Through the Garden Gate --December 2024

December is always a busy month with preparations for Christmas and doing nice Christmassy things. It's never a gardening month for me.

At the beginning of December I made wreaths for the front and side entrances to the house.

Early in December we also had a trip to the garden centre to buy the Christmas tree. Getting it home in the car is always quite an event. 

We had a Christmas tree festival at our church and my friend and I decorated one. It wasn't just the tree to decorate though, it was the table top around it. So it took quite a bit of thinking about as we planned it. They all had to represent a Christmas carol and there was a quiz for visitors to guess the carols. Ours was 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'. I think it would be quite an easy one to guess.

We visited our daughter Sarah down in Bedfordshire for a weekend and her church also had a Christmas tree festival. They seem to be quite popular events now in churches. 

Back home, the following week, our other daughter, Helen and I went to Lytham Hall. The hall is open to visitors throughout the year, but at Christmas it is decorated up with a Christmas theme. This year it had a Charles Dickens theme with each room representing a different Dickens book. It was beautifully decorated. A lot of the decorations were hand made by some of the volunteers.

The garden is looking quite bedraggled with soggy leaves on the beds, but it's nice to see bulbs starting to emerge. The first to flower will be the snowdrops. I was quite surprised as I walked around the garden yesterday to see the Hamamelis flowering and near the kitchen door there's a lovely sweet smell of the Christmas box which is just starting to produce its little white flowers. There are also cyclamen flowering under the trees. There's plenty of interest in the garden if I spend some time walking round and searching. Sometimes it's a bit too cold to go out though!

I received two garden books for Christmas, Carol Klein 's 'Hortobiography' and 'Drawn to the Garden' by Caroline Quentin. Carol Klein grew up only a few miles from where I grew up so it's interesting to read about her early years. 

I also received a long handled patio weeder. I do love a new garden tool. It should be easier on my back if I don't have to kneel down to weed the patio now. 

The weather has been really miserable recently, with grey skies, fog and drizzle and there's a weather warning for snow in the next few days. It's definitely not gardening weather. Fortunately there's not much to be done at this time of year. 

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all a happy and peaceful New Year and happy gardening.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea ' for her monthly 

'Through the Garden Gate' post.