As the years roll by winter is slowly becoming my favourite season.  The light is gentle, the days are shorter and it is easy to find an excuse to cook or light a fire, or both.  Bread proves more steadily, butter can be left on the bench, the snakes disappear, I get to revisit my favourite winter woollies and trips to the woodpile provide solitude, exercise and thinking time.

For me, winter is so much easier to manage than our brutal, hot summers.  Right now I am savouring the crisp mornings, the sparkly light and the dark evenings when everyone is usually inside the house earlier than normal.

This week the stormy skies delivered 44mm of welcome rain.

Golden light shining through a spontaneous sculpture in the vegetable garden.

 

Fresh, churned up water lapping at the banks of our house dam.  A happy site after staring into a big, dry pit for many months.

In contrast to the red and brown shades outside the garden, inside the garden I have a rampant green manure crop.  It is so lush and healthy I am starting to think that I will need plenty of muscle to get it chopped down and dug into the soil before tomato season is upon us.

 

The winter solstice occurs on Sunday.  I am planning to stoke up the wood oven and
load it up with bread, lamb shanks and perhaps a wintery pudding.  I might even find some candles and certainly
a bottle or two of stout.   The seasons
roll on.

Will you celebrate the solstice or will it pass by quietly?

 

Stay warm friends x