december ☆

Just like last year no Christmas tree in da house, only a few pine- and eucalyptus branches.

The eucalyptus branch is a souvenir from the hotel in Essaouira where we stayed last October. The gardener was pruning the huge eucalyptus trees on the property and I asked him if I could have one to take home with me. The guy looked rather surprised, but he thought it was funny.

I have searched everywhere in the attic for our x-mas hares family this morning, but have not been able to find them yet. Well tomorrow I will make another attempt, because it's no Christmas without our cute traditional hares around.

For now we are okay with the a little extra 'green', a paper star and lots of candles in the run-up to Christmas.

Slowly getting into the Christmas mood...

between the eucalyptus & ginkgo

Summer in May, at least that's how it feels in the garden lately.

We have a new evergreen in the backyard; an Eucalyptus Gunnii tree.

The small eucalyptus stands beside the ginkgo tree on the terrace. The new tree is an evergreen tree. The small round gray-green leaves give off a delicious eucalyptus smell. Especially when the leaf is bruised, a strong eucalyptus smell is released. Good thing is, mosquitoes hate this smell, so perfect for long summer evenings in the garden.

This afternoon we planted the new evergreen, a remembrance tree for Henk's mother, who passed away yesterday.

After gardening (we also repotted some plants and sowed flowers seeds) we had a tea between the trees and it felt special...