No more pots - new-school sacks instead

As I've been trying to grow some tomatoes and garlic of my own, I decided to give a go for HomeGrow Sacks by GreenHouseEffect. These sacks are a totally new way to grow house plants at your home. The plants won't need to stand on the floor anymore, as the sacks can be hung anywhere. Be creative. What comes to the aspect of lightweight living, they're pretty handy as you'll need less storage space for them compared to smallish pots. They can be re-used as well by washing them at 40 C. I ordered ten sacks that came in a 30x22x3 centimeter cardboard box, so I'll bet one's ten two-liter pots will take a whole lot more space on one's shelf in winter.

The sacks are perfect for smallish house plants like herbs, tomato etc. At the moment, I happen to have a basil in one, but I'll plant few tomatoes in them once they've grown bit bigger.

Finally, I'll probably have to admit that two founders of the company are my course mates from university and I'm pretty proud of them and their concept.

Microadventure @ Sipoonkorpi national park

Since I decided to spend this May Day in a different way, the plan was to head out to Sipoonkorpi national park by foot from Viikki suburb. As microadventures seem to be in fashion at the moment, we decided to give a go for one in the name of scouting. Microadventure is a bit branded name for a quick outdoor spurt away from everyday life, but I would still claim it's a pretty good concept for getting more and more people to give a go for outdoor escapes.

What comes to the planning of the route, I somewhat used the point-and-shoot method encouraged by Alastair Humphreys. I spotted a pothole on the map of Sipoonkorpi national park that was the way to go. In the evening of the 30th, we hiked from Viikki suburb to the first lake area that is located in the southern part of the national park. The first half of our route followed some smaller streets and recreational paths until we arrived south of the first lake area. On May Day, we hiked into the national park's larger area, at where we had our lunch nearby the pothole located in the middle of the area. Next, we decided to head towards the main road that is located at the eastern border of the national park. By following the road southwards few kilometers, it is possible to utilize the bus no. 93, which leaves from Landbo suburb, to get back.

[ A rough overview of our route (length approx. 25 km) ]

What comes to the weather conditions, it couldn't have been better as sun was shining at all times. The night was though bit chilly as the temperature was around two celsius degrees. During this microadventure, I managed to test my new UL sleeping pad that didn't perform so well. The aluminium foil was ripped at some parts of the pad that I was actually bit worried about beforehand. The foil should have been thicker to resist abrasion and better glue should have been used for that kind of purpose. Otherwise, a 120-centimeter pad works fine, especially as I happen to have a built-in ~50x50cm foam pad in my Osprey Mutant backpack.

Finally, I'll have to admit that the pothole might not be worth visiting, if you've seen them before. The pothole is about 60 cm in diameter and about 80 cm deep. The national park itself is pretty nice as it is located really close to Helsinki, even-though it has the "thousand path" dilemma of the southernmost national parks. There are quite many paths and intersections that are not marked on the map, so we managed to hike some elsewhere that we should few times. Still, we managed to find the destinations, where we were about to go. If you're really into pinpoint accurate orienteering, buy a map. We used free prints from the web service of National Land Survey of Finland. We would have had a map of the Sipoonkorpi area at the meeting place of our scout group, and all the paths we missed were marked.