Happy New Year!

Best Wishes 

for 

Health and Happiness

in 2014

Some images form 2013

January: An epic ski season in 2013 gave us a chance to practice our Powder Eights.  We need practice.

February: Follow Me! released on Amazon

March: Storms, snow and flooding, and not much sun.  By mid-March the garden was already a few weeks behind previous years.  But there was plenty of time to catch up.  We thought.

April:  More snow.  Off-piste skiing on the very last day of the season, above the Col du Tourmalet.

May:  Horrible month, cold and wet with almost continuous rain.  This is one of the last pictures of our kitten Porcie who was killed on the road in May. 

June:  Torrential rain, flash flooding in the mountains causing terrible damage, and the vegetable garden got further and further behind.  The hungry gap widened, but we did see the odd butterfly.

and were introduced to our local rain forest.

July:  Heatwave!  The garden (and we) wilted as the temperature hit the mid forties, plants that had sulked then grew like stink and became weak and sappy.  No pleasing some gardeners!

August: Good weather, not brilliant, but no tomato blight for the first time.  Although we did get cucumber mosaic virus instead!  

The first dragonfly emerged from the new pond.

From August on-wards, the year took rather a nose-dive for me, when I suffered what we initially thought was a dislocated kneecap at the end of the month.

September:  Harvest time and pickle making

We had a really good crop of my favourite fatalii chillies ...

... and the book about our house and garden self-build was released.

October:  I dislocated my other knee, or so we thought, and gardening pretty much came to a halt.  

Ambling around the garden taking photos of the butterflies and moths kept me busy and sane.

November:  November is National Novel Writing Month and being limited in my movement and increasingly weary I took part, writing 50,000 words in the month and completing the rough draft of a sequel to Follow Me! topping out at 65000 words in early December.

December:  Stunning sunrises

and an unexpected diagnosis of Lyme Disease sum up December, and brought the year to a painful yet optimistic end.  If treatment goes well, I hope to hit the ski slopes for a very gentle slide in mid January and then get the garden up and running for a more productive 2014.

Have a good year.