Merry Christmas everybody!

A long-tailed tit features in this Christmas card designed by Sue Waddicor for the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)…

I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas with a few of my favourite festive cards from charities this year. I sent out the one above to many people – and I received the same one from someone else, too. It’s a lovely long-tailed tit in a berried wreath – the berries look like mistletoe (very translucent like pearls) and perhaps snowberry (Symphoricarpos). And the leaves are a bit autumnal, very appropriate with our British winters starting later and later these days. See the RSPB website: rspb.org.uk.

Then there are my favourites from the cards I have received…

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The cauldron: Symbol of life and death

Cauldron cake by The Cake Store – click on any of the images in this blog post to find the sources

As it’s Halloween, I thought I would take a look at the witch’s cauldron in history and myth. It turns out that as well as being an ancient household cooking vessel and a witch’s potion pot, the cauldron has been a mystical symbol of life and, in some stories, an instrument of death…

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Gifts that work like a charm…

Shiny! Pandora bangles seem to be all the rage this Christmas…

This is a sudden post. And all because there was a long queue of people through the door of a shop in Cardiff the other day and I was surprised to find it was the Pandora jewellery shop. The ideal Christmas gift for young and stylish women?

Very shiny, quite expensive, needing no thought at all, or maybe too much thought,

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Some colourful skulls for Halloween…

Rainbow skull by Chris Padgett on Flickr – click on the image to go to his page…

I like to do a post for Halloween and in previous years I have featured owls and Jack o’ lantern and Will o’ the wisp.

As a former archaeologist, I have always

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Ash: The world-binding tree…

My ash trees in June…

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn good sirs,
All on a midsummer’s morn.
Surely we sing of no little thing
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

My back garden – my world – is full of ash trees. And I fear for them, as the threat

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Who’s that man at the door?

Face above the door, a Cardiff side street…

This magnificent face is above all the front doors of a row of old semi-detached houses in a small Cardiff side street that I often walk along.

He intrigues me so much that

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Daffodils for St David’s Day…

Miniature daffodils in the garden, in flower in time for St David's Day

Oh how we love our daffodils, here in Wales. And especially today, March 1, St David’s Day – our national day. We have a choice – to wear a daffodil or a leek – so most people choose the daff and an easy way is to buy a charity daffodil pin from Marie Curie Cancer Care. I’ll be wearing mine.

It’s also a day when

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