Christmas time
What a glorious day, blue skies and warm sun a perfect Christmas Day/ John’s Birthday. So off we went down to West Bay to walk the dogs and enjoy the sea air with lots of other dog walkers also enjoying the wonderful weather and everyone enjoying the display of Christmas hats and admiring John’s sequin Santa waistcoat, it has a very short season so is worn at every opportunity and is guaranteed to bring a smile to people’s faces. Having picked roses and sarcococca, with its heavenly perfume and three lavender flowers, what madness, the flowers on the table were not typical December blooms but looked lovely. I even pulled three radishes for the salad, an august sowing that had sat with the wet weather and done nothing but sulk and produce leaves. On our return from the coast we had cheese and salad with home grown tomatoes from the greenhouse as well as the radishes, added to fennel and red cabbage some walnuts from the garden and spring onions, crunchy and delicious.
The shortest day has past so we can look forward to each day getting a little lighter and as we near January we only have two months of winter left and looking at the height of the bulbs it won’t be long until the spring flowers appear which is always such a beautiful time of year. The woods around us are full of bluebells and they become a carpet of blue followed by the flowers of the wild garlic which is also so plentiful. We make wild garlic pesto, wild garlic in olive oil and also mixed with butter which we freeze so that we can use it all year round. It is delicious in salads and also wilted with spinach. It is a good excuse to take the dogs for a walk and enjoy the smells and sites of spring.
The young grey heron keeps on visiting us, they are a protected bird so the poor fish farm can do very little about keeping them away. We try to discourage it from visiting because of the carp in the lake, the big ones they can’t swallow but they stab them and then the poor fish dies, but having had a couple of years when the fish have bred we have a lot of fish of the perfect size for them to eat and although at this time of year the fish are down and inactive we don’t want the heron to find them when it gets warmer. The beautiful white egret pops up and says hello on a regular basis, it is amazing that it stays so pristinely white.
The little birds are getting through bird food at a rate of knots, they have eaten all the berries in the garden so need feeding to keep them going through the winter, the wild pheasants that live in the garden have learnt how to get seed from the feeders by knocking the feeder with their beaks so that the seed spills out onto the ground. They are a very pretty addition to the garden and are very amusing birds.
Tuesday is New Year and we have a house full, all planning to see the New Year in with a bang, we wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year.