Days of leisure

On Saturday 21st of June we came home from our little sojourn in Poperinge to hot weather, a happy Bess and thirsty patio plants. After a thorough watering of the latter and unpacking a handful of essentials, we left the rest of our luggage for another day and spent most of the afternoon not doing very much at all.

As the temperature had climbed to 30°C by now, I was feeling hot and sweaty after our journey, which wasn't helped by the sauna-like conditions of Dove Cottage, which hadn't had an airing for a week. A quick rummage through the hot weather section of my wardrobe unearthed this lightweight green cotton kaftan style dress. 

Charity shopped at the tail end of last Summer, this was actually its very first outing. To make up for its long wait on the rails, I lived in it for two days running.

We'd brought one of the delicious salads from the local supermarket in Proven - one of Poperinge's sattelite villages - for our evening meal on Saturday, but needed to stock up to replenish our bare cupboards on Sunday morning, buying the ingredients for that night's Salade Niçoise among other things.

With the temperature still stuck at 30°C nothing strenuous was on the menu that day, and we joined Bess for a long siesta in the afternoon.

As I'd taken two weeks off work as usual, I still had a full week of leisure to look forward to. While in our cottage we'd tossed around some ideas, including a day trip to Bruges and being tourists in our own town for a day. In the end, none of these plans came to fruition, as we preferred not to stray too far from home and to take each day as it came.

Courtesy of a deliciously cool night, the mercury had dropped to the low 20s on Monday, the sun playing a game of tag with the clouds for most of the day.

After a morning of pottering, making a start with the unpacking and doing the first of a series of wash loads, we drove down to Duffel for a rummage in the charity shop followed by a walk in the park. Always contrary, I'll tell you about the latter first!

Starting our walk by circumnavigating the largest of the ponds, we spotted a heron at the water's edge.  I'm sure it had spotted us as well, but it was kind enough to indulge me by making me come close enough for a photo.

The starting point of my outfit of that day was the green embroidered linen blend skirt I queued for the better part of 20 minutes for during Zara's summer sale in July 2022. I never regretted its purchase as it has become a true summer staple, worn with many different companions over the years.

Wearing it with this Finnish peasant-style blouse - picked up from Think Twice in June 2023 - was a first though, but definitely one worthy of repeating. Aren't they a match made in heaven?

Both the big bird brooch and the green wooden necklace by the Belgian Les Cordes label were charity shopped, while the stretchy belt was a recent Think Twice find.

The hot weather combined with the lack of rain in the last couple of months had turned some of the grass into hay, particularly in the field at the edge of the park where a baby stone circle lives. Nothing prehistoric about it whatsoever: it's fairly recent and seems to commemorate some kind of village milestone. 

The park used to have imaginatively planted herbaceous borders, which unfortunately, and for reasons which remain a mystery, were dug up a couple of years ago. There's still a great variety of flowering shrubs, though, with quite a few Hydrangeas, now in their prime, among them.

The vegetation was still relatively lush and green at the water's edge in this, the first of the summer months, with the trees across the pond donning their best verdant hues, which they will gradually and inescapably lose over the coming months.

Suitably refreshed of mind and body, and flush with our success at the charity shop, we returned home. 

This is what found its way into my basket, starting with my favourite find, a pair of wide-legged silk-blend Fab India trousers, closely followed by a no-label giraffe print midi skirt.

Although I've got plenty of belts, I can never resist a good old rummage through a box of them, adding no less than three to my collection. Only the pewter coloured stretchy one with its linked metal buckle hasn't been worn yet at the time of writing.

The jewellery display yielded a red wood and metal necklace and a pair of translucent plastic ones in chartreuse and turquoise. Not that I needed any more necklaces either ...

My final find was done in the book aisles. As I'd just finished my previous read, I started The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer that very same day. The novel tells the story of Carrie Bell, a 23-year old woman who is engaged to her high school boy friend. Unhappy in the relationship, she is considering ending it when her fiancé Mike dives off Clausen’s Pier into shallow water and breaks his neck. Although I had my doubts at first, I thought it was an excellent and absorbing read.

Tuesday 24th of June brought a mix of sunshine and clouds, with a light shower thrown in around midday. The temperature was on the up again, though, effortlessly reaching the forecasted 25°C for that day. 

One of the upsides of a week off work without any definite plans is the amount of aimless pottering one can indulge in, not to mention having oodles of time to spend in front of ones wardrobe(s) dithering over what to wear.

