A warm Christmas

The weather the past few weeks has been really weird; sandstorms, then cold and a bit rainy and now hot. It feels strange to be the end of December with such hot weather. Today's temperature was close to 90F. I'm writing this post on my front porch, wearing short sleeves and drinking iced tea! At the same time I'm getting emails from friends in other parts of the world who are snowed in.

I took advantage of the weather by going out at dawn for a walk with hubby. We watched the sun come up and at about 7:30 a humongous flock of starlings appeared over head. Starlings arrive in Libya this time of year and eat the olives that are just now ripening. Hubby says they are considered as pests but I think they are amazing. They spun about over head with their wings making a whooshing noise and then landed in our back field. A minute or so later they rose back into the air and flew above us in a swarm for about a minute before descending on the farm behind ours. I commented to hubby that that the sight of the birds so close was the best Christmas gift. Unfortunately I'd left my camera in the house, but you can see what they look like here: Starlings

The rest of the morning was spent planting flower seeds in seedling bags. Sara helped me out. Our dog, Cisco, wanted to help too. He kept sticking his nose in everything and while I was sitting on the ground filling bags with soil he kept insisting to try and sit in my lap - he's much too big to be doing that but he still has the idea that he's a puppy. We ran out of bags. Tomorrow I'll have to go out and get more to finish off the rest of the seeds. With luck I'll have lots and lots of pretty flowers soon.

By afternoon it was hot enough to turn on the air conditioning, but we decided just to stick it out and leave the windows open. It was a peaceful day. Who would have thought we'd have such warm weather on Christmas day.

Hope you had the best Christmas!