My Tiny Plot

Goodbye Anna Maria. We’re travelling back to the UK today after a wonderful family holiday. It’s been one of the most amazing holidays I’ve been on. Idyllic location, fun times with family and totally relaxing. This is our pet Heron. He comes every day to fish off the deck here. This morning he was up super early to say goodbye to us. We’ll miss you buddy! See you next year :)

I’m sure the weather will be very different at home but I’m excited to get going with the new growing season. After seeing all the beautiful gardens here I’m raring to get back and start some sowing! And I’m eager to see how my coldframe seedlings are doing and whether my Peach frame is still standing :) I guess I’ll find out soon!

Since Jackson already has a boggling array of presents under the tree from friends and family we decided to make him a present this year (well sort of). A cafe in town has a cute little train set that has been glued to a table top to make a train set. He loves it!

So I thought I would replicate it and make one for him for Christmas. I started to search for a suitable table and found this 70s coffee table at the farmers market for £9 (with free delivery I might add!). Perfect.

Then we painted it. Red for the base (because that’s what colour his room is) and green for the top because our train will be travelling through the countryside! Next we found a basic wooden train set. This John Crane set was perfect because it had houses and people and animals as well as track and a complete train. That was £20. Then we stuck it all down with wood glue.

It works like a dream.

Not that we’ve been playing with it or anything. I think he’ll like it. And the best part about it? It’s not plastic, we had a great time working on it and when he’s bored with it we can freecycle it. It’s a veritable eco-toy.

So I went on a mad foraging mission and found all this lovely greenery. I had to make two trips I found so much gorgeous stuff. Very heavy on the green (Laurel, Holly, Yew and assorted other stuff) quite light on the red (could only find one branch of red berries and a bunch of rose hips!).

Holly with berries on it = officially rare as hen’s teeth this year. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not short of Holly, not round these parts, but Holly with berries? well… I did actually spy some in the stable yard down the lane with ooh… at least three berries on it. But you can’t can you - even in the name of Christmas deckies.

So here’s my pile of outdoors, smelling like a gorgeous mountain of gorgeousness. Just waiting to be made into mantle decorations and door welcomers. I’ve got my two little helpers, one’s on Christmas cards, the other’s on erm… ribbon.

We couldn’t get more festive if we tried. Maybe some eggnog?

How’s everyone else making use of the great greenery shop outside their front door? Are you doing it yourself or did you cheat and go to the farmer’s market?

It’s Chriiiiiistmas! And in the spirit I made these Super-Easy Mini Yule Logs for a kids Christmas party that Jackson went to. They are so easy but look quite the part. Simply buy some ready made mini chocolate rolls, then cover each one with chocolate icing (bought or made whichever you have time for). Then dust with icing sugar and don’t forget the ornamental snow-covered trees! Et voilà - the easiest yule logs you’ll ever make.

Thanksgiving - the aftermath. From the 25llb turkey, the roasted vegetables, the sweet potato with marshmallows on top (new experience for me) to the huge selection of pie - this has been a fantastic first Thanksgiving experience for me. I love the fact that the guys are watching football in the background of this photo.

It was nice to sit with family around one huge table. We each got to say what we were thankful for and of course there were tears. But wait, those are some serious bottles of wine!

And then came the pie; Banana Cream pie, Pumpkin pie, Pecan pie or Key Lime pie? Would it be rude to have a bit of everything?

I ask that question like everyone ‘must’ have a Winter hobby! But recently, I’ve been wondering what you all do in the Winter? Gardening is a fantastic hobby but there’s no doubt that it’s a seasonal activity. There’s masses to do in Spring and Summer but then it starts to wind down and by the time you hit the Winter months (December and January are the leanest) there’s very little to do in the garden except harvest your Winter veg and do a bit of pruning. But mostly I’m taking photos of frosted seed-heads and reading seed catelogues in front of the fire.

