Christmas is officially Over

27th of December and we woke to clear blue skies and it remained like that for the remainder of the day.  This was good because I had the day earmarked for washing and gardening and John had it earmarked for car washing and chainsawing some wood for the wood burner.

This December has been considerably warmer and dryer than last year's thank goodness and it is having a peculiar effect on the garden - as I have said before all sorts of things are flowering now when really they should not be.

Historically January and February are our winter months when we would normally expect lots of rain, lots of grey days and dipping temperatures.  We are prepared.   We have had nearly 12 years to get ourselves used to the weather up here in the hills and there is very little else we think we can do to the house to make it more efficient plus as the years have gone on I feel the cold less and less - this is a bonus in the winter although I am not sure that John would agree!!!

So we got up reasonably early ready to get going on the tasks we had set ourselves but the day was not to turn out as we had planned but more of that later...

I put in my first load of washing and John went out to clean the cars.  I wanted to clear up the garden of all the fallen leaves and cut back some plants which need a 'rest' during the winter.  

Last Spring I planted some Cyclamen in the garden which had been in pots indoors.  They have survived and a few of them have started to flower.  This one though is a wild Cyclamen which has appeared of its own accord.  The flowers are less showy than those which we bought from the garden centre.

I hadn't realised that so much stuff needed to be cut back.  You can no longer walk to the outside shower because the osteospurmum has now bridged the gap.  The iceplant is spilling out onto the tiles at the end of the swimming pool and the wild yellow flowering shamrock type plant/weed has taken over in the front garden.  The solanum need a right old cut back to retain their ball shape.

I started out filling my medium sized black bucket but had to move onto the mega large one pretty quickly.  In between times I got my load of washing out and put on a second load but once again, as it did in September, nothing happened and all the lights came on.

John came in and said he could remember what Keith the Engineer had done the last time so was pretty confident he could sort it but the washing machine wasn't playing ball.  We called Keith and he said he would come up and take a look.  This meant everything we had planned for the afternoon got put on hold or delayed.  Keith is on a spectrum all of his own, he arrived with a 'friend' who rides the same spectrum and today I wasn't in the mood for their particular brand of bullshit baffles brains when John is pretty good with electronics!  Sadly the washing machine's malaise was terminal.  It is now an interesting addition to the front garden.  My second load had been in the machine when Keith was doing his stuff so got wet before I could extract it so I had to take it across to Argy's so that I could wash it - I have no idea how long it will be before I get a replacement - a lot of the suppliers say they have to order them in and there are delays in that exercise not least because of Christmas, New Year and Epiphany but generally because things aren't coming into the island as they should do.  Thank you Argy.  I know I normally ask in advance but this was an emergency.

Our planned brunch got pushed back to a fry up tea but actually that suited us quite well because we had been invited across the road to Nicky and Mark's for a Christmas drink and although we weren't planning a session it is always good to have lined our stomachs before a tipple or two.

Sorry about the out of focus snap but I wanted to capture the hard work that the Kirby's have put into the lounge/diner.  Mark and Nicky have worked miracles with the ceiling, insulating, plaster boarding and painting - their interior design is so very different from ours, very clean lines and a simple colour palette.  I love it.  I love to see the love and care and ideas that our neighbours are pouring into their houses - they are all fundamentally the same on the outside but so very different on the inside.  We have at last got the sort of community that this development deserved.