Eucalyptus nicholii

When we were putting in a pond, I was very keen to grow a weeping willow beside it - but I was (correctly) outvoted, as it would have been too big for the situation.  But browsing garden centres, we came across this eucalyptus variety - and thought it would make an excellent "substitute willow".  It is growing into a very attractive tree.

We woke to a frost, but have had a lovely sunny day, though there's still a nip in the air.  W has spent much of the afternoon sorting out his IT - his laptop has just packed up charging - probably due to the charging jack having come loose inside the case.  It is 10 years old, and probably past  economical repair.  But he had his previous office desktop computer sitting idle out in the studio, so that is now re-sited in our study.  It needs a massive amount of updating and spring cleaning, but should be OK for a few years.  I've bought him a mouse mat for his birthday present.

W having cleared the top of the chest of drawers in the studio, I have immediately refilled that space with some more sewing storage.  Rather satisfyingly, I have sorted out the storage of thousands of buttons.  

And I have recently started using beads and sequins of various sizes in the advent calendar decorations, and realised that I needed to re-organise my storage of the many beads I have inherited and acquired from various places.  I looked up "small storage boxes" and came across someone selling old plastic containers for 35mm films - and was pleased to buy a small job lot of these as storage - better than buying new plastic, I thought.  

Once again, it has cooled down a lot for the evening - I'll put on a thicker jumper before we sit down to watch TV.