Reporting from the southern hemisphere where Summer officially arrives in ten days

I know everyone else is posting pictures of their holiday decorations. Well, I may have mentioned how pitiful my house looks this year since I brought very little in the way of Christmas things with us. AND I'm having a hard time finding stuff here. So instead I thought I'd share yet more pictures of my yard. Doesn't it look like these roses are talking to each other? :-) I love, love, LOVE my hydrangeas! We saw a house in Santa Rosa that had dozens of them all over the yard and I thought to myself, "I want a lot of hydrangeas like this!" So we're going to see if we can't start some more with clippings from this plant. But I'd also like to get my hands on some of the blue ones and white ones and... We have trumpet vines on either side of the house, but this side is much grander so it's the side I'm showing (not that the other side is shabby but it only covers about 5' of wall). Underneath is a variety of things but mostly spider plants.

Speaking of spiders...when we had Thanksgiving dinner with a group of missionaries, it was at a camp on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. A camp where big hairy spiders suddenly appear out of nowhere, causing some southern girls to move rather quickly. Well, wouldn't you if confronted with THIS?! Not being a fan of ginormous spiders, I'm glad we don't have bigguns like that where I live.

Jumping from the camp where big spiders live to el campo which simply means "countryside", I'm thinking I may have to take our pruning shears and sneak off in the dead of night to el campo where pine trees dot the landscape. I've been checking out some of the beautiful garlands at the Holiday Garland Show & Tell hosted by Nesting Place. Nester and the others have given me some great ideas. The arched doorway between our living and dining rooms just begs for a big showy garland. And the stealthy night scavenging appears necessary since I can't find even skimpy garlands in the stores. Not that I want to appear to be whining (even though I am) but I'd really like to have something worthy of photographing for BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes on Monday.