In the blinking winter ...

... as a friend's child used to sing, the frost edges the leaves with tiny crystals. This ceanothus is growing from the farm next door over the wall of our daughter's drive. I had lent her my camera - it does a decent video clip with sound - and I rushed in to get it back for one last photo!

Red sky at morning - it was certainly a bad weather warning. Hard frosts for a day or two - our front drive is steeply sloping and it was a sheet of glass for a couple of days at the end of last week. Then came the rain and storms. It rained for 36 hours solidly and the roads were covered edge to edge like they were in the storms of 2007 that caused all the flooding. However, a council vehicle came out to pump out the blocked storm drains and it ebbed away with no harm done. Lessons have been learnt I think.

Deck the halls - in the midst of taking up carpet and underlay and moving furniture and emptying the china and glassware from sideboards in preparation for floor laying, we awarded ourselves a little walk over the fields to collect a bucket full of greenery for the Christmas decorations. It's holly, ivy and yew, to which I'll add variegated holly, pittosporum, hebe, bay, rosemary and viburnum from the garden for green wreaths and candle-bedecked arrangements for the table. I love this aspect of Christmas - bringing in the evergreens before the shortest day.

Unfortunately the floor laying has been delayed by at least a day - hoping it will be finished by Friday so I can decorate the tree and make my flower and greenery arrangements. There seem no point in doing it earlier. Everything has to be moved and anything that stays in the living or dining rooms will have a fine layer of sawdust - not a good Christmassy look!