It seems winter really has finally set in now. As I type it is chucking it down. However, it must be said, winter here is not like the winters of old I remember from the UK – the winters I promised myself I would never revisit. Freezing wind, rain, floods etc. I hate to say it but I actually quite like the winter here (so far). Here, it’s not actually that cold (I say again, so far). It has just meant a change in nature’s palette. The vine leaves are red, the sycamores and the chestnut leaves are yellow but there is still the bright green backdrop of everything else. In our garden it is the relentless green of the grass, in our temporary house it is the green of the pine and eukalypt forests.

It also hasn’t stopped us going ‘down the farm’. Yesterday, with a backdrop of drizzle I finished off the big pond. Now we just need to wait for the spring and hopefully it will prove tempting enough for the frogs to drop in some spawn. And we need them, giant monster slugs have started appearing. Licking their chops and asking when the veggies are going to be planted.

Meanwhile Jackie has rejoined the battle against the brambles and a new ‘super weed’ we have discovered. In actual fact it is a dense and deep network of roots from the plum trees which are sprouting all over the place. Nice to know we have a lot of plum trees but their roots spread wide and are very difficult to dig up.

Away from the garden we have been spending a lot of time shopping – we have bought tiles for the whole house. Most of the rooms will have the usual terracotta tiles found in houses round these parts (you will not believe how many shades of brown there are!) but the bathroom will be shades of green. Tiles chosen by Jackie, which she says were inspired from our trips to Ko Samet, a beautiful island in Thailand. Those beachy days with our toes in the sand seem a long way off now…