I found the cotton, grooviliciously patterned skirt I was wearing at Think Twice last August and thought I'd found it its perfect patterned in the t-shirt I'd paired it with on its first outing. However, the t-shirt's latex printed red chevrons had rubbed off and all but ruined my belt by the end of the day, after which I showed it what's what by relegating it to the bin. No second chances for that one!

Still keeping to red to echo the pops of red in the skirt, I selected my red and white flower sprinkled King Louise blouse, charity shopped back in the mists of time. To its collar I pinned a tiny vintage summer hat brooch decorated with red and blue flowers. A flea market find, if I remember correctly.

Both the blue beads and the red belt were charity shop finds. The eagle-eyed among you may recognize the belt as one of Monday's haul!

We'd purposely waited to replace the spent contents of our hanging basket - the sorry remains of its spring planting of daffs and pansies - until we were back from our holiday, so that was our afternoon outing sorted. 

At the garden centre, we selected some purple and cream Surfinias for the basket, as well as a Begonia and pots of Dianthus, Coreopsis and Astrantia to brighten up the passageway and the plant table under the awning outside our back door.

As we drove past our local charity shop on our way home, we stopped for a quick rummage. Surely, it would have been silly not to!

The gods of the charity shops delivered once more, spoiling me with two retro-style skirts (the birds and leaves print one is by Fever London) and a quirkily printed blouse by the defunct Belgian Who's That Girl label.

Back at home, I planted up everything we brought back from the garden centre and gave all the pots a good soaking. 

In spite of the heatwave temperatures during our week away, nothing seemed to have suffered much, except for the strawberries, which I had to cut back completely ... No worries though, as it produced new shoots within the day. Whether it will still produce any berries this year remains to be seen, though. 

So, that was it for now! As my week off wasn't nearly finished yet, I'll be back with more tales of leisure in a couple of days. 

See you soon!

Life in Limbo

What with life keeping throwing us curveballs lately, it nearly escaped my attention that the month of March held a thing or two worth celebrating. And no, I'm not talking about the fact that Spring has finally sprung!

For the first one, we have to go back to the 4th of March 2021, which was the day that Bess entered our lives. She would soon prove herself to be a more than worthy successor to Phoebe, who'd unexpectedly passed away one month earlier, but how tiny and timid she was when she first came to Dove Cottage! She's definitely come along in leaps and bounds in those four years she's been ruling the roost here!

We have to go back even further, to the 5th of March 2016, for the month's second anniversary. It was on this day that I published my very first blog post, all of nine year ago. Aptly named To begin at the beginning - the title borrowed from Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood - it was a brief introduction and contained the explanation of my blog's name. There were no photos of yours truly;  these swiftly followed in my second post a couple of days later. I've still got that first dress although I haven't worn it in a long time. 

I'm pretty sure that the dress I'm wearing today - or rather, one month ago, on the 23rd of February - wasn't part of my wardrobe back then, but it's definitely not its first appearance on my blog.

Found at Think Twice eons ago, I was swayed by its grey and white wallpaper print brightened with splashes of fuchsia and turquoise at its collar, cuffs and hem. 

I chose a pair of dove grey opaques and picked up the pops of turquoise with my accessories - the brooch was part of a haul from an antiques shop in Carmarthen in June 2017 - and cardigan. To the latter, I added a two-tone grey swallow brooch, a vintage find from the indoor flea market back in the mists of time.

With the dark cloud of Jos's surgery looming on the horizon, adequate distractions were few and far between. But nature is a great soother and healer of troubled minds and, with oodles of sunshine and temperatures easily reaching the low double digits, it would have been foolish to mope around inside.

The small but perfectly formed park near the charity shop in Duffel, a mere 15 minutes from Dove Cottage by car, was our destination of choice.

There's a number of paths to choose from but our initial choice, which was the one circumnavigating the biggest of the ponds, turned out to be too squelchy and muddy so that we soon had to head back.

It might have been only February, its feet still firmly planted in Winter, but there was a definite hint of Spring in the air. At first sight, most of the trees were still stark and bare with only the faintest whisper of green, but there were a handful of shrubs which were gleefully showing off their  yellow blossoms against the bright blue of the sky.

The brutalist fountain, devoid of the mossy green hairdo it had sported for years, was still hibernating and dreaming of the day when its gurgling jets of water will once again ripple the pond.

