Saturday Shopping Spree

There is a truly surprising shop/supermarket (Saaristokauppa Svens) in the middle of a forest in southern Kaskinen.  The building looks nothing much, but once you open the door you get really amazed.  You never know what you are going to find. There's hardware, like tools, paint and various wood products for building. Then there are gadgets you might need at home, rubber boots, home decoration items and even clothes. Outside you will find garden stuff.  And to complete the mixture, there's an old bus parked outside, which has seen its best days as a mobile store delivering groceries to people living in the countryside far away from shops.  The bus is not in driving condition, but the fridges still function, so they sell some foodstuff there as well. They just put an ad when they get some Baltic herring and by the time I'm free from work it's already been sold out.  In the summer there's potatoes, tomatoes etc.  Even beer!

The violas above come from Svens' selection. They look quite nice in the old wheel that I found behind my outbuilding. I had seen a photo in Pinterest with herbs in a cartwheel, but this paricular wheel had been painted with some poisonous-looking green stuff, probably in the 1970's, judging by the shade of the colour. As there are still bound to be nights with temperatures below zero, half the wheel still needs to be filled later.  Not that many flowers survive minus degrees.

My Mom's youngest sister Vuokko runs an art gallery some two houses away from my house on the opposite side of the street.  She had just opened a new exhibition of flower arrangements. Vuokko is a textile artist by profession and used to work as a designer with a textile company in Helsinki.  She moved to Kaskinen fourteen years ago, a year after my parents, and running the gallery is a both a hobby and a passion for her.  Apart from the flower theme, there were Raija Tikkanen's ceramics on display.  I really like Raija's usage of colours and her fun ideas. Vuokko also sells postcards, some books, old and new, as well as some jewellery, so in case you need to buy a present, you can always go and check what there is at Vuokko's!  I visited the gallery yesterday to talk about how and when I could help her with the gallery now that Mom moved away.  But we ended up drinking coffee and talking about a lot of other things instead.  LOL.

This is how the old fish smokery looks like today.  Marja and Seppo had started selling their smoked salmon and other fish products at eleven.  I went there at 12.30. and there was hardly anything left.  I bought some fish pies and a piece of salmon.  Delicious!  But there was more: free coffee and cake (Made by Roos)!!!  People were actually sitting on the new deck enjoying their coffee and cake.  And the sun, of course. Pretty chilly, though, as the wind from the sea was freezing cold...There's still snow in places on our island!

I walked my dog Mollie in the old fish harbour.  She's not in great shape at the moment as she has problems with her joints.  We have seen two vets, bought four antibiotics.  Nothing has worked so far. But there she walked happily smelling all kinds of interesting smells and tried to rub herself in a plastic bag full of dog shit.  So I guess she's improving.  I really do hope so, as she is a lovely character, and only two years old.  She also liked the smoked salmon a lot, but I didn't give her too much because of the salt.

Sun, swans and some gardening

As planned, we planted some seeds and plants last weekend.  The April weather immediately gets better when the sun appears, which is not so often...  Most of the time it is like in the North Pole!

Yesterday I went to the southermost tip of Kaskinen (Lipinnokka/Ådskär) to check if the annual gathering of swans was still going on. It wasn't. Last year we counted as many as some 40 of them.  Mind you, they didn't much like us and the dogs coming close and got rather angry.  Last weekend we only saw 16.  Didn't go too near, no need to upset the beasts. 

Appearantly swans have a meeting in spring to see who are still there, to find a partner and to decide about which area each couple will land to build there nests.  Either we arrived when the meeting was partly over or a lot of the swans residing in Kaskinen area have met their destiny during the winter months. Hoping for the first, of course.  Swans may be protective of their area and even agressive when they feel threatened.  Still, they look lovely and majestic and bring some hope of spring coming up to the north.

Fog or no fog

This time of the year you never know what you're going to see when you pull the curtains.  There are clear sunny days, but also fog or mist.  Mind you, it's April the 20th, and some of the snow still hasn't melted here!  I have a bag full of gardening stuff I have bought, but still too early to get started with most of it.

