Three seasonal things #10

Mossy trees; the Christmas crockery; hazel catkins

Happy betwixtmas! I’m going to keep it short this week as I am trying to practice what I preach and keep this week as sacred down time, and I have an afternoon by the fire watching Agatha Christie films with my daughter planned…but I also just couldn’t resist a quick check in, it having been such an important week.

A tiny bit of housekeeping: from next week this feature will no longer be called ‘three seasonal things’ and will instead become something like Week 1/Week 2/ etc…still workshopping the exact wording with my team of creatives but my thinking is it will be easier to keep track of where we are, particularly if we manage to keep going into the following year/s, and we can check back and see how each measures up. So keep an eye out for that.

Now, the traditional round up of your beautiful comments from last week. I’ve said this before but there is an odd tendency for a theme to emerge out of your comments, and I think I have to point it out or it might stop happening? Anyway, last week it was the turn of Scotland, in particular cold Scottish water:

A beach-side sauna then running into the Scottish sea; a traditional midwinter climb up Arthur’s Seat to gaze over frozen Edinburgh; a candlelit Christmas concert; sitting by a loch as the midwinter dawn broke; the roar of the audience at a performance of Sleeping Beauty; solstice hot toddies; snowed in in Ohio with -20 temperatures and ginger carrot soup; dawn in Holyrood Park; Santa waving from the passenger seat of an SUV; finishing the wrapping and completing the Christmas cake; a still quiet church in between services; a swim in the icy Forth, with a peach and pale blue sky; stepping off the plane from Los Angeles into English drizzle; lying in a basket swing in the park and hearing an owl; a midwinter fire in the garden, with stars; a slow solstice day with flickering candles and board games; and an equatorial solstice, with an apricot sunset fading into a sea of towering blue-black clouds.

As ever, wow.

Here’s my three things this week:

A mossy tree

I walk at least once every day because of the dogs but on Christmas week you can of course get everyone else to walk with you, and so we did, and went somewhere a bit different to usual. We went to Snuff Mills, which is a beautiful little valley and river in east Bristol. It is so damp in there that all of the trees were just coated with moss, down to the finest twigs, like something from a swamp.

The Christmas crockery

I bought these two dishes in an antiques shop on the front in Lyme Regis and am still haunted by the other matching dish that I couldn’t afford to get at the time. They come out precisely once per year, and this of course was that moment. I love them, they are so charming, a 1960s department store Christmas, or a Scandinavian winter hillside, depending how romantic you are feeling.

If I could just have that little divided snack holder too…for the sauces perhaps…gah. One day.

Hazel catkins

Well look, we are just past the solstice and here are the hazel catkins, all ready to get the year going. Let’s go!

Wishing you a wonderful week. Please let me know some of the things that have marked this week out as this week in the comments below.