Hilltop in July

Last week, we revisited the hilltop of the Old Castle of Lieto. The green and red colours of Midsummer shown in my previous post had now turned towards a brown and yellow palette of blooming grasses of all sorts.

Time flies and our summer is short, which feels a bit unfair now that we still haven’t seen a single period of dry and warm weather this season.

Thankfully, there were some new pink blossoms on the hilltop meadow: quite a lot of maiden pinks (ketoneilikka), which is one of my absolute favourite wildflowers, some willow spiraea (pajuangervo) and even a few foxgloves (sormustinkukka) rising from the steep river-side slope. The two last ones must have originated from a garden that used to be somewhere close by.

This time, the reason for our visit was a concert held in the former cowhouse of the manor that has been turned into an event venue and restaurant. The trio Onda3 (Onda três), consisting of talented musicians studying at the jazz department of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, performed bossa nova – both well-known songs and their own compositions – to a hall full of thrilled listeners. Another concert very much to our liking.