Last Weekend in April

The autumn continues to be beautiful in my little corner of the world. A bit of rain, perhaps a bit on the cool side, but plenty of sunshine and many excuses to wear my winter woolly jumpers, and to light the fire in the evenings. It's not really quite cold enough yet to wear proper winter jumpers, but I have been if I can't be bothered lighting the fire (or it's not convenient to light it).

Street light and a full
moon at twilight, from my porch on
Wednesday evening

Lindsey and I went out to the Ballarat Farmers' Market on Saturday morning. We got there nice and early so the fish van from Port Fairy still had plenty of fish, despite the long queues when the market first opened. I might have spent most of my week's food budget on fish! We don't often get the opportunity to buy really fresh fish. The market was bustling and happy. The sun shone. There were lots of children and dogs, as well, of course, as many adults.

Driving down Webster Street (I wasn't driving - I was passengering!)

And in the Wilsons' carpark:

Ballarat really is beautiful in the autumn! (I might have mentioned this before 😉 )

I went to visit Stella on Saturday afternoon. She was in good form. Bright and alert. Looking forward to lunch out on Sunday. Excited that Emily and her family are coming to visit in June. Curious about what everyone was up to.  Trundled down to the Saturday Book Club with a cup of tea and a biscuit, cheery and chirpy. Alas, when I went to pick her up for lunch out yesterday, she was  neither cheery nor chirpy. Instead, she was very sleepy, not at all alert, not feeling well, very down. We took her out anyway, although I don't think she remembers it.

We went back out to the Meredith pub, where they obligingly doubled their entree sized scallop dish for Ian to have as a main:

He says it was every bit as beautiful to eat
as it was to look at

My steak, chips and veg were magnificent:

The generous portion of veg was delicious.
Vegetables are so often disappointing in steak dishes

I didn't get a photo of Lindsey and Stella's roast duck plates but they must have been tasty. Despite being flat and sleepy, Stella ate pretty much every bit of her duck!

The weekend ended in a blaze of evening sunlight, shining through the dining room window at about 5:30:

I lit the fire, prepared a sandwich and some cheese and biscuits, poured a glass of wine, and settled in to watch the first Sunday elimination of this season of Masterchef. To my surprise, I managed to stay awake until the end. It might be because they don't seem to be playing the theme music this season. In the past, the music has started and I have pretty much gone straight to sleep. Annoyingly, it also happens with others of my favoured TV shows. I usually watch them later, during afternoons when I don't have anything more pressing to do, such as going to work or visiting mother. I can usually manage to stay awake during afternoon viewings. With a bit of effort 😄

Speaking of visiting mother, I shall get myself organised and go and see what Stella is up to. I assume she's more or less all right since nobody has rung to say otherwise. This does not, however, mean that she has actually got up. It is noticeable that people, including Stella, who were quite sprightly and relatively active nearly two years ago when she first moved in, are slowing down, fading, waning. Mind you, they are all now in their late 80s and early 90s and if they were in full health and ability, they wouldn't be in a care home. C'est la vie, I suppose.

Miscellany

I have mused before on the gentle irony that when nothing much is happening, you have lots of time to write and not much to write about. Conversely ...

Let's have a catch up.

Lindsey and I took advantage of a lovely autumn day yesterday, and went out to Talbot to the monthly market. It was nicely bustling, but not so crowded that you couldn't look at things  

I don't really need any more seeds
but these little collections were
very tempting

We came home via Clunes, where we had a wander around the shops. Clunes is a lovely little place but the shopping strip has been sadly affected by the lockdowns and later the cost of living crises. We did enjoy the shops that have survived and very much enjoyed our lunch in Cafe 52. My Turkish-style pulled lamb salad was delicious.

I have finally planted the seedlings I bought on Jim's birthday. And, of course, now the seeds that I chucked onto that bed a few weeks before have also started to germinate. The pea seeds are also starting to come up, as are the weeds

Brassica seedlings

The silverbeet is thriving

Silverbeet and bean plants
I'm going to pull the beans
They're hanging in there
but producing no beans

Lots of little capsicums
although they aren't ripening

Pea seeds and grass starting to come up
Might have to pull out the grass!

