Remembrance

The day Jen died a colleague gave me this rose, I put it on our deck and it has just started to flower, I went outside this morning first thing, and the smell from it is divine, another lovely way to remember her.

Yesterday was Luca’s 14th birthday, Jen would have so loved to have been with us to celebrate. We held a small party on the deck with his cousins and Ted, his best mate…

After some relaxing we headed off to the pool hall. Luca recently went there with the school and loved it, so it was high on his list for doing again. Was a really fun time, has been a long time since Rich and I have played, a little rusty, but we held our own 🙂

The boys have just emerged from the tree house this morning after I am sure not much sleep up there 🙂

The kids have 4 days left of school and then it is the summer holidays, wow they came around so quickly!!!! Luca’s exams went well, he is glad they are over though. This coming week his Latin class is holding a celebration meal, he and Rich are cooking Roman Lamb for it, they have already done it once, (only because Luca got day wrong), it did however give us the chance to taste it and it was absolutely delicious. There is a lot of preparation and marinating involved over a couple of days but the result is sure worth it! It is made with dates, I am not a huge fan usually, but done this way I have changed my mind!

Speaking of food, the garden has produced its first harvest of broad beans ,(fava beans), I am so impressed with how easy they are to grow and how tasty! Young and fresh are truly the best way to eat them. I had put them in over winter and they flowered spectacularly in the spring so they also add some colour to the garden when it is getting going for the year…

Also have had the first harvest of celery, which again I put in over winter, I am trying to stagger plant more this year. The spinach in this photo grows all year. We eat a lot of spinach so this is a good thing!

The builder was here again on Friday making plans. It feels like we have a decent one now. Rich busy building the wash house and Luca can help him now that he is off school. We think we will use it as a bedroom while the building is going on, it will de-clutter the current living space so they have more room to work. We need to make a trip up to Christchurch to the reclamation yards, I am keen to continue the recycling into the extension. After the Christchurch earthquakes a lot of the old villas had to be demolished and stores were set up to recycle all they could from them. Our pantry comes from one up there actually.

Pica and I did manage a walk yesterday before we headed off to the Pool Hall. Nice view of our little piece of paradise. A couple of week ago we had a surprise visit from my cousins, had not seen them for over 20 years, they flew over from Aussie, was so great to catch up, a lot to talk about! Hopefully it will not be so long next time, or maybe we will make it over that way at some point…. 🙂