Christmas Ad nauseum.

Our local radio station is mainly a music station, little in the way of discussions, fine for late night listening or in the car. This year they decided that there would be no Christmas records played until the 8th of Dec. Wow, what a relief, however since the 8th of Dec it has been Xmas music ad nauseum, if I hear Chris Rea groaning  'Driving home for Christmas' once more I think I will be throwing the radio out. OK, I get it, it will be Christmas in a couple of weeks time, but the TV Christmas advertising has now gone on for nearly two months. Spotted on Facebook the other day,    Christmas is in December, not November, get over it.  No wonder people get so stressed about Christmas, if you don't have your table groaning under the weight of enough food to feed an small army you are not doing it right, if your tree is not decorated in the colours which someone has decided is this years fashion you are failing, and if you haven't bought this years top toy for the children you are defiantly a bad parent. I don't understand the haste to put up Christmas decorations at the beginning of December, Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night is certainly enough for me. This year however the decorations will have to go up a day or so early as we have friends coming for Christmas, arriving Christmas Eve. Our decorations will comprise of Holly and Ivy, collected from our hedges with a few cheerful candles, pine cones which we have collected and spray painted to add a touch of cheer. If it was left to my O.H there would be no decorations at all!  Extra mince meat has been made, the cake and puddings have been made, the cake still has to be marzipaned, we don't do icing, neither of us likes it. Gifts for friends in the UK are wrapped and packaged, ready for picking up by a courier on Tuesday, the cost of a courier is less than half of 'An Post'. Veg is in the garden and the bird is in the freezer, one of our own, I like keeping things simple, no tearing around shops buying what is not needed.

Mugs for two of our friends.

I have made pottery gifts for three of our friends,

A vase for another.

I hope they will be pleased with them.

And a fruit bowl for us.

I also made a fruit bowl for ourselves, I am now working on a set of matching soup/ fruit bowls but they wont be finished until after Christmas. So that's it, I'm ready for Christmas, now I can relax and do things I want to do.

So near and yet so far, just the black edges to do.

I had hoped to have finished the second  tapestry cushion before Christmas but unfortunately I ran out of black wool, 'The Crafters Basket' where I buy my supplies from will not have any in until the middle of this week which may or may not be enough time for me to finish the sewing. Never mind, if it's not finished it will wait, I'm not going to get stressed about it.

First of the purple sprouts.

At last the purple Brussel sprouts have decided to grow, we have our first picking today, why they should have taken so much longer to grow than the green ones is a mystery, they were planted out at the same time.
We have lots of wild birds visiting our feeders, they are eating us out of house and home. We have

Blue Tit.

blue tits, coal tits

Great Tit.

and great tits, plus goldfinch, a couple of friendly robins  wrens,  a couple of blackbirds

House Sparrow sharing space with a Blue Tit

and a whole army of house sparrows. These are birds which seem to stay around the back of the cottage, in the front we have thrushes, wagtails , hedge sparrows and several robins, but they never venture to the back and the bird feeders.

We don't normally do anything special on a bank holiday, unlike people who have to work but it was such a nice day so a quick trip to the coast seemed like a good idea, as a change we headed for the Mayo coast and followed the road along

the Moy river estuary where the river discharges into Sligo bay . For a bank holiday the beaches were surprisingly quiet despite the nice weather.

We didn't collect any seed weed, we just sat and enjoyed the view returning across the Ox mountains.

Here the rain clouds were gathering and somewhere close by had already had rain

 enabling us to enjoy a rainbow.
Sunday was the last of the plant swap events for this year, arranged by Laslo of the Knockvicar Organic Gardens, it was very well attended as usual and we picked up a couple of things who's names escapes me, so we will have to play the waiting game to find out what we have. In exchange we took loads of parsley which grows like a weed for us, true Oregano, (not Marjoram) soap wort, Mimulus, and Sweet Woodruff, again this also grows like a weed so we are quite pleased to be able to swap with people who want what we have. If we had wanted tomato plants we could have had as many as we wanted, but we are selective when it comes to tomatoes, we only grow Sungold, excellent flavour and they have never let us down. On our way back from the swap we had intended to stop off at our favourite bluebell woods, however, we could not get parked within half a mile of the woods, it seems as though everyone in the area had the same idea as us, it was again a beautiful day, not a cloud in sight. Twenty odd years ago we would have been the only people there, it would seem that the woodlands fame has spread.  We instead took a slight detour via Forest park,

if you don't follow the main route through the park there are several lovely areas full of bluebells

and Garlic Ramsons.

The wild cherries are also putting on a lovely display,

and the wild arum is just popping up.
The garden is now delivering something every day,

we have had the first asparagus,

the first strawberries, although they are a month later than normal, hopefully we will soon have a glut of them, we have also had the first picking of spinach. We seem to have very good germination this year, better than normal, I am wondering if this has anything to do with the Planting by the Moon book that we were given at Christmas and to which we are following. It certainly seems to be working.
Most of the daffodil are now over although there are a couple of types just coming out into bloom,

I think the colour of these tulips is stunning.

now it's the turn of the tulips,

I had bought a few different types this year,

A true black tulip.

one of them has turned out to be a true black tulip, it's lovely. One of the plants that I had got a couple of years ago from the plant swap has this year put on a spectacular display, it had been described as wild garlic, which loosely speaking I suppose it is,

in fact it is Allium Triquetrum, (three cornered garlic) it certainly deserves a place in the garden.

Before glazing.

I've named her Flora, she can sit and guard the rockery for me.

I'm still enjoying the pottery classes that I go to every week,

Funky duck

I have a funky duck waiting to dry so it can be glazed  and a couple of mugs on the go which I started last week.

Before glazing.

I think I will try to emulated a Troika vase for my next project. Troika was a small pottery set up in 1962 in St. Ives in Cornwall, it was only in existence for twenty years and pieces that come up for sale fetch a pretty penny, far more than I can afford to pay, although Troika pieces were made using a mould, I will have to try doing it using the slab method, however it turns out I know I will enjoy the challenge.