Optimistically, I'd left the house bareheaded and I'd exchanged my heavy Winter coat for my ancient cream, pale blue and brown plaid one. Charity shopped years before my blog was even a glimmer of thought, it has by now seen better days, but I'll be wearing it until it actually falls apart at the seams. My frilly turquoise scarf - also charity shopped - was worn in lieu of the chunky woollen ones I've been wearing these last couple of months. 

The two weeks that followed - February's last and March's first - aren't ones we will forget in a hurry, although I'm sure their rough edges will be smoothed out over time.

Strangely enough, work was a distraction for me, although there was no such thing for Jos, whose upcoming surgery was completely occupying his mind. It took all our combined willpower to get through the days until that fateful Friday arrived.

That day was a waiting game for me and I was thankful for the company of my friend Inez and my latest read, which I kept dipping into to read a chapter until my nerves once again got the better of me.

Wasn't it just our luck that Jos's week in hospital coincided with a week's worth of False Spring? After a frosty start the sun soon managed to warm things up to temperatures ranging between 14 and 18°C.

Waiting for Jos to get the doctor's green light for his discharge, which kept getting postponed on a daily basis, this mural was the view from his hospital room window: a welcome splash of colour among the grey concrete. 

Although I'd initially taken Monday off work as we'd expected Jos would be home by then, I opted to go into the office and postpone my booked time off to the day he would eventually be released, whenever that would be.

While poor Jos was mostly on his own - but don't worry, we called and messaged all the time - at least I got the company of a certain furry someone, who hardly left my side when I was at home.

I hadn't slept well in the night from Sunday to Monday, so it was with a head full of cotton wool that I stumbled through my day. 

In a bid to clear the cobwebs from my head, I made the most of the sunshine and balmy temperature by going for a lunch break walk. Aimless it might have been, I couldn't resist having a quick look at what was on offer at Melting Pot, the vintage per kilo shop. I was in luck as I found this fabulous skirt, 100% cotton and lined and equipped with two generous pockets!

I was amazed to read that, back in November, the shop was mentioned in an article by the Guardian called Amazing Antwerp (see here). It truly boggles my mind that there was no sign of any of Antwerp's five (!) Think Twice shops though.

Tuesday's lunch break saw me walking to Den Botaniek again, where I was happy to see that a sea of Crocuses had popped up since my last visit. I even caught a bumblebee going crazy in one of the lilac and white striped blooms on the bottom left.

I also admired the creamy white Camellias flowering to their heart's content in front of the former gardener's cottage - now a posh lunch restaurant.

I exited the Botanic Garden via the premises belonging to its next door neighbour, the Botanic Sanctuary hotel. Opened in 2022, the 5-star hotel is housed in a former convent and hospital complex whose history goes back to the 12th century. I always have the feeling I'm getting the side-eye when I venture onto the luxury hotel's hallowed ground.

Jos was finally able to come home on Thursday, so we roped in his son Kris, who would be picking us up at around 6 pm. I left work early and took the bus to the hospital to help Jos to get ready and tie up the last of the practical loose ends. 

Finally back at Dove Cottage, he was getting a gazillion headbutts from Bess, who was obviously over the moon to have her second employee back at her beck and call! 

Obviously, I wasn't about to call on Jos for outfit photos yet, so I did a quick flatlay to show you what I was wearing the day he came home.

Strangely enough, it was almost identical to the outfit I wore just days after his previous sojourn at the hospital back in October.  Apparently, the green zig-zag patterned vintage St. Michael skirt - a much loved gift from Vix - found its perfect partner in the fuchsia pink patterned blouse by the defunct Who's That Girl label, picked up from an outlet shop in November 2022. 

I was even wearing the same charity shopped wooden beaded necklace as I did back then. This time, however, I added a contemporary green squirrel brooch to the blouse and picked one of my beloved stretchy belts, the one with the octagonal faux tortoiseshell buckle, to accent my waist.

And so, life at Dove Cottage continues, even if things are still a bit in limbo at the time of writing.

But let me end this post on a positive note. As I was putting a bag of rubbish into the bin in the potting shed, I happened to notice some early-flowering Honesty which had nestled itself in a crack in the paving. Not wanting it to go to waste in this out of the way place, I picked a stem or two and put them in a small vintage vase - a gift from my friend Inneke - together with some late-flowering Winter Jasmine. 