I’ve noticed that I often take up my ‘other’ hobbies during Winter. Other hobbies I hear you say - is there such a thing? Well, yes. I like to sew but I only ever have time to do it when the garden isn’t taking up all of my time. Hence in the Winter, friends get handmade Christmas decorations and birthday presents and the house usually gets a new pair of curtains at some point and a few cushions here and there. I even made Under Gardener some camouflaged bags for his Geocaching boxes! (pay back for all the muck-carting he’s done for me).

Recently, I’ve gotten back into painting (A-Level Art really not a waste of time after all, who would have known). And I’m enjoying it. Infact, I’m working on a wee project that some of you might like - more info soon.

So I’m eager to know, what do you fill your Winter months with (assuming all garden duties are done, seeds ordered, pruning, harvesting, clearing done). Do you cook, sew, remodel your house, skydive, paraglide or just collapse into a heap after your busy, busy summer?

Usually, my view is a little less err… dramatic than this. But since I’m visiting family in Colorado for Thanksgiving I have exchanged my somewhat tiny landscape for this, huge, snow-capped, sunshiney affair.

I hate to tell you but this is the view from Under Gardener’s mum’s house. Not bad as views go. We could do with a smidge more snow though. Honestly, I can never have enough snow!

If I find any evidence of vegetable growing here I’ll report back soon. There must be someone growing Sprouts here, right?

This year I finally got around to starting my Christmas Mantel Village. I spied this one last year over at Posy Gets Cozy and immediately hatched a plan to make it my own. Unfortunately, I ran out of time last year so this year I made sure to get organised and buy all the paper, glue and glitter I needed to make a start.

This year we made a village church. I made it out of an old orange juice carton and some cardboard. Then painted the base blue and the roof red and sprayed it with snow out of a can. I also used white plasticine for the snow on the window ledges and orange acetate for the window glow. The trees are bottle brushes that were shaped, sprayed with snow and sprinkled with glitter.

My idea is to make our Mantel Village into a family tradition. Something we can get out every year and add to. Hopefully, Jackson will enjoy doing it too once he’s old enough and it will form part of his memories of Christmas at home.

I think Christmas memories are important. My Christmas memories are of wearing my special (albeit tartan) Christmas dress. Every year that thing came out and it simply wasn’t Christmas if I wasn’t wearing it. I remember too a velvet-covered wind-up Santa that turned round and sang Jingle Bells. Quite scary but very, very festive. And of course the Christmas fairy lights debacle. Every year my Dad would drag the Christmas decorations out from the loft to find that one set of lights just didn’t work anymore and he would spend hours fiddling with each light to find out which one was the weak connection. Ah, happy times.

What’s your tartan dress? What was your family Christmas tradition? Come on, everybody has one!

This year I made myself a little Christmas present - a calendar featuring some of my favourite photos from the past year here at mtp. I used online printing service Lulu.com to create it and when it arrived a few days ago I eagerly unwrapped it to see if it was exactly what I wanted.

It was. It’s huge! And the photos are deep and colourful - just like I hoped they would be. Here’s a photo of it next to a coffee cup so you can get some idea of scale.

I made the calendar for me (honestly I did) but if you want one they are available to buy at Lulu for £15.95. That was the minimum I could do it for since the printing costs were so high. However, I will say that the quality is very good. And the calendar is quite large too.

My calendar will take pride of place in my office and will no doubt oversee many a new post on mtp. Happy 2009!

If there’s one thing that really says Christmas for me it’s Eggnog. I first tasted Eggnog about six years ago. We were visiting a friend of ours who lives in Vail (alright for some eh?). And he invited us back to his mum and dad’s little house tucked up in the hills far away from the glitz and fur coats below. Their house was very Christmassy with a big log fire roaring and the first thing that our friend’s mum said to us once we were inside was, ‘Would you like an Eggnog?’ - I was sold! So now, in our house, Christmas just hasn’t arrived until there’s some Eggnog chilling in the fridge. Here’s my recipe.