Rain, sunshine, rain

A very Happy Christmas to all the Blippers who celebrate today.

We had invited a Newcomers’ friend to spend Christmas Day with us as she would otherwise have been at home by herself.  We had done most of the prep yesterday with just the final cooking to do today.  We picked her up at midday, gave her a tour of the house, then sat outside in the sunshine for bubbles and nibbles.  Some time later we got ourselves organised and cooked the meal, which didn’t take long.  We all enjoyed it, probably ate too much and talked a lot.  We had chocolate mousse, then Christmas cake, then coffee with Baileys (yum!) - courtesy of our friend, who also brought the Christmas cake and a bottle of wine to have with the meal. The rain started as we ate and by the time we’d finished it was heavy and persistent.  We’d intended to walk our friend home but would all have got soaked through so we called her a taxi just before 8pm and she was home shortly afterwards. The cleaning up has been done, the dishwasher is on, we’ve done Wordle and I’ve read Blippers’ journals giving stars as I went.  I must be out of hearts because I was unable to give any.

I am way behind responding to comments, but will catch up with all things Blip over the next few days.

There is a rather large Magnolia Grandiflora tree in the garden that produced a flower yesterday.  There was another one today, which I was able to take a photo of.  The extra shows the salmon before and after cooking.  We discovered after the event that we could have cooked and served it on the platter.  Next time!