A true sight for sore eyes, don't you agree?

She's not there

This post should have reached you by the magic of scheduled posting while we were living it up in the lap of luxury at B&B Het Soetewater in Beernem near Bruges. But I'm not there, I'm here, sat behind my desk in Dove cottage's spare room, where I've pushed the publish button in real time just a couple of minutes ago.

As last weekend Jos wasn't feeling well and ultimately woke up with severe nausea in the early hours on Sunday, we made the heart-wrenching decision to cancel the little getaway which we'd planned to celebrate our 30th Anniversary. 

At the time of writing Jos is feeling well again. However, what with people succumbing to the flu left, right and centre, we don't want to run the risk of Jos falling ill ahead of his surgery, which is planned for end of the month. So, we will kind of self-isolate as much as we can until then.

Obviously, we will be making up for lost time in the next couple of months!

For now, let's return to the matter in hand, which is how life has been treating us in the last few days of that seemingly endless month of January.

On Sunday the 26th we woke up to sunny spells, which filled our hearts with gladness. But clouds soon gathered once more and a blustery, bone-chilling wind made the air frigid so that the wind chill temperature was quite a bit colder than the 7°C forecasted for the day.

My outfit was one I'd prepared a couple of weeks ago but hadn't got around to wearing yet. The vintage polyester tie-collar dress, which is from the Finnish Marketta label, was a Think Twice find in October 2022. I picked up the green in its pattern with my opaques and belt, and paid tribute to the lilac bits by wearing the purple Western-style ankle boots I snaffled from an outlet shop back in December.

I tamed the rather unwieldy tie with a scarf clip featuring a posy of pansies and forget-me-nots. I'm also treating you to a close-up of the dress's pattern and its delightful flower-shaped black buttons.

With Saturday's raindrops still glittering on the sodden plants in our jungle junkyard of a garden, I'm proudly showing you the Hellebore (Helleborus sternii) whose clusters of nodding pink-flushed flowers are currently brightening up the passageway. 

The rain having kept us cooped up inside for most of the weekend, we decided to make the most of the cold but mercifully dry day by going for a walk in the park in nearby Duffel.

As we were nearing the pond, we were met by the sound of honking and quacking and, sure enough, looking down from the bridge we spotted a paddling of ducks who seemed to be chairing the quarterly meeting of the park's waterfowl.

 

For once, there was no sign of the screeching gulls who are usually trying - but failing miserably - to masquerade as ducks in the hope of a handout. At the other side of the bridge, a single, disgruntled sounding moorhen whose invitation had apparently got lost in the post. Carrier pigeons these days!

The wind was making my eyes sting and water but we doggedly plodded on, our booted feet squelching on the muddy and partially flooded paths.

The landscape was at its bleakest under the canopy of whitish grey,, the leafless trees with their clusters of twigs and gnarled and twisted branches meeting their reflections in the overflowing ponds.

And Jos was meeting his reflection too, standing still for just long enough for me to take a photo until I too negotiated that whopper of a puddle.

And what have we got here? Forget about snowdrops, it's Hellebores - and quite a variety of them too - which are the harbingers of Spring here. Aren't they a sight for sore eyes?

I've been wearing this coat on repeat these last couple of months so I guess it's my current favourite, although in all honesty I've been too preoccupied to drag any alternatives from my full-to-bursting and not very accessible coats wardrobe. The others must feel quite neglected, I'm sure.

My orange scarf and yellow woolly hat are making another appearance as well, but that's purely coincidental.

January's final week was a quiet one at the office as our Chinese business associates were celebrating Lunar New Year, entering the Year of the Snake.

When lovely Andrea of 50 Looks of Love T. wrote about this event a couple of weeks ago, she referenced Kaa, the snake in Jungle Book, the stories originally written by Rudyard Kipling and published in 1894. In the book and many of its screen adaptations, Kaa is an ally of protagonist Mowgli, acting as a friend alongside Bagheera the black panther and Baloo the bear.

Andrea's post definitely took me on a trip down memory lane! When I was six, Disney's 1967 version of Jungle Book was the very first film I saw in the cinema. I've only got the vaguest memories of it though, apart from my Dad taking me on the bus to Antwerp on a Sunday afternoon and taking our seats in the darkened cinema near the end of the previous screening.

