Seasonal tasks

This week has too many things in it that have to happen before Sunday. Today Himself had to go over the water for an appointment, and though at first I assumed I'd go too, I simply was going to run out of time if I did. So instead I found myself stravaiging (how do you spell that? There's a red dotted line under it!) through what felt like a wet jungle. In fact it's Kilmun Arboretum, where a great number of trees, many of them eucalyptus,  have been brought down by wind and dragged others with them. 

My pal and I were finding bits of greenery for the Advent Wreath in church, which we've been making for more years now than I care to remember. It will doubtless appear in later blips some time in Advent, and you may have seen ours before - a splendidly wild, suitably Celtic sort of affair of trailing greenery and a mass of pink berries from the church grounds which seem to us ample justification for the custom of having purple and pink candles as opposed to red and white.

The morning's activities left us pretty damp and cold by the time we'd finished (the church is never warm, and we'd been wrestling with damp Oasis) so we scuttled home for lunch. And that was me, really - I didn't go out again, but spent some time sorting possible garments to wear out for dinner before settling down at my computer for some present-buying and sermon-checking. I also did really badly with my Italian for some reason, and had to repeat one of the exercises three times before I could move on - I don't think well when I spend the afternoon sitting still.

Jolly news pinged in after dinner from my older granddaughter - she'd been playing with an Edinburgh Schools' Jazz band and had been greatly applauded for her (trombone) solo. I'd love to get to all these events; it's hard to accept that basically you're past it in terms of travel and effort. Now if we lived in Edinburgh ...

... We'd be flat broke!