A little while ago, Lindsey ran across Farmers' Pick on the internet. They send out boxes of fruit and vegetables that have been rejected by the supermarkets for various reasons. We decided to get a box of vegetables (not fruit) to see what it was like and asked for it to be delivered to my place on Saturday. And this is what came:

So far I have made tubs of roasted vegetables and a not-ratatouille. Lindsey has taken half the roast vegetables, snow peas and broccoli. I have made a big bowl of mirepoix. We ordered a box for two, to come fortnightly - but I have changed the delivery day to Friday. Saturday is our main shopping day and we found ourselves constrained by not knowing what vegetables would be coming our way. I definitely approve of buying perfectly good but misshapen vegetables, and the quality is excellent. I'm just not sure how practical it is to do this for our two households. But we'll give it a go for another couple of boxes and see how we get on.

Stella has improved greatly since her hospital adventure, although she was completely away with the fairies for most of last week. Opioid medications do not agree with her! Anyway, she's off them now and is very much more alert and aware. She's going to see her GP tomorrow so we'll see what's what then.

We've been having some lovely autumn weather. Misty mornings, lovely sunsets, sunny days. 

It's a beautiful day today and is forecast to be quite warm for April. I shall try to get some garden time in. And do a load of washing 😉

Stella's Visit to the Hospital and Autumn Morning Light

Well now. That was an interesting few days.

I went to visit Stella on Thursday afternoon, to find her in some considerable pain in her hip and back. No real idea why. She was also quite a lot more confused than she usually is, but that might have been because of pain and pain killers. She had slid off her chair a few days before, but hadn't seemed to come to any harm. However, no-one could think of any other cause for sudden severe pain

Wendy came up on Friday while I went to work. Stella was in great pain and was definitely Not a Happy Little Vegemite. They consulted with her GP and took her off to hospital for scans and tests, in case of a fracture or small crack. Stella has said that she doesn't want to go to hospital under any circumstances but the general consensus was that we needed to know what was going on, even if no invasive action was taken. Wendy went with her in the ambulance and I arranged to come home from work after the lunch breaks.

I don't know what was going on on the freeway, but there was a great deal of traffic when I got to Rockbank and the satnav took me off and along a really lovely route of back roads. Some of them were new to me, some I had occasionally been along and the twisty, winding, steep road in Rowsley is one I drive sometimes for fun (although it requires considerable concentration - it is not unlike the roads into Rowsley in Derbyshire). I didn't ever get back onto the freeway

It turns out that Stella hasn't fractured anything but she does have an enormous haematoma hidden in her buttock that she had been sitting on. No wonder she was in pain!

She eventually made it back to her place just after 9 in the evening. Wendy did not go home. She came to my place for an impromptu overnight stay. She would have been very late home if she had attempted to get back by train.

We went to the Smythes Creek Farmgate Shop (formerly known as the Ballarat Mushroom Farm) on Saturday morning, followed by the Zoo Drive market. We had tried to go there first but there was absolutely no parking anywhere. There was parking on our second attempt but the market was still very busy. (This is not a complaint. Busy markets are a Good Thing). Wendy took the lunchtime train home.

Stella was in her bed when I got there in the afternoon. She was still in her bed, sleeping, when I got there yesterday afternoon. She was once again Not a Happy Little Vegemite, largely because the staff had changed her bed linen and she was not best pleased about being rolled around while they did it.  Chucked a proper little tantie, apparently 😂. Lindsey, now back from three weeks in Canada, changed her nightdress. Stella did not yell at Lindsey, though she did clearly let us know that it hurt. She admired the toy raccoon that Lindsey had brought back for her, drank a cup of tea, ate a maple syrup cream biscuit and was looking much more alert when we left.

I'll go and see what's happening with her this afternoon.

