We’ve no sign of frost here at the moment, a promising bright morning gave way to a wet and windy afternoon; we’ve lit the fires and opened the chocolates, nobody is moving far or fast.
These images have been waiting in the wings for a couple of weeks.
The holly ( a male, which is a shame, red berries would have been nice)
and the sycamore
Happy Christmas dear blog buddies, wishing you good health, peace and happiness for 2013. The uphilldowndales are still here, all is well, but a little exhausting, but once we’ve recovered from the gluttony of Christmas day, blogging service will resume to something that resembles my idea of normality.
Normality is looking very attractive. Spud the dog sends his love.
My blog lies unattended, my RSS feed is bulging at the seams, I’ve been absent without leave yet again. And it going to get worse before it gets better.
Last summer I decreed I was going to have a clear out, the boxes of ‘stuff’ that had come out of the loft the previous year when we had the house reroofed, and that were now languishing in the barn, were going to be sorted once and for all. Some of the ‘stuff’ might once have been described as bric- a- brac , some of it I knew had a value but I didn’t know how to go about selling it; but now thanks to the world of eBay it is ‘stuff’ that can be found a new home.
Previously the Uphilldowndales have been shoppers on eBay, not sellers, I can tell you it has been a bit of an adventure and it has taken me six months to actually settle down and ‘just do it’. It has undoubtedly taken up swaths of time, energy and parcel tape*( the village post office is my new best friend). But what has been an unexpected bonus is some of the nice people that I’ve ‘met’ , not unlike the people I’ve met here in the world of blogs actually. I’ve particularly enjoyed hearing why people collect certain things and what make an item a ‘good ‘un’ **
I’ve sold things that I whilst I appreciate the craftsmanship of, I don’t necessarily want to share my life with. It has been rather cathartic, letting go, sending them off to new loving homes. OK, it has been fun too.
It has made me think what is not for sale too, what is precious to me, for all sorts of reasons. For starters there are my vintage Christmas tree lights which I now know would sell for a pretty penny) and then there is what my mum tells me is a ‘bread mug’; a large earthenware bowl, crudely made, a tad on the wobbly side but I’m simply fond of it.
What I love is the hand print in the glaze, made by the person that crafted such a utility item.
Today it has various uses, none involving bread: sometimes it is full of house plants others it might be home to my most recent collection of fir cones and beach finds, sometimes it hosts only a spider.
One of the objectives in this mammoth clear out was to fund a new carpet for the lounge. I’ve achieved my goal, and now I have to put some elbow grease where my money and my mouth is. There is an awful lot of work to be done before the carpet fitter can arrive.
Spud the dog will be along later to hold the blog fort, whilst we replace skirting boards, plaster walls and sweep chimneys. Spud may well have a paint brush tied to his tale.
*don’t buy Tesco parcel tape it smells of vomit.
** Mr Uphilldowndale say’s I should post a link to our eBay account then you could leave your comments whilst you did a little shopping
That post Christmas, over stuffed, lethargic sort of feeling, perfectly captured by a pair of rotund terriers, staked out in the market place, presumably whilst their owners were restocking vittels in the Co-op.
If I’d taken a pin to them they would have popped like balloons and whizzed off over the parish church out to the hills.
Like the rest of the country we are eating up the contents of the fridge, I relish the left overs more than the original Christmas dinner, as it provides a series of ‘easy teas’ with minimum input from me, and that sounds very tasty; but somehow there never seems enough of the right food to hit the spot for teenagers. Despite tins of chocolates, boxes of biscuits littering the house and the remains of a large dead bird in the fridge, ‘I’m hungry; what’s to eat’ is still the cry reverberating through the house.
The image above is a ‘left over’ photo from our holiday in Wales. It’s of the strapping ‘all day breakfast’ at the world famous ‘Pete’s Eats’ in Llanberis. I had a slightly more modest toasted cheese and tuna sandwich and very tasty it was too.
I read the section entitled ‘Pete’s Bistro’ on the Pete’s Eats website, as a one time self-employed person, it chilled my spine. Brrrrrr
Home the place to be, I’ve got a fire lit, music, even a scented candle for goodness sake* and the for the first time in what seems like a long while, the chance to play about with all things creative. I’m quietly content.
