scenes from the weekend

friday night has me trying a new recipe from rick steins india – a lovely beef vindaloo with a cheap cut of meat that is perfect for slow cooking.

saturday morning i lie in bed, cat asleep on my lap, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and a tui call outside.

its an inside kinda day, welcome after a whole morning yesterday of uprooting, and transferring, plants and digging the garden over. my body is the good kind of tired – aching from the thrust and heave of wielding a shovel and carrying bags of firewood.

i drink coffee, look at etsy for recycled timber shelving ideas and wonder aloud if my parents will come. its raining, they are still active but becoming frail, and our caravan-to-house route has no shelter. i look out the kitchen window to see rivulets of water forming small puddles everywhere and know we need to come up with a plan.

thoughts turn to a possible solution and we run with it, which turns our inside day into a morning outside in the torrential rain, laying honeycomb matting and filling it with stones. i get down on my hands and knees to smooth it all out whilst Nic shovels loads from the trailer into the wheelbarrow and delivers it to me. we are soaked through, my gumboots are full of water and my clothes are sticking to me… but we get it done, it looks great, and i feel more at ease knowing my parents will have a safer passage now.

in between trailer loads of stones, i move a couple of other plants around the garden to even out the symmetry as i know it would end up driving me crazy if i left them the way they were.

we strip off our wet clothes, dry off and head to palm beach for a well-deserved burger before spending the afternoon inside warming up.

sunday morning, there is golden light streaming into the house and yesterday’s torrent is all but forgotten. he vacuums, then I mop the house, washing the muddy cat and human prints off the floor. we tidy up the caravan and wash yesterday’s mud from our clothes.

there’s time to do some grocery shopping, then make banh mi hot dogs (oh yes, so good) for lunch before collecting my parents from the ferry.

a lazy afternoon and evening are just what we need after a busy weekend. my father talks Nic’s ear off and my mother gives me some crochet lessons. my parents, my teachers – i have so much to learn and they have so much wisdom.

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I’m so happy to welcome Michelle GD back to weekends collected this week with a great recipe/poem.

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Have a great week everyone!