It's a beautiful morning. I might even get my seedlings planted. They've only been waiting for six days!

Morning light:

A Birthday, a Framing and a Roast Vegetable Stew

It would have been Jim's birthday on Tuesday. In my mind, it was his birthday, as in it was the date of his birth, which will always be the case. He just doesn't get any older. But for anyone who wonders, he would have been 82 ( my fingers made that 832, which would have been a Very Great Age Indeed 😆 )

In honour of the occasion, I went to the Formosa garden centre and bought some curly kale, sprouting broccoli and mini cabbage seedlings and another packet of broad bean seeds so I can have successional sowings of both broad beans and peas through the rest of the autumn and into early winter (depending on the weather). Jim would have approved of those as a birthday present, although I would probably have also bought him some local microbrewery beer, had he been here to drink it. I don't know anyone else who regularly drinks microbrewery beer so there didn't seem to be any point in buying any, given that Jim isn't here to drink it.

Then I went out food shopping, assembling the ingredients for my take on a typical British pub Steak and Chips meal. Steak, obviously. I already had potatoes. I went to Wilson's and picked up a Mystery Box, plus a few bits and pieces. The mystery box produced mushrooms, an onion, some tomatoes for my "pub" meal. I also acquired some frozen peas, which the pubs would definitely have added. 

I plated the meal on my Totoro plate that Lindsey got for me at Noritake when we were there last March and which she gave me for my birthday (or Christmas - sometime in December) and which I have used for special occasions until now. Following its birthday outing, it has joined the usual dinner time plates:

It was very close to a British pub plate of steak and chips, except the steak was quite a lot smaller. And there appears to be one ingredient missing. (It's not the gravy. There was gravy, I just hadn't poured it when I took the photo.)

 I opened a small bottle of wine to have with the birthday dinner. A bit more celebratory than the château de boîte that I usually drink.

I had hoped to be able to show you the seedlings all planted and the grass all cleared away - alas, the weather has not been kind for planting seedlings. I think it should be better at the weekend. Not warmer, necessarily, but perhaps not as coldwetandwindy.

This lady has been everywhere with me since 1991. She came to the library where I was working in 1990, as one of a monthly series of posters to celebrate the International Year of Reading or perhaps Literacy. At the end of the year, when the posters were all thrown away, I rescued her and took her home. She has been in every home I have had ever since (although I don't remember how she moved from here to England in 1996 - but she did). She was laminated as part of the library display but at my places has always been put up with blutack or "rent safe" sticky tabs, or drawing pins.  Yesterday, I finally bought her the frame I have always promised her. And I have hung her in the loo, where visitors will see her. She was in the dining room in Tupton, but in Mount Helen she has been in rooms that only I ever go into.

She seems happy:

This is what I did with the many red capsicums, and the oyster mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, and kale that came in the mystery box. The lemons came from Gillie's garden. It looks very tasty!

What happened at the weekend?

Nothing much, is the short answer!

It was a fairly quiet weekend. I didn't do very much or go anywhere much. No exciting things happened.

I did clear up the empty vegetable beds out the front, and planted a small number of snow peas, a bigger number of garden peas and some mixed vegetable seeds (I don't remember now what was in the little tub of seedy odds and ends - they may have been better kept until spring, but too late now.)  There's another bed ready for a second sowing of garden peas. Oh, and I've planted one lot of broad beans out the back. I am hoping to have at least two more beds of broad beans, possibly three.

I think I figured out how Whiskey was getting out of the front yard into the driveway and I've blocked the gap off. So far, it seems to be working.

As you can see, I need to cut the edges, tidy up the dead grass and prune back the flowers and shrubs along the fence. I also want to put down some more red mulch. But it's been raining since my sudden burst of garden activity and I have been driven inside.

I had separate burst of indoor activity and deep cleaned the laundry and toilet. There were unnecessary numbers of spiders' webs and spidery detritus, especially in the laundry cupboard. The bathroom is next on the cleaning hit list but I seem to be very reluctant to do it! Instead, I stuck stickers on the tiles around the laundry sink.

