A Mish Mash

It was a glorious day on Saturday. Not hot but sunny and still. Sunday was a complete about face. Cold, wet, gloomy, dank. And the damp, gloomy weather stayed for a couple of days until today which has dawned bright and sunny. Still cold, though.

I am not working today. This week I am working Tuesday and Thursday. It has been surprisingly discombobulating! I am even more confused about what day it is than usual.

I found the electric couch blanket the other day, when I was sorting out some things in the "study". I was sorting through it because I want to convert it into a third bedroom. I don't use it as a study now that I am here on my own, more as a junk room. I suspect that even if I turn it into a third bedroom it will still be used as a junk room but at least I will have an extra bed should I need one. Plus, I have bought the bed. It just needs assembling and the desk needs to be moved out of the room. I might put it on the local Buy Nothing page.

Anyway, while I was sifting through things, I found the blanket. I had chucked it in a corner at the end of last winter. I really should have washed it during the summer when it would have dried properly in the sunshine. (It can go in the washing machine - the electric cord thing comes off.) However, I didn't. It was absolutely COVERED in cat fur, so I spent a merry half hour brushing it all off. It's now back on the TV watching couch, and covered in cats

Some years ago I bought some sparkly Christmas candles in Japan. I didn't put them out last Christmas but I have put them out now as sparkly Winter candles on the sideboard, along with Stella and Tony's Alpine church Christmas decoration.  Very suitable winter decor, I think:

In its youth, the church's bell tinkled
when the candle was lit.
Not any more, but it still looks cosy

I have been tidying up the plants in Stella's room. Lindsey and I are thinking of taking away her little fridge. She doesn't use it any more and we could use the space to put all her plants together, and make a little garden space. 

I contacted the gas company late last week to see about getting the gas supply disconnected. Last time I did this, you may remember, the bloke I spoke to said I would have to have the meter removed and it would cost upward of $1000. This time, the woman I spoke to said I could just have the supply turned off and the gas people would plug it. This would mean that if anyone wanted to reconnect the supply later, they could do. Someone was supposed to come to do a final meter reading yesterday and then the plug will happen sometime in the near future. I wonder if they did. And how much the final bill will be. Not $1000, apparently.

Gratuitous Cat Photos:

Lindsey's Birthday Weekend

It was Lindsey's birthday on Saturday, so we made a weekend of it.

She and I, as usual, went to the fortnightly market at the lake. On this occasion, Ian came too. The market was very busy! We went out to the Smythes Creek Farmgate Shop (Formerly known as the Ballarat Mushroom Farm). It was very busy there too. It's good that the farmgate shop is busy. At one point they were thinking of closing. But it is VERY busy on Saturdays at the moment. I might think about going on Thursdays, instead. 

Our second fortnightly vegetable box came on Saturday afternoon. I don't think it will ever have really interesting, exotic veg in it; it's vegetables that the supermarkets have rejected for various reasons and supermarkets don't tend to be adventurous in their vegetable supplies. But it does have things that we might not have thought to buy unless we needed them for something specific. Such as pak choi. Celery. And sweet potatoes. I don't often buy sweet potatoes, unless they are called for in a recipe and ordinary potatoes won't do.

I visited Stella in the afternoon and reminded her that we were going to Lindsey, Ian and Hugo's house for lunch on Sunday. We had hoped to go out for lunch, but had failed to note that it was Mothers' Day. By the time we thought about it we couldn't get a table in any of the pubs we usually go to, so arranged to meet Up On The Hill.

I was invited to join Lindsey and Ian at a local Japanese restaurant on Saturday evening. I don't really like going out at night anymore, but an invitation to a birthday dinner in a proper Japanese restaurant (run by actual Japanese people cooking actual Japanese food) is not to be turned down for no good reason. And it was delicious. Edamame, a little plate of salad, a plate of sashimi with a superb spinach and creamy side and a savoury custard, a plate of tempura, then a serving of tooth fish with rice and miso soup, followed by black sesame, and matcha  ice cream. I don't recall ever having had tooth fish before. It was absolutely lovely.

While we were there we had noticed people posting aurora photos on the Buninyong and the Ballarat Facebook pages. When Lindsey and Ian got home they walked to the top of their hill to see if they could see it. And they could. Purple, pink and faintly green. Ian's camera got fabulous shots, showing the irridations and swirls that the naked eye couldn't pick up around here. It is highly unusual for the auroras to come to Ballarat, so no-one was complaining about the light levels. Everyone was just very excited  

I did not walk up their hill. They dropped me off at home and I went to bed shortly thereafter. I did, however, note the beautiful display of stars overhead as I walked up my driveway and paused to admire them - to the consternation of Brandy and Whiskey, watching me through the window and wondering what on earth I was doing!

