Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Long Friday and peace in the house, baking Easter bread and my long-time-favourite, French lemon pie. Slow cooking on a slow day.

Slow Cooking - something I feel strongly about, and found a kindred spirit in a Swedish author Lena Katarina Swanberg. 

I found her book Långsam mat och lugnare livet from Gothenburg, Sweden in an old-books-store Röda Ormen.

It arrived wrapped in thick old-fashioned brown paper as if they had understood that here comes something I will treasure and something that treasures the old-fashion ways of living & making slow food & sharing. 

Making Slow Food takes time but the rest is very simple. 

Good ingredients, wooden stove, cast iron pots and pans, wooden ladles, candle holders...

And if you feel tired, you just make a cup and read the paper. Ps. My true servant from DDR, the orange wondermixer, almost 40 years old...

No to-dos. The rest can wait. It was not me who decided I have to hurry.

Light the candle, gather the dear near, enjoy. The sweet is good for the soul.

Choose the most beautiful way even if it isn't always the fastest.

Ps. the Easter bonfire of Rumar village is lit on the Pellas field at 7.30 p.m. tomorrow - take your own sausages & soda, wellies and warm to wear, wellcome!

My St. Mary Mead

                      Minun St. Mary Meadini

Ennen pitkänä perjantaina eivät saaneet juuri salusiinit heilua, ja kyläluutien piti pysyä kotona. Koitamme mekin olla niin siivosti kuin vain viiden teinin kanssa voi. Taiteilen uuden kuvan ikkunalle. Synkkä risti seisoo sinitarralla aasilla ratsastavan hahmon ja illallispöydän jatkona. Kristinusko saapui tänne varhain, Kökarissa oli fransiskaaneja, ja kirkko tarjosi myös suojaa.

When I was small Long Friday was a day to stay at home and calm down - we are trying, too, as much as it is possible with five teenagers. I make a new siluette to the window. Christianity came to the archipelago early with the Franciscan munks to Kökar, Åland and here in Korppoo they built a church in the 14th century. The church was also to give protection; Korppoo was in the middle of often dangerous sea-routes.

Naakat lehahtavat kirkon katolta. Arkkienkeli Mikael suojaa sivueteisestä tulijoita puumiekallaan. Suuri Yrjänä touhuaa omallaan seinämuurin kielekkeellä. Pohjoisen pahaa vastaan on koko seinä ilman ikkunoita ja ovia, torniin pääsi lukkojen taakse. Jokaisella tilalla oli oma penkki, mutta kukaan ei enää muista, mikä oli meidän. Olemme aina vähän myöhässä. Hengästyneinä haemme nyt paikkaa, josta viisivuotiasta voi äänettömästi ulkoiluttaa, mutta josta näkee.

Part of my Easter is going to church - our church of St.Michael is just so beautiful  with dragons and knights, mermaids and labyrinths at the roof paintings. At Easter time there is a ceremony  almost daily and here it seems that going to church is a part of living in a community. Perhaps I still see it with the eyes of a new-comer but I think this feeling has something to do with living in the archipelago and being a Finnish-Swede. It is nice to meet people, perhaps change some word and even if we are almost every time a bit late and try to catch our breath and find a suitable bench to sit for a five-year-old knight it is also a peaceful moment for me in the middle of everything.

Katossa seikkailevat merenneidot ja lohikäärmeet, hedelmällisyyttä hehkuvat kukat, merkilliset labyrintit. Saarnastuoli on oikealla, mutta puhetta pidetään kuorista.  Tänään ylhäälle alttarin yllä kulkevalle parvekkeelle astelee arvokkaana kuorolaisia. Urut ovat hiljaa. Ristiinnaulittu Jeesus katselee alas meitä hiljaisia. Sitten sammutetaan kynttilät.

Viemme koko penkin, aina on joukossa joku, joka tarvitsee rippikoulumerkkiä. Kaivamme kolikoita. Uhkeaääninen pastorimme ja urkuja tavallisesti vikkelästi polkeva kanttorimme ovat yhdessä kuoron kanssa keränneet lippaaseen avustusta urkujen kunnostukseen. Hymyilen tutuille kasvoille ja toivon, että ehdin vaihtaa muutaman sanan. Se on kaikki tämä, jonka näkee vielä vasta-tulleen silmin, johon tuntuu mukavalta kuulua. Onko se saaristolaisuutta vai suomenruotsalaisuutta? Mutkatonta se ainakin on.

Our priest with the huge voice and our quick and skillful cantor with the pedals of the organ have been collecting a fund with the choir to renovate the organ and we have all helped. Now there is enough money for that, but today it is special with Long Friday - with only the choir singing up from the balcony above the altar. Then all the candles are blown in the end.

Easter grass and spring in garden are green. Soon we can start waiting for the knight of the lettuce land - Roman snail, Helix Pomatia that mostly eat the snails eating my salad.. and is therefor the gardener´'s best friend. The Franciscans took them here for their fast and some of the snails got away. But we can wait, the lamb is already defrosting!

Rairuoho ja puutarha vihertävät. Pian saadaan ihailla salaattimaan ritareita, fransiskaaneilta karanneita viinimäkikotiloita. Upeaa mökkiään kantaen ne syövät parempiin suihin muuta etanan sukukansaa, ovat siis puutarhurin parhaita ystäviä. Fransiskaanit söivät niitä paastoruuaksi. Me maltamme odottaa. Viulu sulaa jo.

Ps. How time flies, my boys and the famous snail five years ago! Happy Easter!

Our Easter Story

Our Easter begins on Palm Sunday with decorating home and entrance by the village road - and hoping the Easter grass has had time to grow - I use the barley seeds because  they grow long and steady with a beautiful water drop on top of them in the mornings just like summer dew...

This year we had birthday party of our 3-year-old and had an extra reason to celebrate.

I think it is important  to have both ordinary pleasant days with routines and days with special meaning and traditions. With children it has been easy to start traditions of our own and I enjoy myself, too, sometimes perhaps even more than the younger ones. 

To explain children - and grown-ups, too - why we are celebrating certain days this book has been wonderful. It is a Bible for kids with humorous pictures and an easy text to read aload. 

As a new day of Easter passes we decorate the grass with symbols that we pick from the story read that day. 

Yesterday was the last supper on Maundy Thursday.

And today we remembered the Good Friday.

Tomorrow we add a tomb with big stones but forget the religious part of Easter for a while - it is the day of old Finnish traditions of small witches called trulli. Trullis go from house to house with decorated willow branches and hope to switch the branch into a sweet to their coffee-pots... In the evening we are going to have a bonfire on our field, a tradition at our home-area Ostrobothnia. 

Village witches year 2010 - let's hope we get some visiting this year, too!