LUNAR SOLSTICE

Last year, for the first time in a couple of hundred years there was an eclipse of the moon on the solstice.  An auspicious (or not, depending how you feel about such things) event. We got up early to look - the moon turns blood red, apparently - but saw nothing but dull grey dawn.  Oh well, there’ll be another one in 2094....

The winter solstice marks the beginning of the end of darkness - from now on it will get lighter by 2 minutes every day until - let’s not even go there - it’s enough that it’s getting lighter, even if it’s not getting any warmer. The snow slows me up in so many ways (I quite like the fact that I can’t do any gardening).  I find it stops me from even wanting to move.  I watch the chickens just standing there, looking cold and refusing to lay much and I know just how they feel.

CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS

Now that most of my children are teenagers I appreciate the little rituals and details that make Christmas what it is.  Sam and I have been decorating the tree - well, he decorates down one side of it and I change it once he’s in bed.  When the others were small I had to have my own tree, so that I could bear to watch them draping theirs in a haphazard fashion and not interfere.  I’m more relaxed about it now and love all the homemade, non-matching charm that a child decorated tree has.  I read somewhere that lots of children have their own tree in their bedrooms now, but my children make too much mess in their rooms for that - theirs  would end up being decorated with old socks...

                          

Last year I went a bit mad drying oranges - across a floor in our house with underfloor heating.  I’d  tried various methods before finding this one.  The slow oven made them too brown, the radiators were good, but not when the slices fell down the back of them - the big one in the bathroom would have been great, except for Sam jumping out of the bath and eating them when I wasn’t looking.  This year my husband declared them a complete nuisance and so I bought them ready dried instead.  Such a waste of a nice warm floor.