End of last week

From my perspective, the rest of the week proceeded in a calm and orderly manner.  There were, from my point of view, no excitements or alarms.  All was well - apart from the fact that I need a new favourite pub.

Mostly, over the past few days, the sun has shone and the weather has been balmy.  Apart from Sunday when it poured more or less all day, until about 4 pm when it was much too late to do anything useful with the glorious sunshine!

The new (toy) dog now has a name.  Lindsey suggested that we call her Martha but that didn't seem quite right.  Then it came to me that Molly was an excellent name for her.  I know it seems ridiculous to say this about a soft toy, but she is looking much happier than she did when she arrived.  This might be because she has fluffed up after being squashed, lost in a package for several days.  Or, of course, she may just like us :-)

Molly, enjoying the sunshine and some iPad time

I took some photos of the garden over the weekend.  It looks magnificent in the photos.  Ian called it "abundant".  I would say "rampant".  We have rescued two of the brick paths but the diagonal one across the middle of the flower beds has vanished altogether.  (I know that it's there; we're away next week but when we get back I shall rescue it properly).  The biggest issue is the bindweed which is rampaging through the beds and which I just can't get rid of.  I think we may need to resort to chemical warfare.  The under-Gardener is going to try cutting it off down to the ground so we can see what we are doing and then we'll napalm it when it starts to grow back.

Newly planted potatoes in boxes, seaside daisies and a small bay tree on the patio

Summer flowers

Rampant abundance

I made a big pot of Japanese style vegetable curry for Sunday lunch.  Even after we had had healthy servings of it you couldn't tell that we had been at it.  We had more last night.  I have set some aside for The Builder's dinner tonight.  And then I portioned the rest out into freezer boxes.  There are five, FIVE, double portions of vegetable curry in the freezer awaiting our attention!!!

So, as I say, from my perspective the week ended in a tolerably happy fashion.  It was slightly more chaotic at work (My poor colleague has had a massive headache trying to sort out the teaching schedule for an enormous crowd of Chinese students who are here for the summer).  But we won't worry about that now.  The sun is shining.  It's a glorious day.  And it's my last Japanese class tonight before the summer break.  I must make a much better effort this summer to do some studying and revision.  I didn't get around to doing any last summer and had forgotten everything when classes resumed in late September :-S

In the meantime, Tabitha, Gareth, Cally, Nate and Duncan went to the footy on Saturday afternoon. It appears that there is a little known Sheffield Aussie Rules club which plays occasional matches

Aussie Rules footy in Sheffield

Footy photos courtesy Tabitha