November days are clear and bright

We're halfway through November now, and so far this month has been a rather mixed bag in terms of weather and mood. Uncharacteristically mild and sunny days which felt more like late Summer than advanced Autumn alternated with those soul-draining damp and dreary ones more common for the year's penultimate month.

More often than not, my mood seems to synchronize with the weather, which was particularly true on Sunday the 1st of November. Perhaps befitting All Saints' Day, the day was a miserable one throughout and so dark that we couldn't even muster the energy to take any outfit photos.

The bleak blanket of clouds followed us into Monday, when they were joined by a succession of showers from midday onwards, the temperature incongruously climbing towards a balmy 20° Celsius.

To say I was glad I could switch off my pc, don my mask and go home at the end of my office day is quite an understatement!

Much to my relief, the sun rejoined us on Tuesday, and even the drop in temperature to a much cooler 13°C couldn't damped my renewed joie de vivre.

Dressing was a doddle that morning, as I'd already planned to rewear Sunday's unphotographed outfit.

A mixture of palest yellow, ochre and tan flowers and seashells adorn my navy blue vintage dress, dictating my use of yellows and tans for my cardigan, opaques and belt. I even wore a yellow beret, although it wasn't strictly necessary yet. I have been eyeing my drawer full of berets with much longing, and a bad hair day is just the perfect excuse!

The chain of wooden rings and discs is an old retail buy from Accessorize and has featured on my blog countless times before, while the flower corsage I pinned to my cardigan is part of an extensive collection. I have been wearing these on and off for many years and they may well have kick-started my current brooch collection.

After a brief inspection of the garden, making note of those plants and flowers which are still going strong and those who have given in to the inevitable, I retreated upstairs for some long overdue dusting.

The November sunshine, at once bright and slightly veiled, streamed in through our bedroom window and landing skylight, highlighting my main wardrobe with its jumble of suitcases and beauty cases on top. These are not just for decoration, mind you, but offer sanctuary to smaller items such as socks, scarves, belts and buttons.

The wardrobe itself, with its gleaming bow-fronted main doors and side doors adorned with carved flower panels, was found in a charity shop back in March 2015, at the end of a very long and initially fruitless search.

Here's a view from our bedroom towards the tiny landing separating our bedroom from our spare room. However small it is, we nevertheless managed to cram a book case into it, which was custom made by my Dad, with a vintage Tomado shelving unit hanging directly above. We haven't got an inch to spare!

The top shelf of yet another Tomado unit, this one living in our bedroom, is full of Lourdes memorabilia. This is one of our accidental collections started after Jos was given a Lourdes clock-cum-music box by an ex-colleague. Shortly afterwards, we found a plastic holy water bottle in the form of Our Lady of Lourdes in a charity shop, and the rest, shall we say, is history!

We've long stopped collecting and have even thinned out our collection in the meantime, but there's still a lot of curious and intriguing objects jostling for space, making dusting the shelf an arduous task.

Egg cups and snow globes, one of them doubling as a perpetual calendar, candles, holy water bottles in all shapes and sizes, and kitsch ornaments galore: we have it all. One of the wackiest items in our collection must be the disco light ornament, pictured top right in the collage below) which we found still in its box in a charity shop. Here it is in its full glory!

The sun greeted us again on Wednesday which made quite a difference to my second working day of the week. Due to my office's wall-to-wall windows, I am very aware of the weather and I'm usually far more productive on those days when I can see Antwerp's cityscape basking in sunslight from my 5th floor perch.

We enjoyed the same sunny but slightly nippy weather on Thursday. As I was washing up our breakfast things, I glanced out of the window, stopping dead in my tracks when I saw a male blackbird making short shrift with our Cotoneaster berries. We always used to have blackbirds flock to our garden until a virus decimated their numbers a couple of years ago. Now they have become a rare sight.

While Jos was off to the supermarket, I dressed in my misbehaving pumpkin coloured cord skirt and a jumper, put on my denim gardening apron and my ankle wellies, and tackled some of the outstanding gardening chores. These included planting the remainder of the Spring bulbs (Snowdrops, two kinds of Grape Hyacinths and Allium 'purple sensation') as well as a leaf sweeping session.

We needed more bread mix, a house plant to replace one that had died on us and some plants for our window box so, as garden centres are mercifully allowed to stay open, this is where we were off to after lunch. Then, with our boot full of stuff - as we'd obviously bought more than we'd bargained for - we drove on to Jos's old playground, now turned into a nature reserve, for a short walk and the obligatory outfit photos.

I'd changed into another cord skirt after my gardening session, this one in a bottle green. Found in a vintage per kilo shop almost exactly a year ago, its midi-length A-line made me feel much more comfortable than the other skirt did. This one's definitely a keeper!

I chose opaques in an orange-red to tie in with my top, added a reddish brown leather belt and book-ended my outfit with sage green boots and beret. My Berlin-made rust-coloured woollen plaid jacket was an old Think Twice find.

A breath of fresh air was just what we needed, although we only went for the shortest of strolls as there were far too many people out and about for our liking. It might have been just a weekday, but we had quite forgotten it was in the middle of the school holidays!

Nevertheless, my nature loving heart was captured by the fluffy Clematis seed heads high up in a tree, a patch of lichen among the carpet of Autumn leaves and some end-of-season dragonflies soaking up the life-giving rays of the sun.

The psychedelic print River Woods pussy-bow top was one of my first charity shop finds after lockdown # 1, the ceramic Bambi brooch was a flea market find and the spiky green brooch I pinned to my jacket was a gift from Kezzie!

Even if the light was waning by the time we got home, I still insisted on planting up the window box in the passageway with some of the plants we brought back from the garden centre.

I used variegated leaved Heuchera 'Can Can' as a centrepiece and flanked it with pansies and ornamental cabbages. Behind the window, you can see the houseplant we bought, which compliments the arrangement perfectly.

The plant in question is called Aglaonema and originates from the Asian rain forests. It is supposed to be perfect for dark places, which is why we chose it in the first place. It might be spotlighted by the rays of the sun now, but soon the latter won't be high and strong enough to reach this spot, which is hemmed in by our kitchen and the garden wall.

While browsing the indoor plants at the garden centre, we fell hard for this bottle garden, which is now taking pride of place in our hallway, where it is enjoying the filtered sunlight streaming through our front door's fanlight.

So, that was it for another episode of semi-lockdown life. There were more sunny days on the horizon, so next time I hope you'll join me again for a proper walk in our favourite nature reserve.

Until then, as always, stay safe, sane and fabulous!