The mercury is due to rise today to thirty nine degrees, it's windy, we are surrounded on all sides by large pockets of bushland and down our street just strolled Santa, followed at walking pace by his big
D was exiting the driveway en-route to Bunnings just as 'Santa' approached our house but managed to navigate carefully around the procession while I watched from inside laughing at the irony of it all. These are the moments that make Christmas - the annual traditions that almost nothing can hinder.
For us, this year's Christmas preparations have run parallel to baby preparations. There have been many to-do and to-buy lists floating around for the last few months and I am glad to see that we are finally nearing the end of them and almost at the point of being as ready as we can be for both events - hospital bags almost packed and presents all wrapped, nursery flooring in the process of being installed and cute things (knitted Converse All Stars - cuuute!) all washed and put away ready.
An annual tradition of ours is taking a basket full of little gifts to our Christmas church service. This year we're taking tomato chutney, made from the Tommy Toe tomatoes D and I grew earlier in the year. I love having a productive garden - it makes gift giving so doable even at times when it otherwise wouldn't be...
Since becoming the gardening type I've noticed gifts and gardens go hand-in-hand. We almost always leave a fellow garden-lover's house with a cutting of this or a sample of that. We enjoyed lunch at the home of one of our church 'Mum and Dads' in early November. Things started off fairly normal, you know - cheese and crackers and chatting as you do, then within moments of complimenting Tracy on her garden we were both out there in it, Tracy shovel in hand digging and dividing any plant which I ooooh'd or ahhhh'd over, and now just a few weeks later those plants are thriving in our garden, and in time will be ready to be divided and gifted to a garden-loving-guest that comes to our home.
We were also the recipient of another very special gardener's gift in spring this year when we visited D's Grandma. She has the most amazing Dahlia patch (a flower I have been obsessed with ever since Colour Conference 2013 when host Bobbie bombed the ladies toilets with lavish displays of them) and this year they needed digging up, dividing, and replanting, a process which left a pile of excess Dahlia tubers that there was simply no space for in her garden. We were so grateful to be able to give a new home to some of them, bringing Grandma's signature flowers home to carry on growing in our garden for decades to come.
She grows many different shapes and colours of Dahlia so we are still not exactly sure which ones made it home with us, but the varieties that have bloomed so far are stunning...
For me the joy of garden gifts goes far beyond economical or practical, it is all about the sentiment. To have plants that started their life in a loved-one's garden and now you have them growing in yours - like an eclectic display of life that prompts memories not only of the people that gave them, but the memories made when they were given.
