Annikki and Jacob Matthan live in Oulu, Finland. Annikki is a Finn, Jacob an Indian. They are the founders of the Findians Movement way back in 1967. Both are now retired. They have been married for 56 years. This blog is an account of their lives and thoughts as reminiscenced through Annikki's and Jacob's eyes.
Annikki and I were enjoying our regular Friday buffet lunch (with a speacial spicey chicken vindaloo) at The Royal Garden restaurant in Oulu when a young couple walked in.
Michelle showed them around and they settled at a table. (Obviously they were new!)
MG University, Kottayam (School of Chemical Sciences)
(Photo from Mahatma Gandhi University website.)
As they came to the buffet table I asked the young gentleman where he was from. He was from India, then Bangalore.
Having established our primary connection I dug a little deeper and found out he was a Polymer Chemist, and then came the shocker, when he said that he did his degree from Kottayam.
I had to travel 7000 km to do my studies in Polymers. At that time only London and Akron, Ohio, USA had reputed courses in polymer science and technology in the English speaking world. Although there were excellent courses in Germany, France and Italy, those were not an option for me.
As my brother was already in London, the choice was automatic, as Ohio seemed to be a little too distant for me.
When I did a little digging I found that the director of the Dept of Chemical Sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi University is a Prof. Dr. Anitha C. Kumar. She had done her Polymer Science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with which I was actively cooperating with in the early seventies when Prof. Guenter Menig from Germany was there to start the department.
Prof. Menig and I had worked on similar research areas, especially the use of the Brabender Pladtograph to characterise the processing behaviour of polymers.
When Prof. Menig left back to Germany, we took his maid, Susheela, to look after the children as she spoke English. Annikki was at that time just starting to learn Tamil.
I hope to share a few evenings with Anupam, just to catch up on what is happening in the polymer field. I have more or less stopped reading stuff in my primary area of work for almost 15 years!
The only subject I do keep abreast of these days is the controversial topic about Polymers and Recycling technology.
Welcome Anupan and Juyel to a great city, Oulu, Annikki and my home for the last 40 years
IIn this part I am going to show you how Annikki used her artistic skill in creating gardens.
KodinnKuvalejti Cover - May 2005
This is the cover of a Finnish magazine which covered the design of the garden she created for her invalid mother who could enjoy it by just sitting at her kitchen window.
But more about this later, as I will go sequentially through the gardens she created over the last 53 years.
I have over a 1000 photographs that display her talent. I will limit myself to key features about each garden that display her artistic talent.
In England, after we got married, we had a small garden in the front and back of the house. Annikki was busy looking after our two babies that she did not give time to looking after the garden.
I would occasionally mow the lawn because that was required by the owners of the property. Gardening was not my hobby.
When we moved to a small house on the outskirts of Madras, in India, the property had just been constructed. The ground around the house was in a mess.
There were a couple of shady trees including an amazing mango tree which yielded mangoes as sweet as alphonso, round as a Romani and each weighing a kilo!
Annikki got to work putting down green grass. She chose one called “blue grass” as it was one which did not need mowing and it was very spongy so the children could play on it without getting hurt.
While all the others in Madras were sitting in the shade in the afternoon sun, Annikki was busy laying down the grass as she wanted to have the garden as she wanted it. With a few potted plants, the garden was soon a spate of colours
In the back garden she planted a couple of banana plants and grew a few vegetables, but she really had no interest in that.
Her life was always about colour and beauty.
We did not live here for long and then moved to a villa with a large property. She did not work on the garden except for the immediate vicinity of the house,
She did get the children tidy up the garden but soon decided it was not too wise as there plenty of snakes, especially cobras in the garden. Also, when little Joanna started carrying stones around, Annikki found some of the stones had scorpions under them.
If Annikki saw a snake she would call the nearby snake park who would come and catch them to take them to the park as they extracted the venom to prepare the antidote.
In our Velacheri Road Villa.
This garden was large. We had a wood apple tree under which there was a leaky tap. The grass around the tap was green and fresh. The deer from the nearby Governor’s residence would come to our garden at night and we could watch them from our upstairs open balcony. We enjoyed the stag fights that took place regularly near the fresh grass.
When we moved to Bangalore we did not have a garden in any of the houses we lived in, so gardening was not on Annikki’s agenda.
When we moved to Finland, the garden at the Oulu, Kampitie house belonging to her parents consisted of plenty of gooseberry bushes in no specific fashion, divided between both gardens of the semi-detached house.
Annikki’s father had an area where he cleaned his fish and smoked it. Also much of the area was for keeping the wood he collected from the rubbish dump to heat the house, There were a few garden chairs, a hammock and a chair swing, but it was not a very inviting garden and it was rarely used.
After Annikki’s father died in 2001, the onus of looking after her mother, the house and the garden fell on Annikki.
She cleared out the overgrown bushes. As soon as this was done, the neighbour suggested that a dividing fence should be put up. Being a handyman, he did it quickly and I helped him paint it.
