Ho! Ho! yawwwwwnnnnn Ho!

This is the time of year when it's really cold, and dark early and I have a great sense of wishing I could just stay in bed till February, like a cat! so Christmas calls on energy I'm a bit short of. I do walk, be it ever so cold, because that's a Good Thing and stuns my neighbors, most of whom are from tropical climes whose walking stops dead in October.

We do celebrate Christmas, but in a muted sort of way! three festive pillows



and one ceramic creche and additions to the collage of cards on the door



where HP can see and enjoy them.



That's it for decorations. Occasional neighbor stopping in is IT for entertaining. Nice meal on Christmas Day made together with wonderful HS, is it for partying. I guess this really is muted, since HPs nurse visited today and asked us if we celebrate Christmas! so low key you can't even tell it's there..

I like Christmas done this way, though, not my fave time of year, too much enforced jollity, and it's nice to enjoy it quietly and without fanfare. And I'm fervently glad that they repealed the law that said you must attend Nutcracker or risk heavy fines.

HP gave us an inspired Christmas gift last year -- a box of cards to use this year! what a terrific idea. So I have been able to do that, with my rather short list, and enjoy doing it. And when a card arrives from someone who wasn't a sendee, I can retaliate, I mean reciprocate, right away. This is good.

I notice that I'm already thinking gardening, though, the indoor kind until I can get outside for the other kind. I did a couple of miniature transplants into my dish gardens, because I love the way a tiny shootling from a big begonia looks suddenly like a giant in the dish garden, tree-like. And a few shoots of chives are towering over the mosses. And a vanishingly tiny rootling of spearmint is establishing itself as a plant to be reckoned with among the pebbles in the mossy landscape.

I love the way the plants know instantly when the days lengthen and start to grow more, before humans can detect the difference. One of the advantages of time starting to rush ahead in older age, though, is that the winter goes just as fast. Spring's here before you know what happened.