I went to the IGA and got milk, pasta spirals, frozen veg and a rotisserie chicken and then made Hugo's pasta meals for this week. He did have to share the chicken with me, but I didn't tell him that and he didn't seem to mind. I have also made a mince and vegetable stew for me and some chicken stock.

Hugo, his teddy and the River Wye from 
the English side

I have been to visit Stella:

Wearing her new linen trousers that Lindsey
gave her for her birthday
and a new jumper that she bought when
we went shopping

The weather has turned autumnal. Drizzly rain, clouds, mist and on the cool side. The local deciduous trees are changing colour. The clocks have gone back to standard time. Winter is coming!

In hibernation mode!

Easter Weekend

Dawn, Easter morning 
from my front door

It was a busy, foodie and sociable Easter.

On Friday, Stella and I had been invited to my friend Pat's place for lunch. Also there were Pat's Sister in Law Margaret and Neighbour Lynn. We had a very delicious lunch; the main course was fish mornay in vol au vents, as befitted the day. I hadn't met Neighbour Lynn before and haven't seen Margaret in a very long time. It was a good day.

On Saturday, Wendy came up from Melbourne. We went out to the Mushroom Farm (now the Smythes Creek Farmgate Shop) and to Dan Murphy's where I bought quite a lot of non alcoholic supplies and no alcohol! We went to Big W and to the IGA. We visited Stella. We had salmon and chips for dinner.

On Sunday, Stella, Wendy and I hosted Easter lunch. Freyja and Simon came. So did a few other relatives. We had (not enough!) roast potatoes and potato gems. We had salad made with tomatoes, cucumber and capsicum from the garden. We had lots of vegan friendly food, omnivore friendly food, merriment and non alcoholic beverages. But not enough roast potatoes!

On Monday the balmy, warm, pleasant Easter weekend weather broke and later in the day the heavens opened. Wendy and I went to Melbourne late in the afternoon and I got to the flat just as the rain caught up with us. It had been chasing us down the freeway but we were just ahead of it until I dropped Wendy off at her car, when the first wave reached us. By the time I got to the flat it was positively torrential. The temperature has noticeably dropped. It may almost be time to get out the long sleeved shirts. And to find the umbrella which is usually in the car and which seems to have disappeared.

Stella, Good Friday

Pat, Good Friday

Simon and Stella, Easter Sunday

Freyja and Cheeky Chops Stella,
Easter Sunday

Do you remember the possum, who so upset Brandy a few nights ago?

I was pottering around outside on Friday in the early evening, when I heard a clicketty, clicketty, clip, clop, click. I looked around and there was what I assume was the same possum walking along the side fence, towards the little apple trees. I really didn't want it to come down into the back garden. Once it got in there it almost certainly wouldn't be able to get out again and that really wouldn't go well. I persuaded it that it would be in its best interest to head back into the little woodland.

On Saturday, at about the same time, it was back on the fence, pottering along, contemplating running down the apple trees into the backyard. Once again, I persuaded it that this was a very bad plan. Wendy tells me that after I had gone to bed, she saw it having a happy bath in my bird bath out the front. 

I don't think it can be particularly well. It certainly has a damaged foot, although that doesn't seem to be impeding it much. But I wouldn't expect a country possum to let me get quite this close to it. It didn't seem to be perturbed by me at all - although I wasn't rushing towards it chasing an angry cat.

I hope it hasn't decided to move in. Possums are protected so I can't force it to move on but I don't really need a resident possum. I'm sure it would be much happier somewhere else!

I was at work yesterday (which is why I was in East Melbourne on Monday night - I didn't fancy leaving home yesterday morning at 5:30 when I could leave the flat at 7). I am not at work today. It is a bit disconcerting being at home on a Wednesday morning!

Hugo, Brandy and Whiskey, enjoying the Easter break:

Wendy took this photo of Hugo