I’ve always liked Boxing Day, my fave, perhaps, of the 365. It doesn’t have a name in the US – or didn’t, at least, in the household in which I grew up. After the stress of the last few weeks, it brings with it a delicious sense of ease, of job-done. There’s always plenty of food left over from yesterday. The year is on the turn – there’s a sense of looking-forward. Little of that applies to me nowadays, but I’m still fond of it. We had a family quiz on zoom this morning.

 

The big news, however, is that there are little green leaves in my salad machine. The first set appeared yesterday, a wonderful Christmas present. Two more have joined it. That leaves one of the four bars still inert – but it hasn’t even been a week yet. My guess is that that’s the basil. I didn’t keep track of what went where, probably a mistake.

 

Monday the 27^th

 

I wrote that much last night, but didn’t get as far as posting it.

 

No advance on the salad machine. The little green leaves which were already with us are moving boldly forward, but haven’t been joined by that fourth bar – although I think I can see that the seeds are sttrring. I’m planning the next lot, in six months’ time: chillis, cilantro (coriander), salad leaves. The problem then will be to give them eight hours of darkness. It’ll be May if not June by then, and that’s more darkness than we get in those delicious months. I’ve got a couple of walk-in cupboards: but they lack electric points. I think they’ll have to stay in the sitting room – where I much enjoy having them to hand – with the curtains drawn in a most un-May-like fashion.

 

C. came this morning, and we got as far as walking across to the garden and sitting for a while on a damp bench. She’s coming again on Wednesday, and we’ll hope for better. On Christmas Day, cheerful and sunny, I didn’t get out of the door with Helen and her family. They’re now in Strathardle, too cold to move.

 

I watched the Fruity Knitting episode with the second half of their Kaffe Fassett interview. He has been awfully successful in finding his niche and exploiting it.