeous it looked to lil ol' me.

@sinituulia I am envious. This winter I’ve only seen few centimetres of snow, most of which is gone by afternoon.

@sinituulia Oh, it's so beautiful!

And you have lingonberries growing wild in your forests? My Dad's parents were Swedish immigrants, so I have had lingonberry preserves--I don't think fresh berries are available in the US--but even in NYC, where you can find almost anything, lingonberry preserves are available in only a few stores and cost more than other preserves. But they're delicious and it's worth it.

@sinituulia The Scots Pine, the least-known cultivar to be bred from Brassica Oleracea.

@sinituulia I've got a heap of grey clouds outside my window, so obviously biased today, but: oh wow, the light in that. It's the angle of the light.

@leahbobet It was a very crisp and pretty day! And of course it wasn't very late but the days are still fairly short

@adriano Brassica, my beloved 🥦

@Karen5Lund Those, Eurasian blueberries, cloudberries, crowberries, bog bilberry... There's also a couple of berries that are not edible, but I don't even know their names beyond "don't eat that"
You can just walk into any forest and gather them to your heart's content, as long as it's roughly the season and you're willing to get blood-let by all the insects. My mum usually goes out at some point, with a bunch of buckets, and then spends a couple of days removing leaves and twigs from her catch so she can actually freeze and preserve them... But you can also just get the jam from any grocery store, just not the fresh ones.