Happy New Year

Many thanks to all those who have visited my blog this year and for all the lovely comments.

Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year filled with many magical wildlife moments.

Boxing Day Walk Around Local Lanes

We went for a Boxing Day walk yesterday around the local lanes. This is one our favourite walks so some of the landscape shots may be familiar to some of you as I've posted on this walk before.

This is one of my favourite cottages - how I would like to live here.

I did look for wild flowers but just White Dead-nettle

and possibly Yarrow? (not sure of id on this one).

Man-made intruding on the landscape!

I love seeing seedheads in the hedgerows at this time of year - so many different shapes and forms.

It took me a while to find a few holly berries

but there were plenty of ivy berries appearing.

Very few birds seen on the walk - just Dunnock, Wood Pigeon, Blackbird, Greenfinch and a few Blue Tits on feeders.



We stopped off for a quick drink at the Plough, Shustoke

I've used an old photo of the pub - from memory it was taken when we stopped off for lunch after going to look for Waxwings in Nuneaton quite a few years ago. Although it appears to be a "Waxwing Winter" in some parts of the country we are still waiting for them to arrive in Warwickshire. Hopefully, they will eventually arrive when berry supplies have been exhausted further north and east!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Christmas at Packwood

B and I visited Packwood House today to have a look round the house decorated for Christmas.

First of all a look round the gardens starting with the Kitchen Garden

And then into the house itself.

This year's theme is "The Theatre of Christmas at Packwood"

Packwood House acted as a stage for its previous owner Graham Baron Ash during the 1920's to 1940's and this year's decorations reflect this by bringing the theatre to Packwood. The National Trust team has worked closely with artist Jennifer Collier who has created the paper decorations this year. All the materials used have links to Packwood - photos, maps and if you look closely you will see pages from Edith Holden's "Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady".

Time for cake and a gingerbread latte :)

(On the one in a million chance the lovely NT lady I chatted to in the tearoom about the delights of using Olympus cameras and the gardens at Morville Dower House sees this blog post. Just to let her know that I remembered the author's name when I reached Knowle!! - its Katherine Swift and the books are "The Morville Hours - the Story of a Garden" and "The Morville Year" ).