Homemade

 It is always rewarding when you have something that you made yourself, and doubly so if you collected materials from the garden.

Most meals come under this description but at this time of year there is the chance to do more.

I always like to make the Christmas decorations using materials collected from the garden, environmentally friendly. no miles and fully compostable or recyclable after use.

I made 2 wreaths this year. I have used laurel as the main foliage, I could do with some conifer or leylandii really, perhaps I should plant some? or perhaps not! (be careful what you wish for).

The wreath by the front door also includes ivy, holly, mistletoe and sedum seed heads. On an ivy stem circle and fir cones which I made about 8 years ago and have reused every year since. Oh and an apple too.

We also put a wreath on the garden gate, again a reused circle with this year laurel, sedum , holly and apple.

The table on the patio gets a decoration too. Using the top of the now rusted chiminea which is nice and heavy, chicken wire inside to support the stems and a collection of seed heads and grasses from the garden. The inclusion honesty seed heads makes it really glow in the low light levels of this time of year.

A few stems with berries adds colour but not for long, the blackbirds fly into the display and eat the berries.

I also put a string of apples up for the blackbirds, unfortunately the squirrel has been and demolished it already.

 The weather has turned cold at last but we still get many warm days, and along with that comes rain!

There are a lot of old apple trees in the garden, some forming strange shapes as they were once closely pruned espaliers but were left many years ago to grow as they wish, which is straight up!

Some are cookers, Blenheim Orange, Bramley and Grenadier, others eaters, Wealthy, Belle de Boskoop, Discovery and Tydemans Worcester. One thing they all have in common is Mistletoe.

This was an espalier over 40 years ago but despite its shape it still produces lots of fruit and mistletoe and looks great.

We always take some of the mistletoe off each year to help prevent it from completely covering the tree and stopping the apples from growing.

We sell some of the fruited pieces for charity and supply a local florist.

This has not been a good year for mistletoe, I think it must be that the weather was too warm.

Some of the mistletoe has not produced berries

No berries here this year

Others have taken a long time to turn from yellow/green berries to the lovely white ones that everyone wants for their Christmas decorations.

We are usually picking the mistletoe in the last week in November, this year we only had a small amount by December, a bit more has turned white now and the rest we are still waiting for it to turn white.

Too green

Perfect!