Ian's photo, on a 10 second delay.
Admire the colours - but zoom in and just look 
at the stars to the left of the photo

Lindsey's photo, with no delay

And so to Sunday. 

I went to collect Stella - and found her in the dining room, about to tuck in to what I have to say was a lovely looking plate of roast pork, roast potatoes and various vegetables. The veg looked to be beautifully cooked. She looked at me and said: "I'm supposed to be going out, aren't I?" I said she could, of course, stay there and have her Sunday roast - but Lindsey and Ian had oysters and prawns at their place. She pushed herself back from the table very quickly, said goodbye to her dining companions and intimated that she was ready to go.

We had seafood, sausages and other proteins from the market, salads and veg from the veg box, a Mothers' Day charcuterie platter from the supermarket, donuts from the market and various bits and pieces from all over the place. Freyja and Simon joined us. Hugo had a great time - he loves having visitors, plus he gets lots of tasty titbits when people are there for Sunday lunch. He is getting more Rupert-like; at one point he pushed his head under my arm to encourage me to feed him tasty morsels. He never did that when Rupert was there (but Rupert did 😉)

Celebratory Sunday lunch (Freyja's photos):

You'll never be able to lose us in a crowded place!

Stella's Busy Weekend

So many visitors!

Wendy came up on Friday afternoon and stayed (with me, not Stella!) until Sunday lunchtime. She and Lindsey visited Stella on Saturday after lunch. Freyja and Simon came up mid-afternoon. They and I went to visit her. Wendy went to visit Stella again on Sunday morning, then my brother Simon, two of his (adult) children and a 4 month old whippet puppy went to visit her after lunch.

Stella had been quite surprised when we told her that we had assumed she would be dead by Monday teatime and that we were surprised that she was still kicking along on Tuesday. All the visitors last week and over the weekend mean that she believes us and is also surprised - but she is happy to report that she remains Not Dead Yet although she is VERY tired.

Must be all the excitement of so many visitors, and a 4 month old puppy.

In the meantime, back at my place, a drama unfolded in the lounge and dining rooms:

Whiskey, the Killer of Librarians

Librarian cowering away from the Giant Killer Kat

We have had some beautiful afternoons recently. Golden autumn sunlight continues to bathe us in the afternoons and evenings, usually after misty, cloudy or even foggy mornings. I have planted some daffodil, freesias and tulips in the garden bed along the side fence, under the Bramley apple, Tahitian lime and miniature peach trees. I put some tulips in rather late last year, which didn't flower. They are starting to come back up. I am hopeful of flowers this year

Looking from my TV-watching couch
towards the kitchen, around 5pm.

Neither of the cats ever sits on my knee if I am on the couches. Brandy will sleep on me if I'm in bed, but not otherwise. They both like to snuggle up close to me, but No Sitting. So I was surprised the other evening when Brandy did come and sit on me. He didn't lie down and curl up,  and it wasn't for long, but even so:

Not Dead - Yet

I did go to visit Stella on Monday, at my usual time of around 2pm.

She was up and dressed and in her chair, but sound asleep, almost unconscious. She would wake up if you spoke her name but wasn't properly responsive. Her breathing was very slow.  I was convinced that she wasn't going to make it to teatime, let alone to Tuesday.

So I alerted everyone.

Carers and nurses came. Stella was popped into her pyjamas, her obs were taken. She was put into bed.

She didn't really know who I was. When I asked her what my name was she said that I was Charlie. She did ask if my jumper was new (no, it was one of Tony's) and how the children were. Otherwise, we didn't have much conversation.

Lindsey came up after work and stayed overnight with Stella.

Wendy came up on Tuesday and spent most of the day with her. I went in at lunchtime, when her GP called in to see what was what. Stella was much more alert - and surprised that she had called me Charlie. Who, she enquired, is Charlie? I don't know. Not me. No, she agreed. Your name is Frances. Wendy asked what her name was and Stella grinned and said: Charlie -  and laughed.

Sense of humour intact!

Matthew and family came up yesterday. Stella was almost back to normal. Still in bed, but noticeably better than she had been. Very happy to have visitors.

Boys crying wolf might have been mentioned to me!

Not dead yet!

Meanwhile, back at my place, I have bought a new mat for the laundry, under the sink:

Someone seems to have commandeered it!

Laundry Kat

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!