No In a vase on Monday

There is no vase from me today – I had intended using the dried flowers I grew this year to make a Christmas swag, wreath or mantle decoration but at the weekend we received the very sad news that my mother in law had died peacefully in her sleep.

She was a wonderful woman much more like a mother to me than a MIL.  She was the person who first gave me the confidence to begin arranging flowers and when I began making regular vases for Cathy’s meme she encouraged me with kind words and with an inspirational book as a Christmas gift.

She will be sadly missed by everyone who knew and loved her.  A strong woman as many of her generation were, she was never too old to learn new things and at 90 years old, she followed this blog on her iPad!

I will sometimes be absent from the blogging world during the next couple of weeks but you can be sure that even if I don’t leave a comment I will be reading yours when I am able.

Thank you for understanding.  Christina

 

Tulip Time

No, sadly I don’t have any tulips flowering but I have been busy planting my tulips in the garden and in pots in the greenhouse.

Wordless Wednesday

Looking up the slope with golden foliage still on the ornamental Pomegranate and yellow berries of the Melia again a lovely blue sky today

Tuesday View 6th December plus 360°

Yesterday the weather was glorious, warm, blue skies and sunshine, perfect for planting bulbs!  But other things got in the way so it was today I was outside planting tulips.  The day was grey with only a few glimpses of the sun all day and it was damp cold.  

In a Vase on Monday – Feeling Blue

Mondays in December can be difficult to find flowers to pick from our gardens to fill a vase.  But Cathy at Rambling in the Garden challenges us every week and so we go rambling ourselves to see what we can find.

A cold and frosty morning 1st December 2016

Last weekend we walked by Lake Vico, a volcanic lake just south of us.  As we were driving I saw a huge tree covered in red berries – surely not a Holly, but yes that’s what it was.  I have never seen so many berries on a full size Holly in my life.  They say that large numbers of berries mean that the winter will be hard; our forecast has also been predicting that this winter would be colder than average and would begin early.