ADVENTures Day 23
This year I nearly didn’t bother with making a Christmas Cake, then my friend Fiona, aka the Cottage Smallholder*, mentioned her ‘last minute Christmas cake recipe’ (www.cottage smallholder.com). You might have noticed the missing slice or three, we took some to share with my Mum when we visited the care home.
I decorated it when we got home, marzipan fruits and pecan nut arrangement stuck in place with icing and dusted with icing sugar. Jobs a good’un!
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ADVENTures Day 22
The Spar at SixMileBottom (highly recommended if you’re local to SW Suffolk/Cambs corner) has a great selection of fresh veg. The delivery had just arrived, the driver gave us a wooden tray and at the till we also got a free majool date each! #AdventAdventures

ADVENTures Day 21
A small van adventure on the Winter Solstice. We drove to Santon Downham and after cooking cheese and tomato toasties in the van for lunch we walked along the Little Ouse river. Quiet wintery colours reflected water. Swans feeding in the river weeds. We watched a Dabchick (Little Grebe) catch a small silvery fish.
The route is a section of the Via Beate, a pilgrimage route connecting Lowestoft with St David’s, 400 miles linking sacred sites along the way.
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ADVENTures Day 19
Outside it’s wet and windy, the snow has gone. It’s the same temperature indoors as out! Room ready for a visitor. Laundry done. Time to add some sparkle to the house with some fairy lights and crystal vases of Bay leaves.
Will I finish the sweater or just sit down for a snuggle with the tabby studio assistant?
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ADVENTures Day 18
By this time tomorrow the forecast says it will be 11C eand raining with 48mph wind gusts. So before the big thaw I’ve had a last snowy walk around the village delivering cards to neighbours. I wonder when the village will look like this again?
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ADVENTures Day 17
The village church decorated for this evening’s Candlelit Carol Service.
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ADVENTures Day 16
The snowy sub-zero conditions continue in the SW corner if Suffolk. My sketching materials were still where they’d been left after the aborted en plein air adventure on Monday. So I too them on a mini-adventure to the end of our ‘Wild Wood’ and sketched the view across the white icy fields and the wood in the distance. The oak trees cast long blue shadows across the snow.
Pastels and watercolour.
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ADVENTures Day 15
Memories of adventures on our tree. I often buy a tree decoration as a holiday souvenir: eagle, bear and moose were from Alaska, the puffin from Nova Scotia. A Czech friend sent me the straw stars. Crafting friends made the felt heart and button decorated tree. A hen keeping friend gave me the pewter hen. The dolls in Ukrainian costume were from a charity supporting the children of Chernobyl.
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ADVENTures Day 14
A trip into town for a Christmas Chinese Buffet Lunch with friends. Eat what you choose. Lots if choice. Lots of chattering.
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ADVENTures Day 13
The snow from Sunday night remains and more sparkly hoar frost has added to the snowy scenes around our village in the SW corner of Suffolk.
A walk from our house this afternoon was an adventure into fan icy white land.
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ADVENTures Day 12
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That was unexpected! Last night it snowed, so the SW corner of Suffolk had a covering of snow this morning. I’d planned to meet a friend for a couple of hours painting outdoors, but looking out at the murky light and uncertain road conditions we called it off. However I did a very quick paint sketch of the view from the little attic room above my studio.
Also an inspiring thing arrived in the post, a book ‘Writings on Art by Per Kirkeby’.
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ADVENTures Day 10
It’s white and sparkly in SW Suffolk, not with snow but with hoar frost. But it looks Christmassy all the same, so I cut holly from the garden and made wreaths for the front doors.
This year I kept it simple, just variegated ‘Golden King’ holly cut from the bush in the front yard … the one I planted over 20 years ago and has an annual prune for christmas decorating… each year I can cut a more generous amount.
An adventure in getting cold and pricked fingers!
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ADVENTures Day 8
An hour spent walking-looking-drawing out in the fields near my studio in the SW corner of Suffolk. 1C but sunny and still. Gathering moments, lines and shapes.
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ADVENTures Day 7
Shopping at my favourite nursery/farm shop, it’s on my way home from the Fens to Suffolk. Veg, eggs, discounted german rye bread and a bag of rather strange vegan ‘crisps’ (not sure about those but I was peckish)
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ADVENTure Day 6
While I’ve been on ADVENTures in Norfolk, back home in my garden the local Foxes and Muntjac deer wander through on their own adventures.
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ADVENTures Day 4
A bracing walk around Hickling Broad Nature Reserve to see the Hen Harriers
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ADVENTure Day 2
Last week a local plant & seed company had a 2 for 1 offer on their Blueberry bushes. They arrived last night, in the dark. I found them by the courtyard gate this morning.
I’ve not grown Blueberries before, I know they prefer acid soil so in SW Suffolk on chalky-clay/river silt this may be a challenge. I’ll probably grow them in containers, which in hot dry weather might be a challenge. I’ll be on a gardening adventure.
#Advent #AdventAdventures #gardeningchallenges #blueberries

Advent
Adventure
24 Adventures before Christmas
On the first Day of Advent I visited the Museum of London before it closes for 3 years, reopening eventually in the refurbished ornate Victorian Smithfields Meat Market buildings.
The adventure did not include the planned views from a roof garden. However I did buy paper and brushes and fresh mochi from China town, before a long walk and a short ride on the new Elizabeth Line tube
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