Cashing in on the success of the film, coffee brand Rombouts issued a set of  felt animals which could be saved for by cutting coupons which came with their packets of coffee. My parents must have consumed a lot of coffee as I managed to collect them all! In hindsight, I guess they must have got some help from my grandparents.

They were displayed in my room, where they lived on the shelves of the desk unit built by my carpenter Dad. And there's Kaa! I added a yellow arrow to help you spot him!

Sadly, most of the animals haven't survived after being inherited by my much younger siblings, but when we were clearing the parental home after my Dad passed away in 2016, I managed to salvage the two remaining ones, one of them being Kaa! He's usually stored in tissue paper but he got a rare outing to feature on the blog.

After this brief trip in the time machine, let's go back to those final January days!

Mostly grey and often windy, with highs nudging 10°C, Monday the 27th was the only sunny exception.

After tackling the usual onslaught of emails awaiting me after my three-day weekends, I treated myself to a walk to Antwerp's Botanic Garden during lunch break.

Things were still a bit bare, but my heart made a little leap at spotting a clump of winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) which looked as if they were just about to open their buttercup blooms.

And look, there were some Hellebores too.  How delightful is this double-flowered one!

Thursday was a dismal day with almost non-stop rain. To make matters worse, I was obliged to make use of public transport to get to the office, as Jos had a pre-op appointment at the hospital, followed by another catheter change.

We'd both been bundles of nerves for days but everything went well, all things considered. Still, it was a relief to get to the end of the day and the beginning of another weekend.

Friday was - you guessed it! - another day of endless grey skies, which did nothing to enhance the highs of 6 °C.

I pottered upstairs after breakfast and paid a visit to blogland while we were waiting for a technician to come and service our gas heaters. Then, after lunch, we did the weekly food shop, followed by more pottering and some reading.

For that day's outfit, I mixed different patterns in similar colours. In fact, for once, the outfit I'd created in my head turned out to be just as good in real life!

My black needlecord skirt with its cloud-like pattern was charity shopped last Spring. The heart-patterned cardigan worn as a jumper is Diane von Furstenberg. This too was a charity shop find. I snapped it up for a mere € 5,90 in December 2021.

The belt was picked up in a long-gone vintage shop, while both the turquoise plastic beads and the peacock brooch were yet again charity shop finds, the latter found on a whirlwind visit to Llangollen (Wales) in June 2019.

And now, how about some biscuits to go with your tea or coffee?

See you next time!

Two Twixmas walks

Time has clearly been running away from me again. Back on the work-eat-sleep-repeat wagon since the 2nd of January, I've just woken up with a jolt, realizing that we're already heading towards the middle of the month. It's quite uncanny how being back on the hamster wheel for just over week has already managed to make my Christmas break recede into the far distance.

With barely a smidgen of energy left at the end of each working day - which isn't at all helped by the mind-sapping greyness of these short January days - it's all I can do to keep up with blogland, let alone pen a new post.

By rights, this one should have been published yesterday and, in fact, I had every intention of doing so if a life-affirming frosty yet gloriously sunny day hadn't lured us outside for an afternoon walk.

Obviously, my blog hasn't made it this far yet and is still firmly stuck in those final December days.

The weather on Friday the 27th of December initially looked identical to that of its predecessors. Mizzly, foggy and of a uniform grey, with highs of just 3°C, it wasn't extending an invitation to spend it elsewhere than inside Dove Cottage's cozy confines.

Cozy is the exact word too for this flower pot patterned vintage frock in the softest of wool blends. Found at Think Twice in November 2019, it is one of my go-to dresses when the temperature descends towards freezing point. Both the teal plastic flower brooch and the wooden pansies-and-leaves necklace were charity shopped, the latter being one of my Boxing Day finds.

The weather forecast insisted that we were in for a dry afternoon so, as we were in desperate need of stretching our legs and clearing the cobwebs from our post-Christmas heads, we chose to believe they'd got it right for once and drove down to Middelheim.

Contrary to our previous visits finding parking space was a doddle this time. In fact, we were able to park our car right next to the new entrance to the part of the park called Middelheim-Laag.

Instead of making straight for the large open space where the majority of the works of art are, we meandered along the path through the green belt which encloses it. This is part of the former flower garden of  Nachtegalenpark (transl. Nightingale Park) which was incorporated into Middelheim Sculpture Park in 2012. 

