Silene dioica Red Campion

This picture of a Red Campion is just to remind me that summer is only a few months away and it won't be -2c forever!

I didn't get to do a lot in the garden this weekend, not because of the cold but because we had a lot of commitments in the village. I am on the village hall committee and as part of that we organise a village quiz night at this time of year and this year Sharron and I offered to do the catering. This would mean making a Chilli con Carne for about 80 people, which we would have to cook in the village hall. Before this however it being the first Saturday of the month it was the church coffee morning. Once a month a couple of the ladies in the village open the church up to serve coffee, it's a chance to meet up with a few people and have a chat. We normally go along to lend our support. It a great idea as we do not have a shop or pub in the village so there is not a lot of chance to meet other villagers.


Now those of you who study this photo more carefully will notice the decanter on the table. This contained vintage sloe gin, not what you normally get at a coffee morning (except in this village!) but a very welcome addition on a cold morning!

Once we had finished our 'Coffee' we walked round to the village hall to start the cooking. Neither of us had ever cooked for this number of people before and we were under strict instructions not to make it to hot. I got the job of chopping the onions and mushrooms which you can see in the photo. We also had to bake about 80 potatoes this mean't distributing bags of potatoes to various other committee members around the village as we needed several ovens.

Anyway it all seemed to go O.K. and the quiz was a great success although by the end of the evening we were both really tired.

On sunday after retrieving the car which we had left at the hall overnight, we went to buy our Christmas tree. One of the local farms sells them and another friend in the village was going there with a Landrover and trailer and they offered to bring ours back. We got a very nice traditional tree about 8ft tall. I will of course be adding a photo once we have decorated it.

Hopefully I will get out in the garden at some point this week as I have a couple of tasks to do, I get withdrawl symptoms if I can't do something at least once a week.