"All I Want For Christmas Is A Yorkshire Pudding Tree."

 Diesel our Bernese mountain dog told me she wanted a Yorkshire Pudding Tree for Christmas.  

Yes I talk to my animals.  I even say "good morning" to our pigs.  Do you talk to your four legged friends?

So in the words of a famous Blue Peter childrens television presenter:

"Here's one I made earlier".

A Yorkshire Pudding tree.

Diesel and the others absolutely adore/ devour Yorkshire Puddings.

Perhaps I will get a CDM (Cadburys Dairy Milk) in the New Years Honours list or perhaps I may be awarded a special award at the Yorkshire Pudding Laughing Horse in Cape Town on Sunday?😃.  I don't think I can make it sadly with all my smallholding chores.

That is two imaginative trees I/we have created in the last few days.

Are you up to creating some unique trees?

Rather like my old ex army friend was told when he was a new recruit:

"Don't be shy.  Your mother wasn't." 😀

The Oxen Poem.

 It's a tad bit late but any road:

Thomas Hardy wrote a Christmas  Eve poem entitled: The Oxen.

It reflects his Wessex  childhood belief that the Oxen of Bethlehem descendants would kneel in reverance at the moment of Christ's birth.

An Oxen was/is a castrated bullock that grows to adult age and was used to pull carts and for ploughing.  My late father use to tell me one of his jobs in his is youth in rural Ireland was feeding and mucking out and they lived until they reached the age of five at least.  They must have been enormous.

Oxen are one of the few bovine creatures that actually get up from a kneeling position.  So there is probably some truth in the Nativity story being renacted yearly on Dorset farms.

Thomas Hardy became agnostic in his early twenties rather like myself.  He still regular worshipped in his local church but he became disillusioned in Christianity and was a big believer in fate.  

I still visit churches especially in England.  When I get the chance to visit them.  But not worship rather for the being and nothingness and peace that ancient stone and brick buildings resonate.

Have you read his poem about the iceberg and the Titanic drifting on the same path from hundreds of miles away?

Read Tess Of The  Durbevilles Or Jude The Obscure to see how we live on a blighted planet or rotten apple.  I actually stood outside the Lamb and Flag pub in Oxford in August where he wrote Jude.  Why didn't I go for a pint in there?  Next time.

The Oxen was published when Hardy was 75 and he still longed for that childhood innocence to return and perhaps he would see the oxen kneel at the crib/ manger of our saviour Jesus Christ?

Tight Wad Christmas Tree.

 No not the name of a Prog rock band, although  it could be🤔?

More like a bit of fun on my part.

Someone in the Northsider Towers household said that we have not purchased a Christmas tree this year. So on Christmas Eve night I ventured out to my plant nursery in the pitch dark.  

I came back with a Hebe shrub that I had grown from a cutting  a few years ago and decorated it with a couple of baubles with dog pictures on them.

Our cats and dogs seem impressed with my pets Christmas tree.

After all. It's the thought that counts:

According to the weather people Ireland had the warmest Christmas ever this year.  Next year we will swap rain bathing for sun bathing and we will all have a barbecue in the garden.

Better still we will go somewhere else next Christmas.  Shearings are advertising Tinsel and Turkey holidays in Llandudno?

It's got to be better than not seeing any body in the countryside next to the sea.

At least its not blowing a gale and throwing it down.

Yours sincerely:  Ebeneezer Northsider.

Picking The Homegrown Vegetables For Christmas Dinner.

 Brussel sprouts have been grown in Belgium since the thirteenth century.  The Roman's are said to have introduced them to Europe.

I bought my organic Brussel sprouts from an organic vegetables plant grower in Bantry a few months ago.

Brussel sprouts homegrown and organic.

They don't like too much nitrogen or the button sprouts will blow.  They also like compact ground like a cricket wicket.  I have known allotment holders to roll the ground with a garden roller.  I tread and formed the plants with my heels and toes.

We have not had much frost other than an odd grass frost so I don't know if the starches will have changed to sugars in the sprouts.

I also harvested a leek and a parsnip that we grew from seed.   The only vegetables we bought are organic vegetables.

Leeks in the baths.

Leeks in old repurposed heating oil tanks.  You don't need a garden or allotment to grow your own veggies.  You just need containers to grow them in and some soil and fym.

Remember my parsnip seed germination experiment?

Leeks, sprouts and parsnips all safely harvested and gathered in.

We will be having our vegetables with a piece of Dexter beef we bought from our local butchers.  He's got a small abbatoir and he kills and butchers our pigs for us.  We will be also eating one of our big hams from one of our pigs that we raised on the smallholding this summer.

One of our free range pigs hams born and raised on the smallholding.

It's good to know we have grown and raised most of our Christmas Dinner ourselves.  John Seymour would be proud of us and know we have read his books.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas and peaceful 2025.

Grave Visiting At Christmas.

We went tidying the two family graves this morning and we placed two Aldi bought  planters filled with winter flowering plants on them.  They are a change from the traditional  wreaths.

It does not do me much  good mentally and leaves me profoundly sad.  But it's good to visit my mum and dad's graves at Christmas.   It's  good to still visit them even though they are gone from the land of the living.

 Then we took our Christmas presents to my brothers house and talked for an hour and a half.  I bet we don't see anybody else until after the Christmas holiday?

Well that's wrong.  Two friends have visited this afternoon and dropped off some prezzies.  I think one is a nice bottle of wine to go with our lump of Dexter beef and our homegrown organic vegetables and some bought organic  potatoes.

I wish it was Christmas Day tomorrow.  

"Rubbeesh, Rubbeesh"

I took that on the plane to Tenerife around this time last  December, yes my phone was set to airplane mode.  

I remember the Spanish air hostess walking down the aisle with a big clear plastic bag shouting: " Rubbeesh, Rubbeesh with her broken English accent.  

Here's a photo of some rubbish  🗑 bins on the beach in Tenerife.

I wish we had litter bins on our beaches like these in Ireland.  

I have only seen them on Banna beach in County Kerry. I have see bins for dog waste but never for litter.  

Why do I see county councils signs saying:  "Take your rubbish home".  People are on holiday so how can they?

No wonder our beaches and seas often contain plastic and rubbish.

 The ones in Tenerife had writing on them in English says: "USE ME!"

Do you have public rubbish bins near you? 

 Rather like Portugal 🇵🇹 you see litter bins everywhere in Tenerife and you don't see detritus on the beaches.

Keeping Warm Christmas Presents.

 We went for a saunter around Aldi the other day.  This is what J bought me for Christmas:

A one size Ladies/Men Hooded Blanket.  Twelve Euros in a cheap discount supermarket.  They are 20 Euros in a more upmarket store like Dunnes or Tesco.

Just the ticket when Storm Eowyn strikes in the next few days or even tonight🤔?

Someone's  obviously been reading my blog posts about me wearing a jumper to bed and fuel poverty?

I wore it to bed and it does what it says on the tin or cardboard even.  It keeps you warm.

Here's what I purchased dear readers:

Two jars of pickles and a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey.  For making hot toddies only to keep us warm of course. For what other reason would I get a bottle of whiskey?😀

I wouldn't getting mind a nice bottle of malt Scottish whisky.  What is your favourite malt?  Mine's Dalwhinnie.