Well that came as a shock to the system, a whole week of proper cold winter weather – even before the official start of meteorological winter. I didn’t mind the frost at all, and because the days were mostly sunny until yesterday (Saturday) it was really very pleasant. In fact sitting in the greenhouse having my lunch it felt almost tropical. It didn’t feel a bit like that standing at the farmers’ market yesterday in the mist and gloom, it was bone chilling. I had so many layers on that my mobility was somewhat compromised, I couldn’t just twist, I had to turn my whole body so trussed up was I, like an over stuffed teddy bear. And then today the frost went and the wet returned – not nice. The photo above was taken of frosted crab apples in the car park at Wyken.

Early last week the moon looked amazing in the clear night sky, and first thing in the morning. It’s light cast distinct shadows, making for perfect conditions for night time hunters. This is a photo I took last Tuesday. For some reason the resolution is never so clear when I upload photos to the website, there’s probably a technical reason for it, but I’m not that clever. On the original photo you can clearly see some of the craters well defined.

I suppose I had better start thinking about Christmas shopping. I always used to have one day aimlessly wandering around Bury or Cambridge looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights, usually ending the day with little more to show for my endeavours than a stress headache. Last year for some reason I managed to get most things online, but I would like to go back to supporting physical shops, so I will have to don my hair shirt, take some deep breaths and go for it. I might keep a tally sheet of the number of times I hear individual Christmas songs – ‘Driving Home for Christmas’, ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’, ‘Feed the World’, ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas’, are all likely to feature in the list, as well as Noddy Holder screaming out “It’s Christmasssss!”

We watched a good film on Netflix last night, a Kenneth Branagh movie based to some extent on his own childhood. It was called Belfast and portrayed a family at the start of ‘The Troubles’. There were some very good performances by the actors, the stand-out being by the little lad playing Buddy, he was absolutely delightful. When it was released early last year it didn’t receive universally positive reviews, but we all enjoyed it, and at just over an hour and a half long it is refreshingly concise – give it a go. We don’t watch a lot of drama on the TV, but last weekend we thought that we would try a new BBC series ‘Boat Story’ that had been promoted a fair bit, well we lasted about 20 minutes! I don’t like all of that violence and unpleasantness, there’s enough of that in real life.

I have to confess I don’t know much about Chestnuts, so if you bought some last week and have tried them I will be very interested to know what you thought of them. They come from the Ardèche region of France. The Walnuts on the other hand come from Drôme, also in France. I do know a bit more about them, and having cracked a few I thought that they were good. I have added another Christmassy item to the shop this week – Clementines. They are thin skinned, not exactly easy peelers, nice and juicy, and are sold in sixes. Apples this week are Pinova.

On the vegetable front there are cauliflowers, Brussels sprouts, Cavolo nero, leeks and lots of root veg. I have now sold all of the butternut squash, but there are still plenty of Uchiki Kuri. Sadly the Isle of Wight tomatoes have come to an end, but they did well to last until the end of November.

I have been having problems with my laptop dying on me in the past week, so I’m not going to push my luck. I’m going to leave it there for this week and get this published before the lights go out. I hope that you have a good week.

Phil