The fence between the two houses in Kampitie, Oulu
After this, Annikki found a couple of large boulders just under the kitchen window which was protruding from under the ground. She called a service which took them out. Annikki asked them to put it next to the house in a corner. She then excavated the ground near the house and by putting a plastic layer she created a beautiful pond. There she introduced fish.
She then terraced the land as it was on two levels and threw away a lot of rubbish that her father had collected.
When that was done she found an old heavy cast iron bathtub had been left behind. She did not panic. She dug a hole in the ground. She then asked me to call my strong muscular friend from Zambia, Kamu, to move the bathtub.
While I was away, Annikki using her Finnish sisu, managed to move the bathtub near the hole and it dropped beautifully in place. It fitted exactly.
Around the bathtub she planned a sandy area with some wooden platforms to put some chairs.
She then took all the waste wood strips her father had collected and built a bridge.
While she looked after her mother, she worked relentlessly, hammering away till 10 pm, and then working well into the night without a sound.
At the bottom of the garden she set up a trestle fence and an old wooden door she put it in the middle. Taking a cue from me, she put a green fabric over the door so I could sing the old favourite song “Green Door”! I never revealed the “secret” behind the Green Door to my pestering children! :-)
As per her specifications I built a shed over the bathtub. Some Thai friends, Unnop and Pailin, of ours made the end pieces making it a Thai flavour.
Annikki crafted everything so beautifully to suit all ages, and especially her mother who could sit at the kitchen table and overlook the whole garden the whole day.
It is impossible to describe the many tens of designs she included in the garden, so I will show you around the garden through pictures and you can see how her artistic mind worked on every detail.
Front garden Kampitie, Oulu
Back garden Kampitie
Kampitie main pond
Thai pagoda in Kampitie
Kampitie bridge
Kampitie greenhouse
Annikki releasing her goldfish in summer from her indoor aquarium.
New steps construction to
Kampitie to handle the wheelchair
Annikki submitted a letter to a leading Finnish magazine of how she had created a garden for her invalid mother out of recycled materials.
They did an article about Annikki and her garden which I give below.
Annikki’s garden was not just for summer. She spent the winter making use of snow as a medium of art. The garden a lot of fun for her grandchildren, she even made the first moving ssnowman.
Snowman in Kampitie
Sliding snowman
Annikki enjoying her working with snow.
Our cat joins Annikki
to enjoy the snow.
Video of first Mobile Snowman from YouTube
Annikki’s humour is infinite like her art.
After her mother died, there was a huge fight between all the siblings about the property.
Annikki left it to her lawyer but she knew that nothing would come of it.
Annikki’s caustic humour!
Before she finally left the fight, she prepared a huge snow cake in the front of the house with the six siblingsaround a huge snow Cake, knowing with the advent of spring there would be nothing left of the cake as it would have melted away only lining the pockets of the lawyers.
Annikki’s mother passed away in 2008 and by December we moved house to our daughter’s home nearby on Vesaisentie. There was just a bare garden.
Bare Vesaisemtie garden
Other than a sandpit and a swing, there was nothing in this garden.
Annikki got to work and created a beautiful haven for the whole family and these pictures show a few different aspects of her creations.
Driftwood in sand
A cherry tree planted by Annikki.
Our evening tea place in Vesaisemtie
Annikki's coffee corner where she would rest between doing her work.
The Green Door became a silver door!
But this was short lived and we moved house to Sarkkatie with a large garden which was bare.
Annikki got to work and soon created yet another beautiful summer and winter garden.
Annikki relaxing with a pulla and coffee - a rare sight!
Annikki working in her Sarkkatie garden! Always relaxed!!
Snow volcano creation by Annikki.
Snow moon rising in Sarkkatie, a creation by Annikki.
Annikki doing the snow work in Sarkkatie.
Annikki created this snowman at the gate "to frighten" the snow plough driver who deleiberately piled the snow in front of our gate. A touch of Annikki's humour!
Annikki hanging up the bags and bottles to collect the birch sap.
Annikki's Newton moment when a drop of birch sap fell on her head while sitting in the garden when she broke a branch! Without damaging a tree she collected bottles of this healthy sap from the birch trees in the garden.
A bird decided to make its nest on one of our cycles, and it was carefully gaurded by Annikki!
Till the winter of 2019 Annikki was still doing the snow work, even as the first stages of dementia set in.
I have limited the photographs to only a few of the thousands I have taken over our 50 years but it is only a very small sample of the work of Annikki in this field of garden design,
Many consider that Annikki walks in my shadow because I am loud and outspoken. This is positively false.
In the first three parts of this series I have shown that I cannot even live in her shadow.
Finally our health problems caught up with us. We had to move to an apartment. Our gardening days are over.
In the next part of this series I am going to show you yet another facet of Annikki’s art.
I miss all the gardens that Annikki created. Luckily, I have photographed much of her handiwork, as shown above. It has been my pleasure to share this with you.
Maybe there will be a chance that I can compile a comprehensive book about this subject as every picture has its OWN interesting story..
