Preparing for the winter

This weekend has included some work to prepare for the winter. Yesterday I installed a net in the patio, to keep both birds and neighbour's cat away. Funny enough, one would imagine the cat would have kept the birds in control but no, there has been too much bird poo so I had to take actions.

Biltema, a shop with all technical stuff with reasonable prices, had a roll of net for less than 10 Euros. Got that earlier this week and it was only waiting for installation - and that was yesterday. Now we only need to clean the bird poo and we can again enjoy the freezing winter patio!

Today I had to clean and organize the shed at the backyard. That was required to make space for some stuff from the backyard, that needed to be cleared while preparing for the winter. Naturally some gardening was part of the pack; clean the leeves from the grass, cut some summer flowers, collect the dead apples from the ground etc.

They have estimated a snow bliz also for the south, Helsinki area, for Tuesday. I felt soooo good for the job done as in the afternoon we got snow! Early wake-up and out already at 0930 was awarded :o)

We are going towards even darker times so some snow is indeed appreciated to bring the light. When we hit the winter solstice on Dec 22nd, in Helsinki the sun is above the horizon only for 5 hours 49 minutes. And as I have mentioned earlier, up north in Lapland the sun stays below the horizon all day long... But now they already have permanent snow for this winter. Road camera images from here, click "Lapin lääni" on the left hand map and then select a camera.

In the graph below, you can see the sunrise and sunset times in Helsinki, Sourthern Finland.

Winter is coming, slowly but firmly, so I guess it is time to change winter tires for the second car too - don't wanna loose the grip...