The lingering fog caught between the trees was adding a magical twist to the rock garden with its tiny pond and the rust-coloured remains of the dying ferns surrounding it.

Still circumnavigating the large open space, we continued our walk into the semi-woodland beyond, where I had a disastrous encounter with a couple of white, red-roofed houses. Oops!

Joking aside, obviously no real harm was done, as the houses are of course a work of art! They are called Musterhäuser (Model Homes), Typ "Bomarzo" and are by the German conceptual artist Timm Ulrichs (°1940).

The murky, brown-ish water of the pond had no problem adding to the overall gloom of the day, reflecting the skeleton trees surrounding it. A lonely cormorant sat digesting its lunch while spiky silver giants kept watch from the opposite bank. Dating from 2012 and by Belgian sculptor Peter Rogiers (°1967), they are supposed to represent palm trees, although the artwork's name, Silver Fruit, Silver Cakespoons, The Garden, doesn't really give the game away.

Belgian architect Charles Vandenhove's (1927-2019) Pillared Pavillion (above, top left) consists of two parts: the pavilion itself and a gateway. Both betray the influence of ancient Greece. The pavillion is strictly geometric and soberly constructed, while the gateway is a slightly more frivolous interpretation.

Inside the pavillion two sculptures are hiding from the dismal weather conditions. They are Sibilla (above, bottom left and top and bottom centre), dating from 1947 and by the Italian sculptor Pericle Fazzini (1913-1987), and Grande Bagnante N°1 (above, top and bottom right). The latter dates from 1956 and is by another Italian sculptor and contemporary of Mr. Fazzini, Emilio Greco (1913-1995).

Finally arriving at the heart of Middelheim-Laag, I briefly joined the queue for the spaceship called Never Mind (2017) by Welsh artist Richard Deacon (°1949), but then decided against boarding it as the weather forecast for its home planet turned out to be truly atrocious. 

At least, our weathermen were adamant that we'd get to see the sun on Saturday!

At a measly 2°C, though, it was time to break out the woollies! 

With its generous wool content, this grey, white and black diamond patterned Trixi vintage skirt is one of the warmest in my wardrobe. It was joined by a 100% wool purple jumper, the diamond lace knit pattern at its yoke echoing the skirt's, an embroidered leaf or flower nestling in each of the diamonds.

My "faux sheep" gilet was a fast fashion find from a local shop, now going into its eighth season. The deer brooch was a flea market find and the pale green fabric belt with its scalloped metal clasp buckle used to belong to a dress I no longer own.

 

As it was the first time in many weeks that we'd actually get to see some sunshine, we wasted no time in driving over the the park in Duffel for a stroll. However, we were tempted to have a brief look at what the charity shop goddesses had on offer in the charity shop across the road first.

My spoils were a cinnamon openwork knit jumper and no less than five belts! Oh, and another cardigan, which you'll get to see in my next post.

Afterwards, we recrossed the road and entered the park where a meeting of all sorts of waterfowl seemed to be going on. Apparently someone had just emptied a bag of stale bread near the pond, which was very much appreciated by all and sundry, by now including a flock of screeching gulls.

Lord and master seemed to be a rather agressive, loudly honking goose (below, top left) which was having a hissy fit whenever another bird even dared to come close to a choice piece of bread it had its eye on. 

The day's sunshine and blue sky were veiled by persistent rags of fog which kept blotting out the horizon.

Silhouetted against a blurring blanket of white, the trees, now completely devoid of the final of their leaves, seemed to be at peace with their lot, knowing their time will come again in Spring.

The blanket of fog which was swaddling the park only allowed the sun to be a mere pinprick reflected into the water of the rill, recently dug to avoid flooding of the main pond.

We decided the risk it and take the path around the latter, which in times past used to be flooded in the Winter months. The rill must have done its work, however, as rather than being faced with a partially submerged path, we only had to negotiate a couple of muddy patches.

The dregs of low-slung sunshine was adding an eerie glow to the almost opaque surface of the pond, rendering it picturesquely atmospheric.

Here and there, a fiery carpet of bald cypress leaves joined forces with the banks of bleached reeds edging the pond in adding a splash of much-needed colour.

It turned out that we'd be seeing the year's final rays of sunshine that day and we'd be back to endless grey to see out its last days.

These, as well as our first tentative steps into the new year, will be the subject of a next post. Hope to see you again soon!