Christmas Composition #1 (A Broken World).

A plate broke amidst our Christmas preparations. This is what came out of it.

Christmas Holly (2015)

Christmas Holly 2015.

It was quite a scramble to find one this year. Not many with berries, but still.

Happy holidays!

Twelfth Night.

Twelfth night, the tree goes out with a bucketful of needles, and Lenin is back in the window.

A Christmas Dog.

My Golden Retriever Strelka found just the place for a post-Christmas snooze.

Holly. From Tree to Christmas Pudding.

Holly trees are in every hedge, garden or wood in Normandy. This year, though, it took me much longer to find a fresh twig of holly with red berries for our Christmas pudding. Probably because the mairie trimmed the trees much later in the season.

At last, there is one. There are more up the tree, but I won't be climbing up that giant. The one in the bottom left corner of the photo would do.
 

And the twig makes it to the table!

Desperately Seeking Holly.

We have lots of holly bushes around here but few with bright red Christms berries. Found one today.

Norman hedges are more like medieval fortifications with oak and beech towering over, hazel and ash below, and the bottom is lined with holly and blackberry bushes. No wonder the Allies got stuck in the Normandy 'bocage' when they landed in 1944. They'd trained to jump over the English garden hedges, not go through the Norman thickets. One clever American sergeant thought of welding a piece of railing to the front of a Sherman tank, thus giving birth to 'rhinoceros' tanks which rammed and ripped up passing places in the hedges. Ike instantly approved it and the battle was won.

The Christmas Cat

Cats of all people do know how to enjoy Christmas.

Licking off turkey delights:

And then cuddling Santa while having a catnap:

White Christmas in Normandy: Jesus Snowed in

A crown of snow for the King of Kings on a road-side crucifix in the Orne. Happy Christmas everyone!

White Christmas in Normandy

A white Christmas in Normandy.

Photo by Francesca Bostock. See another photo by Francesca in 'the Reader's picture of the month' in the January issue of theFrenchPaper.


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