Wendy will turn 65 on Christmas Day. Normally I would see her on her birthday but this year the Christmas plans are a bit higgledy piggledy. So we arranged for her to come up for the weekend and we would do birthday and Christmas celebrations a little bit early.
She came up on the train on Saturday morning. I met her at the station and we went to the Zoo Drive market. It was a beautiful morning and the market was busy. So too were the restaurants, barbecue facilities, children's playgrounds and other facilities around the lake.
We parked in a side street off the main road behind the market.
It was a good market. Lots of stalls, lots of fun things to look at. It wasn't the official Christmas market, which will be held on Friday evening, but it was Christmassy enough.
Then we went out to the former Mushroom farm. It was quieter than I expected it to be, although we were later than I usually am. Wendy got her giant donuts. I got some vegetables. I have cancelled my veg box deliveries. It proved to be almost impossible to change my box options from a small box once a week to a medium once a fortnight. I thought I had done but then I got: one small on Tuesday, one medium on Saturday and another medium on the following Tuesday. It was like being buried under an Everest of vegetables. With the best will in the world, I couldn't eat or process them all before they went off. I don't buy many of my vegetables in the supermarkets so I am not investing in their requirement that vegetables are perfect.
Anyway. We had an early lunch in the Pompeii Woodfired Cafe and went home for the afternoon.
I had bought a turkey crown for our Not Christmas dinner. I hadn't realised when I bought it that it was pre-roasted. I knew it had a long fridge life - best before January 4th, but it was vacuum packed and I hadn't noticed that it was already cooked until I was looking more closely at the label on Friday evening. After a bit of thought, I cut some slices from it and heated them gently in a chicken stock gravy with mushrooms and a garlic flavoured cream cheese stirred through. It was delicious. We had it with roast potatoes and lots of vegetables.
Quite coincidentally, yesterday was the Sunday that the Talbot Market was on. Wendy had never been to Talbot and I thought it was probably the kind of market that she would very much enjoy. So we drove up yesterday morning and Wendy had a great time. I got some seedlings for the garden beds and a few other bits and pieces. Then we went to Clunes, to Cafe 52 for brunch. I don't think Wendy had been to Clunes before. She seemed to enjoy it. (It is very cute.)
Talbot market:
Clunes:
 |
| Cafe 52 |
 |
| Me and Wendy |
 |
| My bacon, egg and mushrooms on toast |
 |
| Wendy's smashed avo with poached egg |
 |
| Clunes Main Street |
And now you find me at Hugo's House. I came up late yesterday afternoon. Lindsey and Ian are in Sydney and Ross is in Melbourne. I kept waking up in the night, wondering why Hugo was whining. It was some time before I remembered that if I was in my room at one end of the house and he was in the lounge room at the far, other end, it was highly unlikely that I would hear him whining. It turned out that it was the fly screen door squeaking!
 |
| Enjoying a balmy evening, splashing in his paddling pool |
 |
| I woke up this morning and couldn't find him. He had moved onto Lindsey's bed overnight |
 |
| Early this morning, before the very hot, very windy conditions expected later today |
No comments:
Post a Comment