Your Day (apart from gardening) - what took place?

Yes Victoria you must take the exercise gently.

@CanadianLori that looks great well done.

 

Went Christmas shopping in a near-by town for the four gifts I have to give. It took about half an hour !
but I did enjoy a nice coffee and custard slice in a little café before coming home

 

Finally our son is going to visit tomorrow. He will arrive at 10.30am and go late afternoon. He will use the train he says that this time of year it won't be very busy so it will be safe for him to travel. Got him a lovely card and he will have some treats for the boys and a card for us.

 

That's good Logan
He should be fine using the train , our brood have used them for travelling a fair bit. Masks were always worn and now of course it's mandatory again anyway. He just had to make sure he carries and uses his hand sanitizer .
Are you cooking a Christmas dinner ....that's what I did a couple of weeks ago for one of ours, but we're not seeing him over the hols. Does he come to you for Christmas?

 

Brilliant, have a lovely day together!

Public transport can feel very uncomfortable and frightening, and it's very individual how we take these situations.

It was a big step for me to gradually start using public transport again after the worst lockdowns. I was, and still am, checking on how many people are wearing a mask and am very uncomfortable if a maskless person is too close to me.

However, we must find a way to start doing things we want to do. After all, we are in a good place in the UK at the moment, even when the infection rate is high, serious illness is low thanks to the jabs and sensible approach in general.

How very lovely for your family to finally meet again @Logan, enjoy!

 

I wish you all a lovely day and hope your son's journey is a safe one.

 

Just ordered a load of tulips from J Parkers. They have an 'end of season' sale on at the moment - prices that match Wilkinsons. What are bargain. Should be a lovely colourful display in the garden next year - keep an eye on my gallery for pic's

 

Thank you @Upsydaisy, @Selleri and @Victoria. No I didn't cook a Christmas dinner and we won't see him over Christmas, that's why he comes now, he arrived at 10 am and went at 3pm to miss the rush on the train, he should be back by now. Just text him and he said that one of the trains was cancelled due to a power outage so had to get the bus.he said that he was the only passenger on it so he was fine.

 

@clanless j Parkers are great with their bulbs, I've had them 2 years running and you should get a great display next spring, look forward to seeing your pics.

 

Put up the Christmas Tree...looking all festive now!

 

Looks great upsydaisy, going to do mine this week.

 

Thanks @Logan

 

We do our decorations on St Nicholas Day, 6 December, and take them down on the 12th Day, 6 January.

 

I have always put them up on ( or very near to ) my Mum's birthday.......and then can't wait to take them down and clear up the glitter from everywhere on Jan 1st.

 

In Finland the tree is cut and put up on 23rd and taken down on 6th, the End of Christmas. It's a intriguing mix of pagan and Christian celebrations, bringing light to the shortest day of the year and ending the feast on 6th when bad men, dressed as goats, roamed from house to house to collect the leftovers. Santa Claus is "Christmas goat" in Finnish.

A modern city tradition is to get rid of the tree by throwing it from the balcony- makes total sense when you live in a high rise and don't want to clear the needles from the staircase. It however creates a unique festive hazard causing many incidents when pedestrians are hit by falling fir trees.

We'll dig our tree out from the garage probably next weekend. Nowadays we have learnt to shake it very well before bringing it in, the garage is also known as the Kingdom of Spiders so one year we had a delightful amount of biodiversity in the living room

Today's job is to find the battery charger and start unravelling the lights. I'm not into blinky or shiny things but subtle, warm white lights are a must.

Next weekend it'll be gingerbread time.