Autumn in Helsinki

Autumn has been quite demanding both mentally and emotionally, but thankfully the season changes again soon enough. I'm not wishing away time, don't worry, but I have just been crazy busy, and that gets really old after a while. But that said, there have still been some lovely things that have happened in the past 2.5 months. Mostly my time has been taken up by my thesis work, which has proven more exciting in some moments than in others, but the following pictures can try and capture that.

But this first picture was one I took when I was flying back to Finland from England in the end of August. I think that the coastline of Finland is quite beautiful with all the specks of tiny islands. I want to set up a tent on one for an indefinite amount of time.

Tervetuloa Suomi - Welcome back to Finland.

And as soon as I got back to Finland it was back out into my gardens to do a couple more rounds of bee sampling before the season was over. Mostly I just relished in being outside in beautiful landscapes, it got me through those long days. And quite a few gardeners have some hilarious scarecrows, which provided for quite a bit of laughter each time. I'm still considering doing something with all of the pictures I captured of the scarecrows of Helsinki. 

This guy was quite exceptional.

And as most of you likely already realize, I had to kill all of my bees for my study, but not to fear, bees aren't endangered here, so the colonies will manage to continue on despite what I extracted from the ecosystem. And maybe I'm just reminding myself for continued peace of mind, but all of the worker bees die at the end of the season anyways, so it was just expedited. Anywayssssss, it was quite interesting going out to the gardens and seeing what I 'gathered' from leaving pans out for 24 hours. I placed 9 yellow, white and blue pans (3 of each color) containing a soap water solution in each of the 12 gardens I sampled at for a period of 24 hours. I then retrieved whatever had fallen inside the next day. Like so..

I'm a tad convinced that yellow gathered more, I'll know soon enough. And a rock was placed in each to weigh them down. And the 'Helsingin Yliopisto' label was to encourage them not being stolen by gardeners, that translates to 'Helsinki University."

A bee gathering food in one of my gardens.

The next step, after my field work was over, was to discard all flies, spiders, etc. that I inadvertently collected. Then I pinned my bees so that they could be identified more easily. The wing venation and coloration of the thorax can be critical in identifying the different species of bees, this is why pinning them is necessary. And then I identified them with some immense help from a bee guru at the Natural History museum. Juho, the bee guru, gave me a collection of reference material of the 19 most common bees in Finland so that I could more easily begin to learn the differences between the types of bumblebees, this was a tremendous help! I can officially say that all of my bees and wasps are successfully identified, yay! And then I weighed my bumblebees, so that I can determine their fitness. Ideally, the weight of a specimen reflects it's overall health, or in other words, the heavier a specimen, the more healthy it is. And once the weighing was finished, and the bees were given proper labels, I donated them to the Natural History museum, where they will now reside (I admittedly feel pretty cool having a 'collection' in the museum, granted they reside in the basement, but still). 

Separating out bees from other winged creatures. I LOVE microscopes..

The 19 most common bumblebee species in Finland. A worker (male), female, and queen of each of the species.

Pinning a parasitic bumblebee, she is obviously a queen if you can't tell by how absurdly large she is!

Fancy scales with homemade aluminum foil balls for stabilizing the bees.

I spotted this 'cat lady' when leaving school one day and it made my whole day! Note the cat in the box, the cat backpack, and the superb choice of wardrobe! I hope that one of my cat lady friends transitions into a full blown cat lady like this one day!

Now that all of my identification work etc. is complete, I have begun the statistical analysis portion of my thesis project. This will be quite a frustrating time, I have been told, and it's living up to its expectation already, but nevermind, just as long as it gets completed in a timely manner I'll be okay. So my life has consisted of staring at Excel spreadsheets and stastistical computing models as of late, and my eyes are growing weary already. But from time to time I manage to take breaks, phew! 

So now that you're all bored from hearing about my thesis, let me tell you about the other things that I've managed to do this fall. Well, one of the first weekends that I was back in Finland I went to Lahti to visit my friend Magda, and we sat on the lake outside of my old apartment; it was a perfect night for watching the colors dance in the sky like only Finland knows how to do. 

