Berries part 2 + Forest photos

I'm back in Ireland now, but I still have some pictures left from Finland that I want to post! So here we go: 

The lingonberries weren't ripe when I made my first berry post, but by the end of August they were getting red, so I went and took a few pictures!

It's not a very sweet berry, but lingonberry jam is very good with certain dishes. It keeps well because the berry contains a lot of benzoic acid!

Here's a picture of the ripe seabuckthorn berry. I had a picture of them raw in my earlier berry post :P

Here's our red gooseberry bush! The branches are drooping! And the berries are yummy.

A tall Anthriscus sylvestris (it had too many English names so I just picked the Latin one...)

Spruce forest

Moss

Wood sorrel

Huge mushrooms! I don't know if the scale is very clear in the picture though...

Oh, and I found that missing picture of the cake we made with wild strawberries :P

Mmmm...

Butterflies

The Small Tortoiseshell (nokkosperhonen) Nymphalis urticae

Didn't manage to recognise this one!

The European Peacock (neitoperhonen) Inachis io

I've also spotted a few other kinds but couldn't get a picture. The Small Tortoiseshell is definitely the most abundant, along with the Common Brimstone (especially now in August).

Angry Birds

Angry Birds soft toys.

Angry birds cards and timetables.

More Angry Birds cards.

Angry Birds notebooks and binders.

Angry Birds friend books (I don't know if these exist outside of Finland (probably) but we used to have these (not the Angry Birds versions back then though!) in primary school and we'd give them to each other, and each would fill in a spread with questions like "favourite clothes?" "favourite band?" "favourite tv-show?" and glue their picture on it.) and diaries.

Angry Birds balls.

Angry Birds towels.

Angry Birds rucksacks.

Two types of Angry Birds sweets. Team Pig or Team Bird?

Angry Birds soft drinks.

Angry Birds briefs (by Black Horse). Hockey themed because Finland hosted the Ice Hockey World Championships in May.

Ice Hockey Angry Birds socks.

Angry Birds sheets.

These products were all photographed in the same store (granted it is a pretty big store, oh and it is a normal super market, not all of the products are Angry Birds related :D). Angry Birds -mania? I haven't bought a single Angry Birds product yet (except the actual game a long time ago) but apparently they are very popular among 7-8-year-olds. Especially the school supplies like rucksacks and pencils etc. I'm kind of tempted to taste the sodas though...

Berries

This summer we've had a good amount of both sun and rain. This has resulted in a humongous amount of berries!

Edit: Ugh! I spent so much time placing these pictures side by side... I should've guessed it wouldn't look like that once I published this! That's why this looks all wonky... I blame Blogger, argh!

We picked loads and loads of wild strawberries! (metsämansikka)

We made a cute cake with these but I can't find a picture...

We bought garden strawberries! (puutarhamansikka) That's my birthday cake :)

The wild strawberries were the only type of berries that I actually picked myself. After that I've mainly focused on the photography and eating side of things... Here are some blueberries! (mustikka)

(Obviously there are some wild strawberries there as well!)

My mum and brother have made about 20 blueberry pies. Also, blueberries in milk - very very nice.

Moving on to our garden raspberries! (vadelma/vaapukka)

Some raw ones...

And our wild raspberries. (villivadelma/metsävaapukka)

This is mum's wild raspberry - redcurrant pie! 1. Before oven 2. Going into the oven 3. Coming out of the oven 4. Eating

Also, we have bushes and bushes of redcurrant (punaherukka/punaviinimarja)

and blackcurrant (mustaherukka/mustaviinimarja)

and gooseberries (karviainen)

The common sea-buckthorn (tyrnimarja) in our garden... These are still raw, they turn bright orange when they're ripe! Apparently they contain huge amounts of vitamin C. But they taste very tart.

These are raw berries on a rowan tree (pihlajanmarja). They're starting to turn red now!

Stone brambles (lillukka) are not as common as the others and we don't pick them, but we see them occasionally!

Two other popular Finnish berries are the lingonberry (puolukka) and Rubus chamaemorus (apparently it has quite a few common names in English including knotberry, bakeapple, cloudberry and evron... in Finnish it's called lakka or hilla or muurain!) but I don't have pictures of them. Click on the names, and you'll see the wikipedia articles on them, with pictures! Knotberry is considered a nice berry in cakes, but I don't really like it... Lingonberry is quite sour but it makes nice jam and goes well with certain Finnish foods :P There's also some nice Finnish chocolate with lingonberry in it...