I'm lucky with my new garden as I don't need to start from scratches.  Mom has planted a lot of what I really really like to have in a garden, like roses, clematises, rhododendrons, and peonies. Some date back to her time in the valley of the Loire in France, where she had a lovely garden with a view of the river.   Also there's rhubarb, strawberries, gooseberries, currants and raspberries as well as some apple and cherry trees, and even a grapewine in the greenhouse/garden room.

I my most wanted list for the garden are some climbers, like Flammentanz and Northern Star, which can normally survive even the harsh winters on our island. And I wish to have a plum and a pear tree. Also lilacs, which for me mean the beginning of summer.  We used to have a whole fence of them in our summer cottage in Turku archipelago when I was little, and we usually drove there for the first time when school was over in the end of May, which meant they were in full bloom and smelled heavenly!  I would like to have the same effect here, eventually, but that would mean removing a lot of  other plants in order to place the lilacs along the southern fence.

We also plan to have wooden boxes for all kinds of edible stuff.  No chance of being quite self-sufficient with the limited time and space that we have, but still it would be nice to have some fresh herbs and vegetables.  The boxes for them have been planned but not made yet...

So far there exist some chilli plants as well as basil.  We planted some other seeds earlier on, but the seeds were too old and nothing came up.  Now I'm really looking forward to my youngest to arrive for the weekend as she's also keen on plants and gardening, and we'll be able to make some plans and sow some seeds, too.

As the plot is relatively small, my aim is to minimise the space dedicated to cars.  My parents have used the old garage, which meant they needed quite a lot of space for their twenty-year-old car to turn around.  I'm planning to use the garage for storage and keep the car in the street in front of the house. However, I still can't get completely rid of cars in the garden because we need plenty of firewood, which must be brought into the shed somehow.  Our neighbour has the same problem, so there must be a route for both of us to use to drive through both gardens.

Next month there will appear a place dedicated to swapping plants outside the flea market in the centre of the town, the idea being that  you can bring your residue and get someone else's instead.  A great idea, especially as the plants you get from other islanders are bound to survive here.  The climate is far from optimal, so the right choice of plants is really important in case you want to succeed and enjoy your garden.

In other towns fences around the gardens can be some two metres high, which allows you to have a favourable micro-climate in your garden.  In Kaskinen, the town plan only allows 1.3 m fences, which leave the gardens open to the winds from the sea, unless there are buildings around them, of course.  Normally I'm all for historic accuracy, but I think two-metre fences would make a world of difference for growing things. But it is as it is and we're sure to try and make the most of it!

Yesterday's news

Kaskinen used to be a fishing town.  We still have the area of the old fishing harbour roughly as it was in olden times.  Today, old local families own the cute little huts along the shore. These are mainly used for storage or recreation, but there are some activities connected to the old purpose of the place.  Nets are being dried in the sun, fish is smoked.  There is also a fishing museum with plenty of different types of old fishing equipment as well as some old photos of the harbour and people who used to work there.  Once a summer there is an event that can be translated as Fishing Harbour Days. Anyone who is dressed like in the old days is allowed to come and sell products that fit the spirit of the event, like various crafts, food etc.

Last weekend's Ilta-Sanomat, probably the most popular national tabloid in our country, published a two-page feel-good story about two lovely people who run the fish smokery in the area today.  Their products are excellent but that's not the only thing.  They have landscaped the entrance and done some major repairs in the building.  They have also rebuilt the huge dock in front of the smokery. Such a lot of work but a great result!

These days, the fish  shop is very different from what it was like during the previous owner, Keijo, whose fish was delicious, too. It was nice to go there as he always seemed to be in a good mood.  The shop was dark and smelly and what my children liked best was the singing crab on the counter.  I think everybody in town was sorry when he passed away and left the smokery empty.

Fortunately, Marja and Seppo had by that time bought an old shopping centre in the main street and were repairing it.  They bought the smokery as well and have done an amazing job modernising the building and its surroundings.  Seppo has learnt to smoke fish and Marja bakes fish delicacies.  The shop is cosy and clean. But the place is now open about once a month only, so you will have to get there early to be in time to get your fish or fish pies!!!

