poppies and bbqs??

We had our Christmas fair fundraiser for our village church yesterday. The weather was so mild that a bbq was set up outside in the courtyard and did a roaring trade selling 120 burgers!
As I loaded up the car with my homebaking for the cake and candy stall I noticed this poppy had just bloomed. These poppies normally flower in May/June and have faded by August so it's a bit of a surprise to see it now. Climate change ? What's that? This time last year we were knee-deep in snow and the Christmas fair had to be cancelled as the roads were unsafe, we couldn't keep the carpark clear of snow and the paths were like ice-rinks!
I had a brilliant time at the fair, helping in the make and take craft area for the children. The kids were decorating porcelain trinket dishes and I was setting the ink with a hairdryer then gift-wrapping their pressies for their grannies and grandpas. It was tremendous fun. My cakes were sold as were the two scarves which I had put on the craft stall.
We raised £1,300 for the Wind and watertight repairs fund and are very close to our target of £70,000. (we have more than £65k I think).

No doubt the weather will change this week and I won't have any more plants being confused by the mild weather. A shame really, as after last winter I would be happy if we only had a light dusting of snow for one afternoon in January!

The Killing II

Saturday night TV just got good again as Sarah Lund, Denmark's best detective and inadvertent knitwear promoter has returned to UK screens with another puzzle to solve against the backdrop of political intrigue and threats of terrorism.

So we sat down with some Danish lager and I made sure that my knitting was subtitle friendly (a simple beanie for the Christmas shoeboxes) and prepared to be led astray, confused and misdirected through the bleak Danish landscape. Wonderful stuff!!
The Radio Times even has the pattern for this season's red sweater, and I'm sure that many fans will be casting on pdq! Awesome!

Meanwhile in daylight hours I'm battling against the billion billion leaves which fall in my garden every Autumn. I sweep them up then more fall off the trees. Today I emptied the leaf mulch bin and put the mulch on two freshly weeded flower beds  so that
a) it helps the beds and
b) I have somewhere to put the next gazillion leaves!!

I need to buy some more garotta powder to speed up the composting process in the leaf bin. Garrota is ammonium sulphate and while I know that some gardeners just pee on their compost heaps (usually after a trip to the pub and a few pints of beer!) I would much rather buy the powder than be the talk of the village!!

I've not been blogging about football recently, largely because it's been so depressing. While Newcastle are flying high at 3rd position on 25 pts, Sunderland are languishing at 15th on 11 pts. D is dumbfounded by Newcastle's current success (despite losing 3-1 to Man City yesterday) but I'm disheartened by my team's poor form. We had a goal-less draw at home yesterday against Fulham. Sigh.

Still, at least the brilliant Sofie Gråbøl is back and the leaves have been re-arranged in the garden!

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old

the older I get, the more moved I am by Remembrance Sunday Services.

So much has been given by so many. So much is still being given every day by our servicemen and women.

The last stanza of Laurence Binyon's most celebrated poem "For the Fallen" is this:

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.