Blame it on the weather and the face that the garden is,responding to the rain,is beginning to look like Burn-Jones' pictures of Sleeping Beauty's castel!

  Then again,a garden filled with herbs smells wonderful after heavy rain.The mulberrt tree still hasn't flowered.I keep reading about these descriptions of mulberry flowers being spectacular and I'm growing old waiting!!!

So I'll just have to content myself with dandelions and forget-me-nots! I know dandelinos count as herbs but I'm not sure the rest of the family appreciates that.

   The Lily-of-the-valley have multiplied and have put up promising green spears.I wonder how many shades of green there are?

In the garden it ranges from the (currently)pale green of the lilies across the mud-green of thehazel trees to the deep glossy green of the holly.A green thought in a green shade indeed.

After unsuccessfully attempting to navigate the various blogs I'm back home on my own little corner of the web.  I feel as though I have survived some arcane ritual.  I have to confess that I also developed a weakness for fantasy films during my forced hibernation.  I have always enjoyed sci-fi and reading fantasy books but I had not really watched very many of the films.  Still it's spring in Scotland and something is stirring in the ancient woodland.

In my small garden the witch hazel is in bloom and the minature daffodils are all out.  The fruit trees we planted some time ago are still being sullen.  Last year the plum tree managed to grow one blossom!  And while we can find hazel nuts on the ground under the nut trees how come we cannot find them on the trees?  It's either helpful faeries or the children.

I have been inundated with gardening catalogues, which I have covered with wistful stars as usual and spent our income several times over, luckily only in my head.  Maybe with global warming I will be able to grow peaches in Scotland but not yet.  I read the entries under the beautiful photograph and then come the dreaded words 'not frost resistant' or even 'tender'.  My house is not big enough to hold them all so while I have a real garden I also have a fantasy garden, full of tender plants and lucious fruits!

So....the last time I wrote I was busy planning for Christmas and making up a 'treasure hunt' for my children.  Unfortunately a combination of poor weather and a badly behaved leg(!) meant a long stay inside this winter.  However Spring seems to have sprung and I have ventured out to the library to type on this blog.

Lucky enough to live in one of the stunningly beautiful parts of Scotland I was struck again by the sheer size of the local hills and the sharp blue of the Scottish sky.  I think it is like living at the seaside and not appreciating the sea, sometimes absence really does make the heart grow stronger.  Now I wonder how many more platiitudes I can fit into this little letter to the universe? 

So I have spent the winter hibernating from outside.  So what did I do?  Read incessantly, many childrens books.  What is it about being cooped up that makes you revert to childhood?  Sewed incessantly, I actually developed a middle finger that looked like a pincushion.  This despite the fact that I inherited a steel thimble that belonged to a Great-Aunt, which I dust religiously once a week.  There is something very comforting in the small domestic trivia you carry out often without thinking.  I also picked up my neglected crochet hook and indulged in some 'wool therapy'.

I have been eoncouraging one of my daughter to indulge in cross stitch and she seems to have caught the bug, so I guess I'll be looking for two thimbles! 

Okay, my daughters have persuaded me to write a blog, hoping I expect that I will be distracted from reminding them to tidy their room this evening! So, it is a rainy, damp, dreich day in Scotland, nearly Christmas, and so neighbours are beginning to drape their houses in lights, to push back the early dark.  Today I had to put a light on at 2:30 p.m.

Preparations for Christmas are at the manic stage as everyone in the family suddenly remembers Christmas happens in December!  There is one exception to this, my mother who has been buying "bits of this and that" as she calls it all year and is now serenely wrapping presents. 

This year in order to try and reduce the level of hysterical excitement that is building up I thought I would use the advent santa we have to make a game.  Instead of treats in the drawers I put clues, so that the children could have a treasure hunt around the house.  The treats are just small things gold-foil wrapped Christmas coins, little chocolate santas etc.,.  For some reason I thought this would be better if the clues rhymed.  So tonights is "Here all stations can be found, but not a train upon the ground".  I knew my talent for composing doggrel poetry would come in handy one day!!!