Tis the season to go foraging....

Spent the morning as the weirdo of the woods... or should that be the  mad lady in the park with floristry scissors?  Silver birch twigs, ivy flowers, fallen blue spruce branches, berries and yet more pine cones all got squirrelled away into my capacious Sainsbury's shopper.

On returning home, these were transformed into Christmas wreaths, made on a base of clematis stems that I couldn't resist making into frames when the thick, vine-like stems were felled along with various pear tree branches in February this year.

I love making wreaths. So satisfying and simple. Poke stuff into them, bind with wire, add a bit of this and that, and suddenly you have something so much nicer than the £6.99 holly boredom you can buy from every grocer on the high street.  Especially if you have discovered a brilliant stand of yellow and red dogwoods in the local park.

This is the one I made for my friend Jeanette, to be delivered tomorrow evening along with accompanying bottle of warming red wine....