The story about Marja and Seppo attracted a lot of attention among town dwellers, and, in consequence, the local shop run out of Ilta-Sanomat.  I had to drive to the neighbouring town to get a copy for myself and my aunt, too.  Later I borrowed my copy to a friend.  The crying need for the papers was finally solved by a friendly soul who took her paper to the local library for those to read who had been left out.  Again I would like to point out how friendly people are in this town.  Good at problem-solving, too!

I took the photo (above) of a drawing in an exhibition of our art club Marina in Spectra art house in Kristiinankaupunki. It is by Harri Karvonen, who had a series of four drawings of the harbour area nicely set up in one wall of Spectra house. I liked them a lot.  The chairman of Spectra art club was amazed at how many active and talented artists there are in such a small town as Kaskinen.  I'm not amazed.  Once something good gets started, it tends to grow.  And there have always been artists of various kinds in this town.

Tracing St Eskil

Still frosty mornings on the island. My parents arrived yesterday from southern Finland and said Kaskinen was the only place on their way with a snow cover.  The cold sea keeps the island cold in the spring.  But in the autumns, the warmth stays here a bit longer than in the inland, so we a get a little bit back.

Today I cut the berry bushes and apple and cherry trees.  Things you can do even if you don't have your voice.  I'm starting to feel better after the flu, but as often happens in my case, my voice has disappeared.  I went to see the doctor again and was adviced to blow bubbles in a bottle. (?!?) We'll see if that works.

The first harvest can be seen in the photo: some laurel leaves drying in the kitchen.  Even if there still is a lot of snow in the garden, I'm starting to feel really hopeful.  The sun is shining, the snow melting, and the first tulips are coming up from the ground.  Looking forward to picking some nettles and rhubarb next month.

Got some criticism from my daughter when she had finally had the time to read my blog.  She was so disappointed about Cafe Olivia that I decided to keep the old name.  So, even if the place is new, the name will remain Cafe Hilda.

My mobile, for some reason, seems to think we live in St Eskil's Street.  Close, I admit, but not quite. There is one house between.

When we first arrived in Kaskinen, I wondered who St Eskil was.  I had never heard about him before, and yet there was an island and a street named after him here.  I tried to ask the local folks about him, but they didn't have a clue.

Eskil's mystery  haunted us and we started making up stories about him.  There was an old carpet in a plastic bag in our attic and my daughter thought it was the body of Eskil.  My former business partner, today a tourism teacher up in the north, had a vision of a grand tourism event in Kaskinen. His idea was that St Eskil (elected yearly e.g.among local policians who wanted a moment of fame) would walk along St Eskil's Street with all the unmarried maidens of the town following him. Having reached the jetty at the end of the street, he would throw the maidens into the sea one by one.  People from near and far would come to see all this, and we could sell the cheering crowd some beer and sausages. A bit far-fetched as we had a jewellery and boots shop, and had no license to sell beer, anyway.  And why the maidens would have wanted to be thrown into the sea I do not know.

Anyway, only a lot later did I meet in Vaasa by chance a lady named Sirkka Mäki, a historian who has done some research on early pilgrims to Finland in the Middle Ages. The only one of them generally know to us Finns is the unfortunate St Henrik, who suffered an evil and sudden death on the ice of Lake Köyliö, the killer being a farmer, whose wife St Henrik had allegedly seduced.

According to Ms Mäki, St Eskil arrived from Sweden in order to spread the new religion and landed on what we call Eskilsö, the Swedish name meaning Eskil's Island.  He founded a parish and even built a chapel, the ruins of which are still somewhere to be found.  We have been searching but haven't found them yet.  Not surprising, as we don't really know what we are looking for.  After all these centuries probably a fairly modest rock formation.  So I guess there will be a lot of packed lunches for us around Eskil's Island for many summers to come.

In the Bedroom

Most pieces of  furniture in the house go a long way back with me.  And boy have they moved!!! Some have stuck with me the latest ten moves. Of course I always tend to hope the current home to be the last and final, but so far no luck!

