Cornflower

New Year wishes

    A look back at my year via the so-called 'best nine' Instagram pictures, and gardens seem to be a theme!

    From the top, left to right:

    my garden in May; Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons at dusk; Oxford Botanic Garden;

    Kellie Castle, Fife; reading in the greenhouse on a rainy day; socks and Shakespeare;

    Spring colours - book and wool; St. Mary's Pleasance, Haddington; Oxford again.

    My thanks to you for visiting here (and here), and for your kind, informed, helpful comments - it's a pleasure to have you stop by.

    All the best to you in 2018!

A very Nigel Christmas

    Waiting in the wings are Nigel's Christmas pudding and Nigel's Christmas cake, but centre stage today are Nigel's excellent Mincemeat and Mascarpone Tarts, all recipes from The Christmas Chronicles.

    Wishing you a joyous, peaceful Christmas.

On the up

    Flowers for the solstice.

Foliate

    Nordmann fir, ivy, box, bay, rosemary, lavender, winter jasmine, rose Blush Noisette, vinca, pyracantha, honeysuckle berries; making the wreath is one of my favourite tasks of the season.

Three wise men

    One of my favourite things about The Crown - and there is a great deal to love - is the palace triumvirate of private secretaries, Tommy Lascelles (now retired in series 2 but still very much present when needed), Michael Adeane, and his deputy Martin Charteris. They are played impeccably by Pip Torrens, Will Keen, and Harry Hadden-Paton respectively, and as royal 'guards and guides' they are a force to be reckoned with, variously exuding disapproval from every pore, giving counsel, playing devil's advocate, or being the seemingly immoveable object around which the queen neatly skirts. So entertaining.

A little colder

    After Friday's unseasonal flowers it's minus 6 degrees here today - but we have no snow, unlike much of the rest of the country. Happily, the heating system is working again, the new radiator is a big improvement on the one it replaces*, the leak through the laundry ceiling has been fixed, and we've said goodbye to plumbers and decorators until the new year.

    But harking back to last week and the cold song, if you're watching the new series of The Crown, you'll have gathered that the theme music is another reworking of the frosty Purcell.

 

*its demise has been a blessing in disguise.

Friday flowers: hanging on

    Edinburgh, December, but still flowering (just).

Slightly fixed

   

    The title of this post comes from Claire's little mis-type in her comment here, so thank you, Claire for that and for making me smile.

    We are very much in 'slightly fixed' mode here as following on from last week's boiler installation we've had variously a gas leak, a broken radiator, and water pouring through a ceiling.

    The gas leak has been fixed, thank goodness, the radiator will be replaced later this week, and the ultimate cause of the water ingress traced soon, we hope, though buckets and mop are still at the ready.

                                            ~~~~~

    The picture is nothing to do with plumbing, leaks, and broken things, but shows the fireplace in a newly redecorated bedroom which, when the house was a convent, was the nuns' chapel. We have wondered whether the figures might represent St. Veronica. Anyway, all is clear and calm in that room at least.

Monty ...

     ... has a new website.

    And look in the books section and in addition to Paradise Gardens which will be out in the spring (the television series starts in January), you'll see that on the way is a book on dogs and human health, and the first part of his memoirs.

    Ladies, form an orderly queue.