Easter

 

Sunrises from our place

Glorious days at Hill House

Magnificent sunsets from the Hill

The weather was glorious over the Easter weekend. Temperatures in the high 20s during the day, sunshine, blue skies, light breezes.  You couldn't have asked for better summer weather, even if it is mid-autumn! I even got the t-shirts out of the summer wardrobe 🌞

I greeted Good Friday with Duruflé's Requiem which I streamed onto our TV.  It was a proper requiem mass, recorded last year at Trinity College in Cambridge. No congregation and the choir and soloists were physically distanced.  It was very beautiful to listen to and to watch. Thank you to Friend Robert for the suggestion of the Trinity College performance. YouTube then ambled on to Allegri's Miserere and then Fauré's Requiem. Jim was still in bed and the cats were dozing in their beds. It was still and quiet, with sunlight streaming in through the lounge room windows. An excellent start to the Easter weekend.

In Australia, most things are closed on Good Friday, so no supermarkets, no DIY stores, no grog shops. But some smaller enterprises were open and one of those was the mushroom farm. Lindsey and I went out for a few bits and pieces (mainly, I wanted vegetables) and then we went out to the Avalon garden centre. A nice country drive, a potter around the plants and trees, and a toasted sandwich in the cafe.

On Saturday I accompanied Lindsey and Ian out to Gordon where a new farm shop has recently opened. It's only open for a couple of hours on Saturdays and is staffed by volunteers.  It's also, more or less, an order online and collect shop. Lindsey had ordered a family sized vegetable box. It is a beautiful drive across country to Gordon (which we usually pass by on the freeway). The vegetable box was a good size and had a good variety of vegetables. We shared the contents between us. They also had bread, hot cross buns, local meat and various other things that you could pre-order.  Not much that you could actually buy on the day, though (which frustrated me a little!)

The Easter feast was in Warragul this year. I had decided that I didn't really want to drive all the way to Warragul, have lunch and then come back. Lindsey and Ian were going on Saturday afternoon and staying  over, so there wouldn't be room for Jim and me to stay. So Lindsey and Ian headed to Warragul and Jim and I headed up to Hill House and spent the night with Rupert and Hugo. Alas - I did not sleep well.  And the clocks went back at 2:00 on Sunday morning.  I saw 2:00 happen twice!  Jim, Rupert and Hugo slept extremely well, although Rupert and Hugo didn't notice the clock change, or care all that much.

"Where's our breakfast?"  "You are an hour early. The clocks went back overnight." "You seem to be speaking in an incomprehensible, alien language. Where's our breakfast?"  I gave them their breakfast.

Rupert

Hugo

Back at Christmas, Jim's daughter and her family had given us a gift voucher for a place called The Hop Temple. I had never heard of this place so investigated and parked the voucher for a lunch out at some point. I recently ran across the email again and booked us in for Easter Sunday lunch.

It's down a little laneway that I had never noticed before and is an American Smokehouse/BBQ diner. On Sunday they had a smoker BBQ in their courtyard and a little Blues band inside in a corner. They have a huge range of beers, a good selection of wine and an interesting range of cocktails and mocktails. I had a Philly steak sandwich, which was probably a heart attack on a plate (although so far I have not succumbed). Lots of finely sliced Scotch fillet with two types of American cheese, fried onions and capsicum in a long bread roll and with twirly chips on the side.  It was absolutely delicious. Jim enjoyed his fried chicken sandwich and his twirly chips - but I think he enjoyed his beer and wine even more. I was driving so had an autumn berry mocktail.

Apart from that I have done a little gardening, a little clearing and tidying. I have used as many of my mystery box of vegetables as possible, including an enormous lasagne, a tray bake, little pies. I have a huge number of tomatoes, some from the mystery box, some from my garden and a bag of free Black Russians from Avalon. I am in the middle of processing most of them for the freezer for winter deliciousness. The lady over the back fence gave me some surplus zucchini - very welcome because I had pulled up my zucchini plants on Friday ready for autumn planting. And the weather has become more sensibly autumnal again.  Cloudy, misty but no rain in the forecast for the next few days.