As always, my interior design strategy has been to get started with one room by picking one or two items that are bound to be placed there, then rummage through the remaining ones in order to try and find some that I believe to go together with the first ones.  And so, step by step, room by room I have used the existing stock. Mind you, there are some left-overs, which I plan to put for sale in the garage.  So it's going to be Cafe Olivia + garage sale on Saturday the 19th of May.

Unfortunately not all the pieces of furniture are quite perfect yet for inviting people to pop in.  For example I had totally forgotten there was a loose part in my precious inheritance, a wooden sofa I had left to be stored elsewhere.  So, having just and just managed to fit the sofa on our tiny trailer, I happily drove home, only to find out that the piece that had always been loose since my childhood had flown somewhere along my route of some 45 km.  Mom said:' Go and find it', but for once, I didn't obey.

Filling all the rooms went surprisingly well, really, and we now have more than enough of pieces in each of the rooms. I deliberately left my own bedroom last to see which particular items would be left over from the other rooms.  But no worries, there is a bed, a desk, a cupboard, kind of, two chairs and some paintings I like a lot, made by my grandfather and his brother, both teachers by profession, yet artists in heart.

The painting my children have particularly despised looks very nice on the wall of my room.  It was only recently I learnt  why one of my daughters had hated the painting so much that I had had to hide it behind a wall in our home when she was young.  It was not because she was ashamed of the group of naked ladies in the painting, a scene probably based on our national epos, Kalevala.  Instead, my daughter had thought the ladies to be in the process  of committing some creepy group suicide by a method of suffocating themselves with some kind of plastic substance coming out of the ground. Well, see for yourselves and decide!

Cafe Olivia?

Gulls screeching above the sea one block away make me think about the builder of this house, John Saxen.  Not much can be be found out about him, but in the book 'the History of Kaskinen' (available in both Finnish and Swedish, 15€, Blahdin puoti, Bladh House, open Saturdays between 11 and 15) he is mentioned for his habit of forecasting the weather by the conduct of birds flying outside our upstairs window. Being a sea captain knowing the weather was of course vitally important for him.

Now, there are three proper high windows upstairs, but we have come to the conclusion it must have been the window facing south, the one in our cupboard room.  We call it by that name simply because my Mom placed some 16 cupboards in it.  Don't even ask!

Captain Saxen actually wasn't the original builder of the house, as some parts date back to the 1840's. He just bought the property and enlarged the house to its current size with six rooms and a kitchen downstairs plus a cold attic.  Before my parents there was only one separate room upstairs, the current cupboard room, so that must have been the room where Saxen spent his time birdwatching.

Yet it is the window facing west towards the Baltic that  one would assume optimal for observing birds. It is our room with a view of the sea. (Photo in my previous blog.) For me, the easiest weather forecast is to go up to that room and have a look as the weather here normally comes from the south-west.  No rocket science, really!

Saxen's wife's name was Olivia, and I think I will call our next pop up cafe after her.  How does it sound? Cafe Olivia.

By the way, some may wonder why I should blog in English.  Well, this is a predominantly bilingual town.  I wouldn't like to go into the trouble of writing first in Finnish, then translating it all into Swedish. For me writing in English is the easy way out.  Plus my friends abroad (Hello Margaret!) can understand my texts, too.  Still, feel free to comment on any language!

Some Sunset

The Spirit of Kaskinen

Still not well having coughed my lungs out all night I needed more sick leave. Phoned the local health centre and got an appointment for 10.30.  Super.  The centre is located just two blocks away. Easy.  Politicians seem to think big is beautiful when it comes to health services, but I think small units can bring the idea of being customer-friendly to a whole new level.

But the true spirit of the town hit me with full force via Facebook when I was having my first cup of tea in the morning.  There was an ad on Kaskinen Notice Board (Kaskisten ilmoitustaulu if you want to look it up) for free cakes!!!First come first served. So you could just go and get a cake!!  And they were not just any cakes, but magnificent, really beautifully decorated ones with chocolate leaves, blueberries, roses and stuff.  Mind you, you needed to take your own cake box with! Not too much to ask, really...  The cakes were leftovers from an advertising event of my my friends' company Made by Roos.  A lot of happy families having a treat this morning!

