From one Full Moon to Another
Sometimes people meet up and do nice things without telling you. At the end of December I discovered one of these groups. This was the view at dusk, in the cove where they meet.
Category: Celebrations and Tradition
Posts about traditional celebrations throughout the year
How to make a Christmas Stick
Plastic Christmas trees are the most sustainable option because they last for ever. But does yours fill you with thoughts? ‘Here it is again.’ or ‘It’s always the same.’ Are the thoughts layered with vague nostalgia for something missing?
Look for a stick instead.
Simple Tips for a Cheap Christmas
There is a Christmas Market on Cathedral green. The grass is flattened by rustic buildings and baby Jesus has his own, fresh from B&Q, right at the front. This is all a call to spend money, but first I have to take a closer look at that baby.
Do I Need a New King?
There are flags all over the village but this is the biggest one. When it flaps backwards, the letters spell NOITANOROC. A confusing word for a strange day. Watch it on TV? Go eat soggy cakes in the rain outside the village hall? Swear allegiance? Announce that he is ‘Not Mine’ or something else? What to do?
Continue reading “Do I Need a New King?”One Wedding, and a Funeral
We had a family wedding. Not too large, because we all know the old saying ‘The bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage.’ It was just the right size, with all the ingredients to set the couple up for life. This is their recipe for a good wedding and, next time I get married I will probably follow it.
The Hidden Dangers of Board Games
It is not a good idea to lock a large family of adults in together for several days over the holidays. Especially when the weather is bad, daylight is minimal, alcohol is plentiful, and everybody is nursing their own version of whatever mental illness they got from 2 years of the pandemic. That is why you need board games. They help to channel behaviour by forcing people to do things, and they are Fun until they are not.
How to make a Christmas Crib
The Ancestors were keen on Cribs. A special birth was re-created in a new setting every Christmas, and the decoration box here is littered with scratched and dented remnants of those scenes. It was kind of them to leave us with all this stuff.
It is easy to make a crib if you have a few basic things, feel free to improvise and add in your favourite items.
Why Christmas is full of Traps
It is easy to crash into Christmas on autopilot and do the same things every year. Two weeks later you pick through the debris and realise that Christmas is a load of traps, that are easy to fall into.
Jobs for December. Get the Decorations out.
Suddenly it is dark by 4pm. This happens every December, but is always a shock. Every afternoon we say interesting things like ‘It’s dark already,’ before checking the news about Omicrom, with anxiety fuelled by grey skies and vitamin D deficiency. Stop it. You can’t change the outside world but you can mess about with your home. Go to the Christmas decorations, and see what’s there.
The Best Kinds of Foraging
Advent Sunday. A day to light a candle, and think about shopping. Exeter this week was full of city noise, bus fumes, and Black Friday frenzy. I went there to meet someone, not shop, so it was easy to despise everybody else for being too consumerist, but then I had to hang around waiting, and that changed.
Autumn Jobs in the Garden are not What you Think
Don’t bother looking for garden jobs now. Let everything die back, and trust the worms and insects to mulch it all down. They are better gardeners than you will ever be. Go for a walk, admire the colours and, when you get back, get busy with lost chickens, wild rats and too many pumpkins.
Discovering New Walks on the Doorstep
Last month Glastonbury festival would have brought half a million people into a field. It felt right to mark ‘Glastonbury weekend’ with Something. So we did.
How to Organise the Perfect Garden Party, for up to 30 People
The hedges are full of cow parsley, and the ditches are full of rain. Midsummer is the time to party and we were allowed up to 30 people. So we did. There were a couple of glitches and we learnt some lessons. Here are the tips.
Learning How to Party Again
In Japan, cherry blossom is a symbol of new beginnings and is celebrated with parties under the trees. Good idea. We are bristling with antibodies so the invites went out to come and party. Would we know how? And what would we need?
Finding Hope in the Snowdrops
The snowdrops are here. Time to step AWAY from Christmas and the disappointing debris of sherry, stuffing and cold potatoes.
Swedish Ginger Biscuits. How to make them, and why.
Tried to go out yesterday and maybe buy a couple of presents. Came home with this picture instead. It’s called ‘rainbow on rain’ and reflects the upsetting portal that we are all going through at the moment. Everything is blurry and there is no way of knowing what is ahead. But one thing is certain. It’s time to stay home and make biscuits.
We are all Artists Now
Here is a little Hellebore, the Christmas rose. A useful pit stop for bees, who might need a drop of nectar on a winter flight, and a symbol of serenity. All is well in the garden, with plants quietly getting on with winter. Completely ignored by humans, who are going into a frenzy of ‘creating Christmas no matter what’.
Christmas Cards made Simple
The prickly heath bush has pearly pink berries, as lovely as John Lewis baubles, all ready for Christmas. I’m not. Christmas cards keep turning up and there are two of me here. One wants to send Christmas cards out fondly and the other doesn’t see the point. What to do?
Now the Holly bears a Berry and it’s not just for Christmas
The holly tree is groaning with berries and we’re all groaning about Christmas. There are three things to worry about.
The Clematis is Flowering. It’s Pumpkin Competition Time.
The Winter Clematis is out. It’s time to launch into a frenzy of preparation for the pumpkin competition. Hopefully the other entrants are all small children so I am in with a chance.
