4 Dec 2012

Hestia's Remember November

I don't know where my time goes.  *whispers* Facebook probably.  But we are looking straight down both barrels of December - and it's loaded  - with all the attendant stress that comes from this jolly month.

So, I thought I'd swing by and share some November magic with you, before we are properly terrorised out of our wits with the realisation that it's only '2 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS'!!!!

I bought one of these:


No, not a green sweater, but a black tricorn!  My friend Ania has a purple one and I thought it looked quite fetching.  I was a big Adam Ant fan back in the day and without a word of a lie, I have been wearing it around the house, coupled with a white flouncy shirt, black jeans a black fringed wrap and all the attitude of Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady.

Sonshine has announced that if I so much as step into daylight in that rig-out he will phone Social Services himself.

The self-same Ania knitted me these....



.....because Tartarus accidentally washed my beloved bed socks with the bed linen so they shrank to miniscule felted blobs that a doll would have been hard-pressed to squeeze her feet into them.  

Tartarus has now departed for sunnier climes, I am wearing them in bed at night.  But they look a bit good for bed socks, don't you think?  Ignore my hairy wee pins.  I'm back to being a goaty little satyr again from the waist down.  It's winter.  It's Scotland.  My legs won't be on view until next summer.  Which is likely to be the 16th of July and even then only for half a day I expect.

I made potato scones with leftover potatoes.  Twice.


They were damned tasty.

I treated myself to this:


Which is a privately printed Tarot deck by a Russian artist called Alexander Daniloff.  I am loving it to absolute DEATH.

I also have this flowering in the garden.  Just the one.  And I'm about to cut it because another frost like last night and it will be reduced to purple mush*


I love these cactus-headed dahlias.  It should have flowered ages ago, but I don't dig them up over winter, so the poor thing had to start from scratch in the darkness of the earth, instead of the brightness of a shed.  Pretty eh?

My winter flowering viola:


And lastly, figgy - who gave us 4 teeny weeny tiny figs.  She's not looking too well, but I'm assuming that this is ok for a Turkish Fig.  In Scotland?


Just because I know you lot are inquisitive little souls, the blue 'M' is part of the house's name, which is mosaiced (is that a real word) into the floor.  I know. Posh.


* needless to say, I did not cut the dahlia bloom in time and it has turned to mush 
*Monty Don would be ashamed of me face*

Tell me what's been happening with you!

11 comments:

  1. Ah, the joys of perception and self-interest! When I first saw the shot of you in your tricorn hat, I thought what you'd bought was a snazzy new camera ;)

    Those potato scones look delish! I sometimes buy potato farls, which I'm guessing are similar. I rarely have potato leftovers, plus I'm lazy, but your homemade ones do look great.

    My Dear One recently mulched our front and back gardens, and it absolutely reeked! It's worn off a bit now, with the rain, but I kept on thinking I'd trodden in dog sh*t when I walked up our front steps! So, I'm impressed with your gardening, and maybe you should mulch your fig tree?

    Hugs, C

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  2. Akshully, that's ok - it means that you didn't look at the photo and say 'OMFG WHAT IS SHE WEARING??!' which seems to be most other's people's response in real life :-D

    What was he mulching with, Choe? Leaves and what not ought not be too stinky - has he been letting it all rot down in bin bags maybe? I did that one year and forgot to puncture holes in teh bag. Six months of rancid water WHOOOOOEEEEY! Stinky didn't quite cover it!

    Good idea re figgy - might bubble-wrap figgy to protect her.

    Ali x

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    1. LOL, maybe I'm just weird, but I like the look. Wish I could have seen you in the jeans and frilly shirt, though :D

      Yeuch, six months of rancid water does sound worse than ours! My DO says that he put on J. Arthur Bower's Multipurpose Compost + JAB bark chips, but I swear, it smells like dog sh*t. We still need more rain! ;)

      As for figgy, my stepgrandmother is a keen gardener, and she puts some kind of bubble wrap and ratafia around her outdoor plants...

      Cxx

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  3. ali, great hat. i think you ought to take it out for a spin. life is too short to be boring.

    flowers? in december? you think you've got it bad? we've been under a fluffy blanket of snow for a month now! then again, it's been one of the most beautiful winters in years, with hoar frosts sparkling their way through the morning sun (that's 9am).

    what am i up to? school. drinking tea and school. then some more school. then break for tea. and more school.

    still, i am so looking forward to christmas. especially since we don't do gifts and i can focus my energies on baking things and eating them and drinking hot booze!

    muah!

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  4. Re Figgy. You should see ours. Or, maybe not. Poor Figgy might faint. In the subtropics, ours is five feet high and seven feet wide. Takes several years to get ripe figs, though, but they're nice sized when they do come in. The fun bit is when the birds get drunk on them...:)

    Love the hat. Also thought it was the camera you were talking about at first, but I've already seen the hat on FB.

    R: The M on the front entry: Took my ex and I a long time to figure out the house name thing. When we lived in Suffolk, we thought our neighbors' name was Dobson because it was displayed on the house (that's kind of how it's done in the States, although often with a possessive (Dobson's), but subsequently found out we were totally wrong, and it was a house name. So, we named our house Lothlorien (not too original). Got a nice wooden plaque for it, but have no idea where that is now...and, so what's your house's name, then?

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  5. I am very taken with your hat. Adam Ant is currently on tour and is wearing his tricorn, so you are bang on trend with the King of the Wild Frontier! :)

    The tarot deck looks beautiful and fascinating. I should imagine it will take a while for you to absorb all the details.

    Our fig did nothing this year, but I am following a tip from a cookery programme and using the leaves to line my cheeseboard at Christmas. I watch enough of these wretched programmes, it's about time I actually put something into practice!

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  6. I will give Sonshine the number for Social Services - I have it on speed-dial :D
    Comes to something when you think of Scandinavia as 'sunnier climes' LOL

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  7. I'm cold and hungry and really want those potato things....they look delicious.....socks are stunning!!

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  9. We actually got 3 figs this year, an improvement over last of 300%. My band at school was called LothLorien.
    A delicate fig like that might need Hessian wrapped or bubble wrapped as well as mulch.
    xx

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  10. The tricorne is a bit dated, but I think the addition of a feather would make up the whole ensemble.

    Potato scones, especially fried in bacon fat is the ultimate Sunday breakfast treat.

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