Since not many people seem to enjoy the morning hours, I was fairly sure that I could photograph the flower I missed yesterday in peace and quiet this morning. It was a lovely warm weather for cycling and when I got to the lake, I found that the sun hadn’t quite reached the flowers yet, making me wait for a moment. I didn’t mind this at all – it really doesn’t get much better than sitting down by the lake with the sun warm on your face. Even the horse flies and mosquitos hadn’t woken up yet so I was really able to relax.The flower, by the way, is Mentha arvensis (corn mint / åkermynta / rantaminttu).

There’s one thing for sure about botany. When you have once seen a flower, it becomes a lot easier to see it again, even if you somehow kept missing it when it was right under your nose to start with. As I said yesterday, I had never seen the water lobelia before. But now I saw them right next to the parking – didn’t have to walk hundreds of meters along the shore to find them.

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I really wanted to photograph butterflies and I hoped that the old field would yield me these winged beauties this time. Well, the field yielded something else winged – horse flies and mozzies most definitely had woken up. Protected inside my Bugshirt I was ok, even if I had to keep moving the mesh hood around when it touched my forehead and got soaked in sweat, kind of foggy to see through the viewfinder like that!

Anyways, I found another ”new” flower. I have a slight frustration about yellow flowers – there are so many of them! But this yellow flower somehow seemed different, and when I got closer, I instantly recognised it as something I hadn’t recognised before. I took my pictures and had a look around for the butterflies, and finally found one. Happily I photographed it until the constant buzz of the horseflies and the sweat running down my face were driving me crazy, so I got out, trying not to trip on the numerous grooves on this old field, perfectly hidden by the thick vegetation. At its worst you just have to feel your way through, a few times I got close to tripping when I stepped in a groove when I expected level ground.The flower is Hypericum maculatum (imperforate St John’s-wort / fyrkantig johannesört / särmäkuisma).

When I got back home, the clouds were definitely gathering and it was thunder on the way. I watched the clouds pour out their contents on the far hills and waited for the storm to hit us, but somehow we got spared even if the roll of thunder was loud and clear. When the sun came back out, I decided to go cycling once more. When I got to Hembygdsgården, I saw that the tarmac was wet in some shaded places. Talk about local weather… it never rained a drop at home. After I got back home, the second thunder front finally reached us and now we also got the much needed rain. Having learned for my tv-blowup, I kept everything disconnected from the mains. Which means that I couldn’t work on my new images, but I was able to write the text for this blog using my little PowerBook on battery power. Love it!

…and then a bit later publish the post with the images, even if I still can hear the thunder in the distance.