Christmas 2013

Here we are and it is January....the Festive season behind us again and it is good to do a bit of reflecting.
I always get a couple of branches from the Cyprus tree these days. The decorating is monotone and simple with no lights.

 When the boys were little, seemingly eons ago now, we used to get Pinus radiata branches and the boys would have much fun bringing them inside and  decorating them.
Slowly too, the presents under the tree are getting less and less as we don't need or want anything these days.
So, there are tokens of gifts but always some books! Books remain a joy to give and receive.
There is always a Man Booker prize book a literary family member gives his father each Christmas and this year it is The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It looks fascinating but I haven't started it yet as my son sent me Tim Cope's On the trail of Genghis Khan for my birthday which is also at this time of the year. I have always been interested in Mongolia as my father had two volumes on Genghis Khan with beautiful cover jackets of the hordes on horseback. I wonder what happened to those books......

So I have started reading about the young man who wants to understand what the nomadic life was like in the 13th century. He travels on horse back from the edge of Mongolia to Hungary.....
It is freezing cold as he seems to insist on doing this journey in the beginning of winter ...
But I digress
Going back to Christmas, I decorated the fire place with Lhemanii buds which look like fingers, gumtree branches and bird nests and a Christmas bird or two....

 Christmas day we had quail for lunch with a bottle of Penfolds Grange my brother generously brought along for us to have a veritable feast...
and so we did.
After that, we had to try some of our own renowned local reds of course and so it went on
Why did I feel less than healthy the following morning??
Just as well we had plenty of left overs so I didn't have to think too hard about what to have for the next few meals....

Christmas time also always reminds me of sheep.
Everyone seemed to think I ought not to be without sheep after I had to give my own little flock of beautiful spinning wool sheep away years ago. So these sheep on the right here are my constant companions and reminders of days I would spin skein after skein of wool or later Alpaca and also silk. They have collected me and not the other way round.

I also adore pigs and would love to have a pet pig, in fact I wanted a pet pig long before it became fashionable. However, my mother packed my piggybank when we left Holland to come to Anlaby, South Australia and it has been with me since I was a little girl.
You are supposed to smash the pig to get at the money but my brother showed me how to insert a knife blade and the coins would slide out along it and so I was able to save and save my little pig as well.....