little packages are just the best

I thought Christmas had come again yesterday, the postie, who is now well trained and is our new friend, delivered a little package for me. It was from Bri. It was the most delightful little book I have seen. It has lovely old fashioned snowy illustrations. It is just my thing. It was ‘The Greatest Gift’, by Philip Van Doren Stern. It is a facsimile of the one he wrote in 1943, which he couldn’t get published and so he had it made into Christmas cards for his family and friends. Since then of course it has become the all time Christmas favourite movie story, ‘ It’s a Wonderful Life’. So thank you Bri, it will be one of my most treasured possessions and I just love it to bits. I bet the publishers who turned the original down are real sorry.

1 Robin, 2 Blue tits and 3 …

What’s Molly going to do now that Earthflight has finished? She hasn’t missed a frame. It must have made a BIG impression on her because, when we were doing our count the birds in your garden hour, we heard seagulls and then they got bigger and bigger as they came down to fly around our pear tree and take a look. Molly ran in hell for leather as their shadow crossed over her. I guess she was thinking eagles!vultures! They weren’t your usual size they were huge, more like albatross and they shrieked really loud. Enough to give you nightmares.

I think we will have to stop her watching too much television…

P.S Just looked up what we saw in the AA bird book and it really looks like they were black backed gulls and they, apparently, are really mean

Brrrrrr!!!

Bri has just told me there is a severe weather warning for this week. I watched Country File last night no snow, no rain, no wind so what’s the alert for then? Cold, it's going to be cold. This is ridiculous, all the winters in the past have been ‘cold’ without any weather warnings, are we getting soft? I have just started writing the story of my family starting 1811 in Snowdonia. The river Thames froze that year it was really really cold back then and with no comfort of any kind. How soon we all forget what our ancestors went through and a lot of us too, before central heating, lighting, supermarkets, cars, designer bottled water etc. It is so easy to take all this for granted, I know I do. However, I do hope they don’t turn off our street lights like they have down south, I can’t find my torch anywhere!.

at last Christmas spirit turns up

The village green at Streethay came through last night with true and simple Christmas spirit ,the best kind. Despite the freezing temperature we all went out there a caroling full of good cheer. It is such a lovely tradition they have and we were pleased to join in with Terry and Yvonne to start Christmas week full of peace and goodwill. It was ****** cold though! We also went to Swinfen magic barn last week and thoroughly enjoyed their effort to bring all sorts of Christmas decorations together under one roof as the picture shows the barn was full of wonders. What fun...

plum's pumpkin fun...

...my halloween carving this year is a spooky house and a bear. Julie next door on the plot got me a pumpkin carving kit which made it so much easier than using my old kitchen knife. Thank you very much Julie I really love it. The BIG problem this year was photographing it without flash and not getting camera shake. We tried everything and nothing worked so in the end I used the firework setting it isn't perfect but you get the picture so to speak!!!! I just love carving pumpkins so I am going to have a bigger pumpkin patch next year on the plot just so I can have lots of goes... who needs vegetables when you can have this much fun!

deaf as a post....

...yes, that was me all week last week and what an eye opener! I am used to having no voice as I suffer from hay fever and it makes everyone whisper to me. I have no idea why, empathy perhaps? Last week everyone needed to shout and whisper it all got very confusing BUT the main thing I learned was everyone also treated me as if I was as daft as a brush. Should I pass this human behaviour onto David Attenborough I wonder? Well I would except this week having had my ears syringed and I have my voice back everyone is still treating me as if I am daft, including Molly, why are they doing that I wonder?????

fruits of autumn to me mean,,,

`…lovely things,
pumpkins for soup or pie, or something a little out of the ordinary from my friend Sarah’s orchard. Quinces to make jelly to go with cheese through the dark evenings round the fire in autumn; it will never last to winter in our house. The quince, Sarah and I think, may be the pear referred to in the age-old nursery rhyme about the King of Spain’s daughterhttp://www.rhymes.org.uk/a35-i

-had-a-little-nut-tree.htm when she had a nutmeg and a golden pear. It is a really old fruit. It looks like a pear but seems to smell of apples (a weird one, well fine with me) and can only be used cooked, but it can according to Monty (Don), be used as a sort of pot pourri and if left in a fruit basket on a table, will give off a beautiful scent for weeks. Well mine is going to be made into jelly next week all being well so I probably will never know if he is right. I am still finding those lovely little patty pan courgettes on the plot and Issie’s pumpkin (plus the one I had to buy) is ready waiting for her.

We are still eating our pears and apples and yesterday I spotted in the strawberry patch a few rogue strawberries trying to ripen. Will they make it before the weather turns? I hope so. We also have flowers self-seeded thinking it is spring namely hundreds of California poppies and Godetia. To cloche or not to cloche that is the question? I am going to make risotto with my butternut squash despite seeing Nigel make a pie with his last night, as yummy as it looked. And although not a fruit, today I am at the minute baking my first batch of autumn short breads for which I have used my autumn cookie cutters, pumpkins, apples, witches on broomsticks and black cats. Yeah!

Molly seems to like autumn fruits too...

the case of the incredible shrinking pumpkin

I don't know how we have done it but I have to say little Issie's pumpkin, which looked so promising, growing in it's giant pot all summer, has shrunk. Yes, it is orange and ripe, yes it was watered and getting bigger when Issie visited it and I promised her she would have a big one, but to my utter dismay, I am going to have to take her the tiniest ever giant pumpkin for Halloween. Each day I went to water it as it went from green to orange it got smaller and smaller. How will I face her when at just three and a half she only knows of one pumpkin, Cinderella's and it became a coach!!! Oh what a dilemma! Her's will only make a small seat inside a coach. What a disappointment it will be. Mind you, she also expected it to go blue, don't ask why!!! I am now off to find the biggest pumpkin I can before I get to see her and no matter what it costs she will get her coach. Growing one would have been the best thing ever but there is always next year.

That phrase must be an allotmenteers by- word.

just a simple bowl of soup...

When we took on the lottie, one of the things we wanted to do was grow our own tomatoes. This hasn't always been successful as the weather and or the blighty has stopped us from getting a good crop. This year, however, as the weather was dryer we have had more success and have had more than enough so we have been making soup. Not just any old soup, but Delia Smith's recipe which Plum has added her secret ingredient to which makes a simple bowl of soup extraordinarily good. I can tell you this is the best soup ever, Mr Heinz eat your heart out. One of the reasons has been that we have used a variety of tomatoes in each batch and it has been delicious. I hope we can do it all again next year!

Internet Blues

During the last few months we have been having trouble with our Internet connection. The signal keeps dropping out and we haven’t been able to stay on line. This has been, to say the least, frustrating, so much so that I even ended up writing a blues song about it. Not yet been able to upload it to You Tube I have been going back and forth with the Virgin tech guys trying everything to keep it running.

The situation came to a head a few days ago so I called them to cancel as I was going to transfer to BT. The guy there told me I had a contract, which I was unaware of as we pay monthly, and there was a £50.00 cancellation fee. We took umbrage to this and so, we told them to fix it as they weren’t keeping to their part of the contract, so they said they would send us a new router.

The router arrived to day so, full of anticipation, we set it up and, guess what? We couldn’t get a strong enough wireless signal downstairs to stay on line. I looked up on the Internet, using the main computer as to how to solve this problem, and there was a You Tube video, which said to wrap a piece of tinfoil around the aerial. This we duly did thinking we could probably now receive transmissions from aliens, but this proved to be a fallacy as the signal was no stronger. However, Plum solved the problem by moving the router to a different place, which may have been the problem all along. Only time will tell!