No Rain.

Not a drop of rain today which made a lovely change. Although it was cold in the shade I wrapped up and gave the front garden a good tidy up. 

The lavender has finished flowering (just) at last so I gave it the lightest of trims taking off a little more where it overhung the stepping stones. Then I worked my way up the path picking up all the dead stalks and leaves from the shingle. I found more myob lurking in the one of the flowerbeds so that went too and I did some cutting back of the hydrangea that overhangs the raised beds. 

 

Eventually I retreated back indoors for an afternoon in the kitchen. (How anybody does this for pleasure is beyond me.) At least now all the shallots have been chopped up and put in the freezer for future use. 

Also in the freezer are a large number of sage and onion stuffing balls. Peter prefers the stuff you buy in boxes which saved me having to make the stuffing for our Christmas dinner from scratch. I did add cooked chestnuts to half the mixture and put more chopped onion in both lots. I hadn't been sure how much to buy (won't eat supermarket chicken and can't remember when I last had a roast dinner) so ended up buying 4 boxes which made an awful lot of egg sized balls. But we only need to take out as much as we need and the remainder will do for later. 

I finally decanted the sloe gin. This year's version is more of a tawny colour than last year's which was redder, maybe from the blackberries I used with the sloes. Once I'd removed the sloes I thought about putting them out for the birds but decided against that idea. I'm not sure how well inebriated seagulls would cope with floating on the waves.