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| At the entrance to our Home Sweet Home |
We first saw our current home, Tottering Towers, more than thirty years ago. It was my birthday, and our hunt for a house ended at these gates. Several of the fences sported huge Clematis Montana climbers. They were just coming into flower, and scrambled for yards in every direction. We would have put in an offer for our dream home anyway, but that sea of pink and white blossom sealed the deal. Fancy having millions of ready-made cake decorations to put on my birthday cake each year!
In those days scientists talked about a hole in the ozone layer rather than climate change, but over the following decades we noticed the seasons slipping. Winters got shorter, and milder. Spring came earlier and earlier each year, and it was often much warmer than usual. The most obvious sign of change came with the flowering of our clematis. It started sooner each year. Instead of coming into flower during mid-May, by 2009 the blossoms were all out (and over) during April each year.
Then came a succession of the hardest winters we’d had in years. These reset our garden’s biological clock. Everything is back to normal. Since 2011, the clematis have flowered right on cue for my birthday, although the weather on the day hasn’t always been so lovely!
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| Alex at 8 weeks old |
I’ve been concentrating on non-fiction work lately, and you can read one of my latest pieces here. It’s all about early starts and new beginnings, as we’ve acquired a puppy. He's a golden retriever/yellow labrador cross called Alex. He’s exactly thirteen weeks old today, and in the month since he arrived our lives have been turned upside down. Talk about new beginnings—it’s like having a baby in the house again! At least he provides plenty of snippets for my newsletter. The next one will include my recipe for a quick and easy orange polenta cake. Alex “helped” me to get the details right by supervising, then fell asleep on my feet as I was baking!
To get my new orange polenta cake recipe and more news about Alex, send me an email with the subject “newsletter” to: christinahollis(AT)hotmail.co.uk (replacing the (AT) with @)
When she isn't cooking, gardening or beekeeping, Christina Hollis writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and she’s sold nearly three million books worldwide. You can catch up with her at http://www.christinahollis.blogspot.com, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com
Her current release, Heart Of A Hostage, is published by The Wild Rose Press and available at myBook.to/HeartOfAHostage worldwide, and from http://bit.ly/1iNf2Gw in the US.
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