Lessons Learned and (not) Remembered

You may recall, although it was over five years ago so you may not, that I made 80 cupcakes for Tony's 80th birthday party.  This enterprise was set back when Lucy the Great Dane took it upon herself to eat the butter from the kitchen bench. Lindsey had to dash to the shops to lay in emergency supplies otherwise we would have been a few cupcakes short of a party!

Marlo the cat would never steal the butter. He can't jump well enough any more to get to the kitchen bench. Even when he could he very seldom tried to help himself to whatever was on the bench (unless it was turkey which I never left unattended!). He is quite a polite cat and asks if he wants something.  Mind you, if you aren't quick enough to respond (such as if, say, you are slow in giving him all the turkey there is) he can be quite insistent, not to say assertive. But he wouldn't steal the butter.

Or the bacon.

I had some bacon sitting on a chopping board on Friday morning.  I was  intending to chop it up and add it to some mushrooms and tomatoes and have it all on toast for breakfast.  Now.  What have I done with those scissors I was using the other day. I know I put them in the dishwasher, but I've emptied that since.  I wonder where I put them?  Hunt in drawers. Fossick in cutlery pots.  Search around the kitchen.  Give up and grab a knife.  Turn to chop the bacon.  And there it isn't.  But there is Sam,  who had come in ninja like, helped himself to the bacon and was now stood there licking his chops.  He seemed quite shocked when I yelled at him loudly and forcibly ejected him from the kitchen.  

So the lesson has been remembered - just too late to save our bacon.  Fortunately we had eggs, which Sam hadn't eaten. I fried up some of those to add to the tomatoes, mushrooms and toast.

Yesterday The Builder and I went to the little farmers' market which is held at the top of the lake in Ballarat on the second and fourth Saturday of the month.  It's quite cute. I've been once before, many years ago, at Christmas. It was significantly colder, damper and muddier yesterday!  We bought some lamb for today's lunch (safely tucked away in the fridge, away from the mouths of ninja dogs). Some potatoes for the weekend and some others for Monday evening.  Lots of vegetables. It might have been small but we enjoyed it.  We will probably go again. Next time we might even take Sam. We didn't take hims yesterday because we weren't quite sure where we were going, or what we might do afterwards. Instead, we took him for a walk down through the University, which sits snuggled in woodland, down at the bottom of our hill. He was a bit puzzled that we weren't following any of his usual routes, but he seemed to enjoy the walk anyway.

We have investigated the tumbledown greenhouse and decided that it will do nicely for starting off the seeds that we got from Diggers.  But not quite yet.  Not only have we still not bought any seed planting compost, but the weather has turned noticeably colder (although it has at last stopped raining - for now!) The weather bods are warning of the possibility of frost this coming week.  I have to keep reminding myself that this (in gardening terms) is the equivalent of March in Tupton and I wouldn't have dreamt of planting seeds in March, unless I was growing them in the house. Which I could do here, except that this is a strangely dark house given the number and size of the windows. I'm not sure they would get enough light. No need for impatience though. There's plenty of time.

We were being watched, while we were in the greenhouse

There was a whole mob of them further over in the paddock.
This one was apparently suspicious of what we were doing in the greenhouse!