Jewels of a year grown old

We're well into December by now which is feeling quite unreal. The final month of a year half-lived: a constant balancing act between despair, reluctant acceptance of a new reality and the odd, flickering spark of hope. 

The year's darkest days are encroaching on us and if they always have a tendency to make me feel quite maudlin, this is especially true this year. The fading light is making it almost impossible to pick out the positives from the long row of negatives 2020 has presented us with. The gift of time versus the loss of freedom to go where we please and without fear? As much as I appreciate the former, the latter remains a bitter pill to swallow.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, as my blog hasn't caught up with the calendar yet, being still firmly stuck in November.

The weather on the month's penultimate Sunday wasn't much to write home about: an utterly miserable day on which darkness ruled, the granite grey sky joined by light but persistent rain in the afternoon.

We'd waited all day for a break in the clouds so that we could nip into the garden for outfit photos, but when this still hadn't happened by mid-afternoon, we had no choice but to take a couple of snaps indoors. None of which were very good, I hasted to add, the one on the right being the best of the bunch. 

The dress with its groovy green, orange and brown print was an old Think Twice find. I've included some close-ups taken in proper daylight a couple of days later which, apart from the print, allows you to have a better look at my necklace and my belt with its tortoise shell buckle, a flea marked and charity shop find respectively.

For want of something better to do, I continued with the kitchen cleaning I'd started the previous days, taking the time to dust some of our shelves of kitchenalia, which I'm sure you'll understand is quite a time consuming task!

Lunch was Jos's yummy homemade Winter vegetable soup.

The afternoon was spent hibernating reading on the couch, making things cozy with cinnamon and vanilla scented candles and tea-lights burning cheerfully inside amber coloured 1970s coffee cups.

I'm skipping Monday's humdrum office day to arrive at Tuesday, 24th of November which, in total contrast to Sunday, was a gorgeously sunny day. 

With the temperature still hovering in the region of 10°C, it was the kind of life-affirming day that implores you to go outside and explore.

Racking our brains for a suitable place to wander around, we decided on a nature reserve called De Walenhoek, which we last visited in high Summer.

Situated in Niel, a village about 10 kilometer from where we live, this is another reserve which has been established on the site of former clay pits.

When clay extraction came to an end here in the late 1970s, the local residents and town council joined forces with the fledgling nature conservation movement to achieve something which was quite unusual for that time: they saved the former clay pits from being turned into a waste disposal site.

The result is today's reserve comprising 60 hectares, and offering an enchantingly varied landscape of large ponds and pools bordered by reed beds and dense thickets. There's a largely fenced-off wooded area as well, which is being grazed by Galloway cattle, and is home to rare fungi and mosses.

I was wearing my favourite green fur-collared jacket again, this time accompanied by a multi-coloured knit scarf and a tan Burberry beret.  I've had the scarf for so long that I can't remember where it came from, but I do remember the beret was picked up at Think Twice.

I exchanged my ruined boots for a pair of fleece-lined chocolate brown ones, which were last year's retail buy. 

The dark brown dress, with its symphony of white and yellow spots, arranged into squares on its box-pleated skirt, was yet another Think Twice find. 

My necklace, an arrangement of wooden disks, as well as my belt and opaques, picked up the yellow in my dress's print. To its bodice, I pinned a large off-white oval brooch containing a picture of a lady, which I found at an outdoor flea market several years ago.

Dotted around the reserve are some of the remnants of its industrial past, completely taken over by the forces of nature and the passing of time.

Narrow paths separate the twenty or so pools and ponds of varying sizes and depths, all vying for first price in a natural beauty contest, and eliciting wows around every corner.

In Summer, lush and sprawling vegetation tends to hide some of the smaller ponds from view, but in late November, with only a handful of glistening golden leaves left on the otherwise bare trees, the reserve's innermost secrets are revealed.

On this still and golden Autumn day, the unrippled surfaces offered mirror-like reflections picturesquely framed by skeleton twigs and branches. 

Time seems to stand still here, even if only for a moment, until suddenly it's there again, triggered by a trick of the light, or the chug-chug sound of a distant train passing by: a dawning realization that nothing is quite as it seems.

The weather continued to be good-natured on Wednesday, my second office day of the week. 

As always at the end of a sunny late November afternoon, I was regaled with the most spectacular sunsets from the first row of my office window. 

And then it was Thursday. I'd woken up with the craving to wear a particular red-hued dress, which I soon realized was missing from my wardrobe. Hoping against hope that I hadn't sold it and that it was still lurking inside one of my flea market boxes, I dived into our bedroom's built-in cupboard, opening one box after another. 

Alas, my search was in vain, but what I did find was this luscious floral velvet skirt. A charity shop find back in December 2016, it had become a tad too snug and was thus relegated to the to-be-sold pile. Gingerly trying it on, I was overjoyed that it fit me again, so all thoughts of the elusive dress disappeared from my mind, as I was determined to wear the skirt there and then.

To keep the skirt company, I opted for the ginger cat blouse I paired it with the very first time I wore it (here).

I did wear a different belt this time, an unstructured burgundy one with a big circular buckle, and instead of an orange necklace, I chose a string of olive coloured wooden beads. The ginger cats were joined by my faux Lea Stein cat brooch.

A burgundy fluffy cardi, curry coloured opaques and sage green suede ankle boots completed that day's outfit.

Rummaging through those flea market boxes unearthed a couple of other forgotten treasures, like these two dresses which I'm offering a second and final chance to rejoin my wardrobe.

I'm concluding this post with some jewels from our garden, which I caught with my phone's macro lens.

It seems that the moderate temperatures and the mix of sunshine and rain has been tricking the garden into thinking the flowering season isn't quite over yet. 

We used to laugh at one of our local garden centres, whose generic plant signs proclaimed that the plants they were selling would flower until November.

Well, this foursome is certainly living up to expectations and beyond!

On that note of positivity, I am wishing you all well and hope that you keep on staying safe.

Hope to see you again next time!