Summer with little snow

We were back in Svalbard in early July. Then it was time to put shorts back to cupboard and find our thin woollen underwear on use.

Actually summers are pretty nice in Svalbard with around +6 centigrades, but it's not uncommon to get some new snow on the mountains even middle of the summer.

Amounts of water destroyed one of the bridges over Longyearelva, river running through the town. Rivers can be get pretty heavy on rainy or warm summer days.

Smell of green grass

What could be better than smell of green grass? Or walking outside on shorts, just having sandals instead of gore-tex boots? Having the sun over you - the sun, which is warming, not just giving light?

Quite excatly one month ago we left from our cold island and met a real summer in the mainland. We celebrated the biggest happening in the summer time, the Midsummer festival, in our neighbour country, Finland.

It was really nice to be just walking around - without a rifle, seeing all the greeness and flowers around and listen different birds singing. Finnish country side is really beautiful in the middle of the summer.

We were overnighting couple of nights in a cabin, nicely hidden in a small forest beside a waterside. And as we were in Finland, having a refreshing sauna every single possible evening.

Nights in the middle of the summer are light without dark time in North, just as they should. The darkness in the summer has always been a strange thing to me. Warm weather and darkness in the same time isn't fitting each other in my dream world.

We were really enjoying our little holiday in the North. Weather was just nice and we enjoyed summerdays with over 25 centigrades. That was totally enough for us! We were having it just fine on those temperatures, but it was worse for our black coated companion. The best thing he could do for to cool down was to swim - and that he was doing as often as it just was possible!

Since we're used to see just white bears around in Svalbard, we went and had a visit in a place to see brown bears.

Even though sign was just in the native language, the pictures was clear enough to  warn, that we needed to keep distance to the bears.

Welcome summer!

We have got some really summerly days here in Svalbard. Amounts of snow has been just disappearing! When the weather got suddenly warm (up to +10 degrees Celcius) and same time came lot of rain, the risk of the avalanches got also high. Luckily no human life has been lost but some roads needed to be closed for a while when avalanches tumbled over and also one cabin got totally damaged.

But we're happy that summer is coming. It will be great to be having some trips to the mountains without skies. And I really like that brown colour we're getting on the mountains in summer time. When I was still living in the mainland I didn't like so much brown as a colour. Now I think that variable brown colour mountains are having is really nice. In the same time I'm waiting forward to have little bit holiday in the mainland. I can almost feel the smell of grass when I'm just thinking about it.

Lunckefjellet - The new coal mine

Store Norske is planning to open a new coal mine in autumn. We'll be still based in Svea, but the way to work for miners will be just longer. Those, who will be working in Lunckefjellet, need first to drive through the old mine (that's about 10 km) and then over the glacier (about 3 km) before they reach the new mine.

This is an opening to the old mine on Skollfjellet beside Marthabreen.

People are working hard to get everything ready for autumn.

Lunckefjellet is on the other side of the glacier, Marthabreen. Opening to the new mine is getting to be ready.

These are our new storage halls. We'll see if we'll be working there after a while.

The blue building is called cathedral. It's huge as a cathedral. Actually it's a silo for coal which will be transported by conveyor belt through the old mine to Svea.

Symphony for Arctic light

I was supposed to go to work on Thursday morning, but weather was bad again. There weren't any local flights until Saturday fornoon. That was actually just fine for me, because Nordnorsk Opera og Symfoniorkester had a concert here on Friday evening. I'm not any big fan of opera, but Tchaikovsky is just fantastic and Grieg is something great as well. I guess that a trip to Longyearbyen was an experience for those who were playing in the orchestrer, but for us, who is living in Longyearbyen, it was an experience to listen that kind of great music.

 

Norwegian National Day

Norwegians are celebrating their National Day at 17. mai. That's a big day with parades and celebrations and it's spesially a big day for children with lot of activities.

We didn't really have a nice weather for celebration in Longyearbyen. It was snowing and blowing and even the dog find it best to stay on the lee-side of his snowhill.

Dogs weren't welcome to join the parade. I can't really understand why they couldn't join on the end of the row with "små og store", but we respected the wish and didn't join at all. 

Instead we had a dog-friendly walk. It was blowing and snowing, but anyhow, we need to have a walk every day regardless of weather.

It's not yet really summery in Svalbard, but at least winter is over and it's spring. We have parked our scooters for sommer even though the toughest are still driving.

Tree hugging

We are out of the house every other week while we're working in Svea, so that gives limitations what kind of plants I'm able to have at home. If it wouldn't be like that I would love to have a total garden on my living room!

Last year I shortened all of my yucca palms so that we were able to see out of the window again.

Then I didn't cut my dragaena. I was counting it was still having good enough place to grow one more season. I was wrong...

Actually I should have cut it already before it reached the roof, but I didn't manage to do it.

After cut I measured the length of the plant: it was about 3,50 meter. I think that was pretty impressive thinking about that the plant has been growing in the arctic. We got the plant in early 2006, so it was now about seven years old.

I put the top of the plant straight to the pot, so we'll see if it manages to start to grow again. I did the same with yuccas last year and none of the died.

As I'm having now mostly just non-flowering houseplants,  I decided to buy some new ones with flowers. I'm counting to that these will survive even they won't get water every day.

I bought also one Hortensia, even though it's having higher water requirements.  I'm not so sure about how it will survive alone over days without water.

Moods of spring

After a short week in Svea it was nice to come back home and enjoy a week off in Longyearbyen. We got a really nice days with spring weather.  

Now we were having a better view over the town - last week everything was  just foggy.

With this kind of weather it was nice to have a walk with a dog around the town. There were a real  feeling of spring everywhere. Snow buntings were singing, little oaks were busy by the mountains sides and a polar fox were howling somewhere close by.