The day got off on the right foot with a sunny start, Spud and I went down the field to the copse, I wanted to check everything was OK where we buried Dacy the cat. The remaining berries on the Buckthorn caught my eye.
I planted Buckthorn in the place where we’ve chosen bury our pets, for very sentimental reasons.
As a child my Dad always used to dose the dogs, we had Border terriers, with syrup of buckthorn if they were unwell. I’m not sure it was the right thing, it was probably a very antiquated idea even in the 1960’s; from 1891 the Lewis Lloyd collection
"Occasional Physic for dogs
1 oz Jalap
1 pint of syrup of buckthornDose for a full sized dog.
A large tablespoon twice a week, in hot weather more especially.Jalap "consists of the dried tubercules of Ipomoea Purga, Hayne (N.O. Convolvulaceae), a climbing plant indigenous to the eastern slopes of the Mexican Andes." (The British Pharmaceutical Codex, 1911). It was used (in humans) as a purgative, as was Buckthorn syrup (The Physiomedical Dispensatory, William Cook, MD, 1869).
But there worse things to give a dog, see the prescription for distemper
For distemper
outward application½ oz White Hellebore
½ oz Black Brimstone
1 Pint of old milk (1 quart for a very small dog), mix together and sponge the dog well all over (particularly the chest and underneath parts). Shut the dog up in a warm place, it makes him very sick and purged for some hours – when recovered sufficiently feed for the first 24 hours on slops and no meat, afterwards keep him well. Tho’ the hellebore is poison, dog need not be muzzled. The above is a capital dressing for Sporting dogs once a month during the summer and hot weather."
I think it would take more than a scented candle to mask the smell of a dog drenched in sour milk
*The candle is very nice, so much so, that Mr Uphdd, who is not a fan of such things does not protest, it’s by Neom, and if you wanted to buy buckthorn hedging plants, I’d recommend the very nice people at Weasdale nurseries their fine plants have featured here before
Spud would like to wish his world wide fan base, a very Happy Christmas,
may it be cosy and relaxed.
Peace and goodwill to you all.
I can report Mr Uphilldowndale finished the decorating at 18:00 hrs yesterday evening. Dinner will be served.
On Monday morning (note the date, the 19th of December) Mr Uphilldowndale sat up in bed and announced he was going to decorate our bedroom before Christmas. The need to re-decorate our bedroom has been evident since the roofer put in his foot through the ceiling, in July 2010. The task was on a schedule of work that ‘slipped’ when Mr Uphilldowndale ‘slipped’ from his bike back in October. I’d long since given up hope of a coat or two of emulsion paint this side of Christmas.
Given that Mr Uphilldowndale was also working a couple of days this week I thought he’d set himself quite a tight delivery date, but I wasn’t going to discourage him.
He did falter slightly yesterday as he’d seen a chance to run off in search of the roving lunch box again: but I pointed out that if he delivered a half painted bedroom, I’d be reciprocating by delivering a half cooked turkey to the table on Christmas day. We’ve come to a mutual understanding.
The photos are from last weekend, I’ve been too busy to get out and about and it has been wet miserable weather during any moments that I’ve actually managed to get my head up.
Here is Mrs Bees boy, isn’t he handsome with his dusting of snow.
I was Christmas shopping last week when I found myself in a delightful but tiny shop, when I shop there I have to quash rising feelings of claustrophobia because it sells such nice things and is, unlike the rest of town a ‘real’ shop: it is so small and intimate that everyone is sort of forced into one conversation. Well that is my excuse.
Another customer was going on, and on, and on, about the trials of buying a fresh Christmas tree. There was nothing right with the selection of trees on sale in Derbyshire this year (and trust me she had checked every last one of them).
Tree angst included
It was probably a bit blunt of me, but the words just fell from my mouth…
“I’m sorry, I think you need to ‘get a life life’ here; it is just a Christmas tree you are talking about. Why don’t you just get some nice twigs and some pretty lights.”
She looked at me as though I had arrived from a different planet, and in truth I probably have.
(*probably the person who has invested time and effort in growing the thing for the last six years, they will be trying to recoup their investment and buy nice things for their children…)
