Back to Reality!

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the past two weeks wondering what day it was. Christmas and New Year’s felt like Sundays, but then there were a couple of Fridays thrown in there and a weekend or two. Regardless of the day, I hope that your festive season was wonderful!

It’s been a busy few weeks here with lots of parties and other fun events. An annual event to which I am invited is a New Year’s Day brunch with friends. The food is always fabulous – caviar on blinis, cheesy grits, scrambled eggs, Scottish salmon, fresh fruit and champagne.

Before we ate, we took a minute to walk, or in my case, hobble, through the garden. I am recovering from a bad knee and it’s super painful to walk right now. Although it’s freezing, I am still waiting for the first snow of the season to take the final series of images of the garden, which I’ve documented through the past year.

The iron dogs which greet visitors are festively decorated for the season with beautiful wreaths.

Small evergreens have been trained into spiral topiaries.

J made two window boxes with seasonal greenery, including some hellebores from the greenhouse. Because this part of the house is south-facing, the hellebores actually do quite well.

I love this half-urn which also showcases a little evergreen decorated with white lights. .

The inside of the house also took advantage of the plants from the on-site greenhouse and there were fresh flowers everywhere. In addition to the lilies, there were paper-white narcissus, hyacinths, white azaleas and some amaryllis.

There were also some poinsettias in a variety which I have not yet seen.

The table was set with some traditional tartan cloths, and beautiful amaryllis in a candy-cane stripe!

Honestly, there’s nothing like fresh flowers to banish the winter blues!