This has no filter, I swear.

And then it transitioned into these fabulous shades of blue and purple.

I also got to check out the local beehives that are kept at my school's campus. There is some really interesting research being conducted on honeybee hives at Viikki (my campus) regarding the varroa mite, one of the main causes of colony collapse disorder in honeybee hives. There are a handful of places in the world that are not infested with the varroa mite, and one of them is the Åland Islands, the islands between Finland and Sweden. One professor at the university has extracted a handful of hives from the Åland Islands and is monitoring the progress of these hives in Helsinki to determine how long it takes for them to be infested by the varroa mite, and if there are any conclusions that can be drawn from when the mite inevitably arrives. Needless to say, honey is a happy by-product of this research, and I got to help harvest the honey. It was really interesting to see this process, since it was what I was originally interested in. I am still very eager to take a beekeeping course and to learn how to be a beekeeper some day. 

These are the 'clean' hives at my campus.

Scraping the wax from the comb.

Filtering the honey! It then got poured from the plastic bucket its being collected in, to glass jars for taking home! Mmm!

What else can I share.. well I have spent some time with other friends/classmates as well, and that has been quite nice. We spent an evening making Chinese dumplings, and I can tell you that my future does not lie in any Chinese restaurants, that's for sure, but it was still good fun. 

I don't have the dexterity for this kind of stuff.

I also spent Magda's birthday weekend with her, and it was nice to have a weekend like that! But the highlight was making sushi for the night of her actual birthday! I could easily eat/make sushi every day! It's so much fun to make and it's super healthy! The trick is just finding the doll hairs to fund eating seaweed and avocado every day for the rest of my life..

Magda and Alana roll sushi.

I also doubt my future lies in a sushi restaurant, but that's okay, I'd prefer to do my botch job, with no judgment, from the comforts of my own home, or friend's home in this case.

Well I also managed to get the nerve to sign up for a full marathon, and I'm already wondering if I am crazy, but I'm mostly just excited! I will be running the Barcelona Marathon next March with my dear old pal Casey and her lady, Chelsea! I'm really looking forward to their visit, arguably far more than I'm looking forward to the race, but all of it will be a memorable time, for sure! Yay for friends visiting, running until we nearly die, and then traveling around Spain, boom!

We might be crazy...

And then as you've maybe already read about, I got to take another trip to Cornwall, which I'm so grateful for! But as I was flying back to Finland the colors of the trees were magnificent, and it calmed my heavy heart.

Autumn colors soothe the soul.

And then not long after returning from England, the snow started for the first time of the season, yay! Nothing like snow in October :-/ but oh well, I'd rather it snow than drizzle rain at 35 degrees, it's just nasty like that. So the snow is actually welcomed on my part, I know, who the hell have I become! 

Snowy train rides.

And my good friend Sunrise's daughter is actually doing her sophomore year of high school in Kouvola, a town east of Lahti. Naturally we had to meet up because it's just too small of a world for me and someone I know to be living in the same country and not see each other! Spending an afternoon with Makyla was really nice, her positivity and joy really radiate and it was so calming to see someone from home. I can't wait to see her again before I leave for the holidays. 

Yay for seeing friends from home!

And Halloween, my favorite holiday! What's not to love about being scared, dressing up, and eating copious amounts of candy without having to feel guilty afterwards?! Nothing I say! So naturally scary movie watching ensued, and a Halloween party was had. I dressed up as Mrs. Fox, from the Roald Dahl classic, Fantastic Mr. Fox. There were quite a few animals present at the party, so we all got together for a blurry picture.. 

All Hallows Eve.

And that about does it for the past couple of months. I'm looking forward to going home for the holidays, and to be writing my thesis from a Barcelona apartment, rather than crunching numbers, but all in due time. In the meantime, I will continue to find the little joys in this otherwise stressful time of my life. Sorry to anyone that I've dumped on recently, and sorry in advance for any future unloading, but I promise this phase of my life will be over soon enough, and I'll be just as excited to talk about something else as you'll all surely be to hear about something else. In the meantime, thank you everyone for the continued emotional support, it means more than any of you know.