I can’t believe that we have reached December, the start of summer for us in the southern hemisphere, and a month of festive gatherings. In the blogosphere, it is also blogmas, with the challenge laid down to blog every day up until Christmas Day. Now, it is already the evening of the 2nd December here (you may not know, but we are 21 hours ahead of Seattle at this time of year), so I am already a little late, but here goes with my first post for blogmas.
Christmas down here comes just after the longest day of the year, during the summer. No log fires, mulled wine and cosy candle light, but barbeques, glasses of rosé wine in the sun and summer fruits. The first stalls selling large, paper bags of cherries, dotted along Lambton Quay, have appeared. They are so hard to resist (cherries are so good here) and also make make a colourful addition to the Christmas table.
It’s also the time of a wide variety of salad greens, of tomatoes, crisp cucumber and edible flowers. I need to do a post about the last of these, but in the meantime, we had a few flower petals in our salad tonight. There was one whole, peppery and delicious nasturtium, which I picked out and ate before taking the photograph.
So this month’s posts will carry the theme of Christmas in summer, how we have adjusted to this seasonal swap in the time we’ve been here, the foods around at this time of year, and the odd Christmas memory.
In the meantime, listen to Ronan Keating and Julian Dennison’s Christmas duet, Summer Wonderland.
Thistles and Kiwis 