It is typical of this town to have some really nice events.  Some visitors claim this looks like an empty town with few people in the streets.  True, no heavy traffic, no queuing, no rush.  Still there's always something going on, activities to take part in, excursions organised.  One year there were as many as eight Pop Up cafes and restaurants on the International Restaurant Day, our Cafe Hilda one of them. (Pictures above.)

I said I was having a cup of tea.  Normally I drink coffee in the morning, lots of it, but right now with my heart-beat over a hundred per minute I can't stand the idea of coffee.  So porridge and tea it is.

Bye for now!

Hi,

Slow morning on the island.  Our move from our blue house to the yellow one was finally completed last week, completed meaning our stuff is inside the new house.  Only the canoe and our second car still remain in the old premises as the spring has been slow and they are still stuck in hard slowly-melting snow.  And also the new owner promised to bring the stuff that had been left in the dishwasher. LOL.

Influenza hit us when the stress about emptying our belongings and moving them was over.  It was a slow move and took several weeks.  The only vehicle used was my tiny red Citroen C1, a surprisingly roomy thing, though. The bigger stuff we simply put on a tarp and pulled along the icy street one by one.  Easy, as this is probably the only town in the world where kickledges are more common than cars if the winter is good, as it clearly was this year. Also, the distance between the houses is probably less than a hundred metres.

Still feeling quite weak after five days of slow life and a lot of echinacea tea.  The piles and boxes of stuff somebody wants to keep and nobody knows where to locate will have to wait.  Yesterday I had an active moment and attacked the corner where some leftover paint bottles, brushes etc lie supposedly hidden, and decided to make an effort to get rid of some of the paint.  Got two small pieces of furniture almost painted, rather badly I regret to say.  Painting felt unusually nice as I couldn't smell the paint at all!  I didn't realise I had totally lost my sense of smell until I had to use turpentine. It that stuff doesn't smell, then you just have no sense of smell! Well, smell or no smell, the paint still had an unwanted effect on my infected lungs and I ended up sleeping for three hours in the middle of the day.

The reason why I so desperately wanted to be rid of the paint rests is the discovery that our new house, even it it's considerably larger than the old one, has no space for stuff that must not freeze, like a CELLAR.  So I will have to use the paint or keep it in one of the rooms, where  the storage space is limited to what it was in the beginning of the 20th century.  We just can't spare any of the precious closets or cupboards for paint bottles, however much of our wardrobe we discard.

But whereas these are just minor issues, the big picture looks promising.  Our house can easily room me and all my adult children whenever they choose to come home, which seems to be constantly. One of the rooms was left to the use of my parents who sold me the house.  They spent the total of twelve years here and did some nice renovations.  They fixed the roof, renovated the bathroom, added a small sauna, took some of the attic space in use as a guest room and a large rec room with Mum's looms, Dad's tools etc.

Our town is the smallest in Finland.  It is an old fishing town located on a small island on the west coast of Finland.  For three decades town life was largely dominated by a pulp mill, which closed down a few years ago.  After that it would seem a lot more young families are getting interested in our lifestyle. Our blue house was just bought by a family with a toddler. Great!

When I first came to Kaskinen in the early 1990's, there where a lot of abandoned houses. There were hundreds of flats in the area that was originally built for the workers of the mill. The workers, however, had bought or built houses of their own. Today, the once empty flats are inhabited again, as some twenty years ago the town took an active role and renovated them and sold cheap.  That meant a lot more inhabitants and a nicer entrance to the town.  No more ghost houses. Yet, we still do have some of those as well.  They mainly belong to people who live elsewhere, like in Sweden, and refuse to sell or refurbish them.  Shame really, as today there is a lot of interest in rescuing old houses.  I wish something could be done about this.  I'm house crazy, if you didn't get it by now!!

I named my blog Foggy Island, not because it's always foggy here, but because we do have some of the most amazing fogs.  Especially in early autumn and early spring the temperature of the sea results in various types of fogs.  I'll add photos later. Now back to bed, I need to get well soon.

Yours,
Ms K.

P.S, Don't mind the spelling mistakes, I'm slightly dyslectic, so I always try to re-read everything and correct, but sometimes my letters may appear in wrong order.  I'm sure you will understand anyway...