welsh hills again

2019 finished with a lovely Christmas down in Devon with younger son and his family where, for only the second time in over forty years, I did not cook Christmas dinner!  I don't mind cooking Christmas dinner at all but it did feel rather luxurious to be cooked for.  We were sleeping in the campervan despite the cold as older daughter and family were also staying.  That sounds a bit daunting in the middle of winter.  Actually the first ten minutes when you come out of the warmth of the house, go into the cold van and get undressed are the cold bits.  Then with two of you under the duvet you warm up surprisingly quickly.  And in a house of early risers you have the morning bonus of waking up at seven or later, rather than at around six, or, on Christmas morning, four thirty.  We understand the girls were sent back to bed but even so Christmas Day in the house began at around half past five! Here is Ian on story reading duty.  Both the snugglin...

Confession time.  How many projects do you have on the go at the same time?  If you knit or sew, if you write or quilt or draw, make furniture or compose music, do you do just one thing at a time or are you like me, juggling with numerous projects, the one you do always dependant  on your mood? I didn’t knit or crochet for years and years.  I didn’t have enough time and the results were too slow.  I did make clothes for my children when they were very young on my trusty sewing machine and later curtains and cushion covers and blinds but knitting went by the board in my early twenties.  But I have always been grateful for my ability to make things, which is mainly down to having spent my adolescence in New Zealand.  I am not sure whether I would have learned had I spent that time living in the UK.  My mother is a fabulous cook and she taught me to cook and bake but sewing and knitting were not her things.  I suspect that had I spen...

A bright cold day, the hedges crisp and bare and the sky blue and pale behind the leafless domes of oak.  Behind the hut the high wall of holly takes some of the wind but the hazel in the hedge outside my window shakes and flutters its last rags of leaves as a gust goes by.  I am sitting in the shepherd’s hut and have just lit a fire in the stove.   The wind catches the smoke as it leaves the stove pipe chimney and a puff blows past my window and away over the hedge, down the field and into the valley.  Soon the hut will warm up but for now I am still wearing my coat and my second pair of socks.   The blanket I crocheted so obsessively a few weeks ago is now finished and a wonderful thing to wrap around you while you read or think. Somehow it has very suddenly become winter.  When I drove away last week to spend some time first with my daughter and her family and then with my parents, my sister and her family, the rain was thudding on...

The end of month view for October is a depressing sight.  In fact it is so depressing that my laptop seems to have lost the pictures.  If I can raise the enthusiasm I will go round again but in the meantime I can give you a verbal picture: blown over, brown, grey and green, tatty, floppy, flattened. There is a lot still to do in the garden but I am suffering from my usual response to putting the clocks back: I want to stay in and keep warm.  I have managed to plant out practically all of two hundred new daffodil bulbs which I had ordered and I have some bare rooted plants coming this month so will have to force myself away from the fire to get them in but in the meantime I am ignoring the falling over fennel and the shabby Shasta daisies and getting excited about blankets instead. These are the new daffodils, to add to the thousands I have already: February Gold Actaea Pueblo Thalia Peeping Jenny All the images are from Peter Nyssen 's catalo...

OK, rant over.  Normal service is resumed.  It was great though to find how many of you share my wish that we could all relax, accept that we grow older,  and be comfortable in our own skin. Saturday here was a beautiful golden day, autumn at its absolute best.  Younger son and daughter in law were staying for the weekend and we all went walking.  I love the way here that you can walk, really walk with grass and heather, hills and views to the horizon, right from the door. The dog loved it too.  You can just see her at the top of the path, whizzing back to check where we were, before heading off again at a joyous lope. As we walked up to the end of the road we met a local farmer.  "Better just hop over the stile there" he said.  "I'm bringing the cattle down."  Safely  on the far side of the gate, we watched as the herd came down from the hill, driven from behind by two guys on one very small moped. I don't know how many th...

You may take for granted the daily round of hospital visiting, father in law's cheerful stoicism in the face of all that has been thrown at him, Ian's determination to do the best for him, the endless not knowing about what comes next. But life goes on too, oddly enough, and in other news.... Scaffolding has gone up in readiness for the roofing job on the house.  The house looks strange in its metal exo-skeleton and I must admit to being a bit daunted by the idea of no roof and no roof in November at that.  It's a good job we have a great builder or the phrase "a bit daunted" would be an understatement rather than the truth! A ginger cat turned up on Sunday and is doing a lot of sitting determinedly on the step.  I've had this before when we lived in cities.   I never used to feed a passing cat in order not to encourage it to leave home but it's hard to know where this one has come from.  Our only near neighbours are at the farm and they say it isn...