First days of Advent

Well it is December but this outside Christmas decoration went up a few days before the new  month started. During the day these decorations are all flat on the ground, presumably pumped up with an air compressor.

At the weekend I was looking after these two rascals. The princess on the left is obsessed with me and as usual I had them in my bed. Princess sleeps on the pillow next to mine and the pup  one on the right moves around in the bed, usually at the expense of my comfort. They live in Twyford and it was nice to be in a different part of the village for the two days. 

I had a surprise when I put my boots on the other day. I saw a flash of orange in the pond? Newt ? No wrong colour. Then it reappeared and it was a goldfish it was say two centimetres long. How did it get there? Probably a fish egg ended up on a birds leg and then fell off when it was having a bath in our pond. There might be another or perhaps it’s been eaten. I don’t want to net the pond for one fish, I am hoping the site of the pond in our front garden by the busy road will put herons off. Below is a festive decorated post box in the village. 


Another different cake, this time with crystallised ginger in the cake plus mixed spice and ginger. On the top, lemon icing and cubes of the crystallised ginger again. It was pretty nice. 


The jigsaw is coming along, my strategy with these types of jigsaws when you don’t really know what you are building up, is to sort a few colours out and then try and fit them together to build up blocks, ideally near the edges, as you can see. 

Lastly, I have done a lot more tiding on the new allotment plot , now vacated. It’s painstaking work, but satisfying. I took the weeds down to ground level and got rid of them at the recycling tip, I have lifted  the weed block and random carpet bits to reveal the soil after which I will fork it over. ( another tip run) I will go around the edges, and create a soil barrier to stop the invading weeds back into the caged area. I will keep it all for next year, and see if I can use it, but the fruit trees and bushes, I will deem them communal. The bindweed is going to be hard to remove permanently. At the TRHA store, we have had the two items made and delivered by the carpenter, a frame to hold rolls of fabric and a table which fits over our new bird seed and grass seed bins.   



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