ALMOST OVER.

Well we've had a couple of very mild days here with ... sunshine and no rain. Amazing! 

So Dafad here has taken the opportunity to do a bit of necessary weeding in the garden and had a bonfire of dried out stems and twigs that had been left in piles last year as they were too green to burn last time I was up here. I love the smell of wood smoke and the crackle of the flames as they take hold. The daft dog likes being a gardeners companion, 

which basically means retrieving thrown tennis balls and then bringing them back to where I am weeding and trying to hide them in the trug full of garden tools or more craftily nosed into the pile of weeds that are ready to go to the compost bin. He then lies down waiting for me to throw the ball again, I desist ... he gets impatient ... his nose and eyes focused on where the the ball is. But, not always ... being a crafty collie he will sometimes stare somewhere away from the ball in the vague hope that I will be intelligent enough to find it, but not having the acute sense of smell that a dog has, he gets fed up waiting and will run in, point his nose directly at where the ball is, then run off  and lie down waiting for me to throw it again. I wish I could train him to dig up weeds!

In the engrossing process of stop and start process of gardening, I've totally forgotten to take photographs over the last two sun blessed days and we've had visitors too, so tonight late I took him for an amble around the village green and the pond. The ducks were shy tonight and didn't swim over to greet him, which he seemed rather baffled by, stood as he was at the edge of the pond waiting for them to appear, ears pricked, nose pond-wards.

As we headed back past the village pub, which, this being a Saturday night was busy, I realised that the fir tree on the green outside the pub ...

<<< was still twinkling with Christmas lights. Come Monday the kids will be back at school and so hopefully all these festive decorations will get taken down and put away until next November. Now I don't know about you but Christmas seems to be around for quite a large chunk of the year now and grumbly, moaning oldie that I'm turning into ... I'm fed up of it. The earliest I saw a fully decorated Christmas tree was years ago when I worked for a company that involved me visiting all sorts of sites. In one hotel I came across a fully decorated tree in ... July! The hotel was advertising early booking for Christmas Dinner. The poor receptionists had to put up with that  twinkling (live) tree for the following six months of the year, I felt so sorry for them. For me as a child, the tree was put into place and decorated on Christmas Eve, nowadays I see decorated trees in house windows in November, I've even seen them before Bonfire night on November the 5th! Is it any wonder that when December 25th actually arrives, so many of us are so fed up with it all? I for one will be so glad to see the multi-coloured lights switched off and am looking forward to the much more interesting variant shades of the flowers in early spring. In the garden here those delights are already appearing ... delicate primrose flowers, early cherry blossom, small early daffodil buds, even very early privet blooms. I would far rather have all that, than any artificially decorated Christmas tree. And no I may be getting old but I still have that child-like wonderment when I see how nature provide us with so many surprises.