A social life once more

We were lucky with the weather on Wednesday last, when we had a delightful afternoon with Chris and Jon in their beautiful garden.  (Chris is one of our little art group).  The walled corner of their garden with grape vines trellised over it makes the perfect place for a relaxed barbecue lunch on a summer afternoon.

On Thursday, ex-colleague David came round with two little pots of agapanthus seedlings.  (He is an ex-colleague twice over: initially at BTI and later at the hobby.)  The seedlings are now potted up - all seven of them - so we have great hopes that they’ll add some height to the back of the garden in years to come.  If I remember to look after them.  Our hospitality was a bit sporadic: while David was here we had two deliveries: a bed for my former study and the weekly Sainsbury’s delivery.  We still managed to have a good chat.

Pleasant afternoon with Martyn’s sister and her dynasty on Saturday.  We barbecued home-made burgers and various bangers and veggie burgers.  We bought some samosas, and Martyn did a tomato tart using most of this year’s rather dismal crop.  Big bowl of rice salad, some baby spuds with mint and chives from the garden. Big bowl of fruit salad and a raspberry pavlova.  So, yes: we over-catered as usual: the leftovers will keep us going for a day or two.  The weather was not with us: it was a touch chilly, with the occasional spot of rain, but we managed to be outside for much of the time.

We’ve just about finished the leftovers: leftover meat (and veggie burgers) went into a cottage pie, we had sausage sandwiches with leftover burger buns yesterday, smoothies at breakfast today with not quite the last of the fruit salad, and bruschette for lunch using leftover baguette slices.  We’ll finish the cottage pie tonight, I expect.  We feel good about using up leftovers, but would probably feel better if we got the catering right in the first place!

I mentioned earlier that we’d got a bed for my old study.  Though we got it from the same shop as our front bedroom bed, this one came with castors rather than feet.  As we’ve kept the laminate flooring, the bed is very mobile, so I’ve had to send for some cups.  Since we can no longer look to Margaret for a quilt, it was back to good old IKEA for a bedspread.  Anyway, mobility aside, the bed is very satisfactory: it has already done a couple of nights’ snoring refuge duty.  Less good news in the other back bedroom: we spent an age yesterday trying to drill the lintel to accept a venetian blind, but in vain: neither of our drills achieved more than holes in the plaster - and lungs full of dust.  Not sure where we go from here.