Happy New Year!

…and to start it off I want to give you two bits of important news about the blog and its future.

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The  blog is about to celebrate its 11th birthday!

  The first post was on New Years Eve 2013 and  the numbers reading  have continued to grow apace with over 236,000 views  by 143,000 visitors over the course of the year,  just slightly  up on last year’s already record 224,000, the 100,000 for 2020 and less than 7,000 for the whole of 2014!  All adding up to a grand total of over 1.08 million views from 625,000 visitors

As always, thank you  for your loyal support and the nice comments. Please keep  telling your friends about the blog and get them to join the mailing list.  Just  go to the very bottom of any post, enter an email address and each new post  will appear, as if by magic, early on Saturday morning in time for breakfast. And now for the quiz….

Not Mr and Mrs Nesfield celebrating to acquisition of their archives by the Garden Museum but, believe it or not, an advert for the Anthracite Bedding Manufacturing Co., 1910. Image: Library of Congress.

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As usual I’ve been wracking my brains for the last few weeks trying to think of something original and garden-related to say about Christmas.

Over the last ten years I’ve tackled  all sorts of things  Christmasy from Hellebores to Brussels Sprouts and Amaryllis to Ivy. I’ve even looked at artificial Christmas flowers whilst  studiously avoiding the obvious things such as Christmas trees . Sadly I thought this year I might have to give in, and for want of anything better  finally give in and look at firs, spruces and pines but  in starting my research  I discovered another seasonal subject which allows me to avoid them for at least another year!

So if you don’t know much about Moodjar  or Pōhutukawa then read on…

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