Saturday, February 2

Notes from the festive season

Eeek! How did we get here already? It's been 2 months since I last wrote? How ridiculous! It's not like I haven't had things to say, either. In fact, just between you and me, my dears, I quite often write to you in my head. If only all the blog posts I write in my head actually got onto the virtual page!
Oh well, not to worry, or one could turn something enjoyable into a chore and we don't want to do that now do we Lindsey? Hehe...
Enough about what hasn't happened, onto what has:
There was Christmas, obviously. For me, Christmas this year involved a carnival and an unexpected guest. My mother, in her ever enthusiastic and slightly child-like manner decided that this year we should have a Carnivale themed Christmas. Extreme use of colour, costumes and party hats were called for and Mum declared her intention to make a 50m paper chain with which to decorate the entire living / dining area! I am proud to announce that she succeeded too, with a little help from my sister. The linking span was installed Christmas night, after the lunch and the presents and the festivities, Mum wasn't going to leave that 3m un-festooned, even if it was a bit late :-) My contributions were the garishly bright table setting, complete with an outrageous, dahlia sporting, arrangement and a giant wreath of paper tassels. All in all, everything looked quite jolly (in a non-green and red kind of way).
And so, onto the unexpected guest ... a day earlier, my sister and I drove to Bendigo to celebrate Christmas with my dad's family. It was there, that for the first time ever, we met our Grandfather! What? How? You say. No need to go into details, really, it's just one of those silly family stories of estrangement that you hear of. It wasn't a big deal, we just didn't know our paternal grandfather and never expected any different. But I am really happy to say that things changed, for whatever reason, and as a result (without pre-warning!) we met Arthur. Now I know where my nose and that slightly deviant family sense of humor comes from. But what really tickled me, was that Arthur (from now on to be called Pop) is a gardener! I think he was quite taken with the homegrown flowers that I had taken up to my Aunts'. "Larkspur" he said, "I haven't seen larkspur in years." And "These poppies are just like poppies used to be." That made me happy. Here was me thinking that I had come from a family practically void of any gardening talent. In fact, until a couple of months ago, I wouldn't even have considered myself a gardener! 
Families are funny things.

No comments: