Day-before-yesterday, Wednesday evening, Annikki's mother, Hilja, went in for her interval care at the Hirosen Old People's Home, so that Annikki and me could re-energise ourselves.
It was quite a wet day, so Hilja had to be dressed with warmish clothes. It was after five in the evening before the Invalid Taxi arrived to take Hilja and Annikki to the Old People's Home.
I followed by car. As soon as Hilja was comfortably installed, Annikki wanted to go straight to the garden shops to pick up things for the garden. The Flea markets had already closed as it was past 6 pm. :-)
Besides picking up rich soil bags and some evergreen trees for potting, she picked up some wooden lotuses for the pond. 
She also picked up two artificial lotuses which have LEDs in the centre. They run on three small batteries. the LEDS are rated as having lives of 8000 to 10000 hours.
When switched on the colour of the LED changes continuously, rotating through a beautiful soft glow blue, to green, to red and to yellow.
I tried to photograph them but was not successful. They look gorgeous. (I must get a better digital camera!) Annikki put one in the main pond and one in the bathtub. They add so much character to the garden.
At the bottom of the pond the real lotus, which is a local variety, is growing very rapidly. We should soon see them flowering at the top of the water.
The solar fountain sent to us by Susanna a few years ago is still functioning beautifully. But I have to get a larger fountain as the goldfish love to have the water splashing aroung them.
On Thursday, which was a holiday here in Finland (Ascension Day - the day Christ ascended to heaven), Annikki, instead of resting was doing back-breaking work cleaning up every corner of the garden. She took all the rubbish out of the flower beds, sifted all the sand, and realigned all the stones. She had to take up each of her many hundreds of stones so as to get the rubbish out from under them.
I saw the first bee in the garden, hovering over the flower beds, although the first flowers are yet to arrive. The magpies are having their regular baths in the shallow pond, and after they finish the smaller birds take their turn.
We are still waiting for some warm days so as to re-introduce the goldfish back into the pond. Annikki is not going to take any risks again!
This year we will have lots more interesting stuff in the garden - so watch out on this blog as Annikki's new creative ideas come to fruition!
