Another quiet Sunday

I am alone at the moment. It's 5.35am, Sunday. Hanno has gone to the farmers' market to buy a few seedlings and fruit, it's quiet. Outside, rain is falling. I have a cup of tea, there is washing in the machine and soon I'll watch Martin Clunes Horsepower that I recorded last night. It's such a fine program, I'm not sure how long it goes, but this is the second episode I've watched. I love horses and will watch any intelligent program about them. This examines the relationship between people and horses and how horses have shaped and supported our world.

8.00am I hung out two of the Centre's table cloths that I had soaking, then washed. The bad thing about white table cloths is that they show every stain. The good thing about white table cloths is that soaking in oxybleach removes every stain, even tea and coffee. I often buy plain white linens simply because they're so easy to care for. I have the bed linen in the washer now and Hanno's black alpaca jumper to wash by hand. I'll be back soon.

I must remember my hand cream.

8.32am I just took the photos of Hanno in the garden planting up the new seedlings. The air is heavy with the scent orange blossoms and once again, the orange tree has far too many flowers and is shedding them. It isn't big enough yet for too many oranges but I like its optimism, and its common sense. It will grow to be a fine tree. There is a white cloak of blossoms around the base of the tree, I'll pull more off in the coming weeks.

8.35am Quentin packs her bags and moves out. Our Light Sussex chook Quentin has been pecking our little Faverolles, Heather. Heather is pictured in the right side bar. She is the little whitish girl with feather pants. Quentin is twice Heather's size and is causing her a lot of distress. We asked Jens and Cathy if they wanted to add Quentin to their flock. They agreed, so Quentin will live with them now. Bye bye Quentin.

9.30am Cleaned the kitchen, washed up and swept the floor.

10am Morning tea, date scone and knitting.

10.10am Shane rang to say Happy Father's Day to Hanno but he's still out. I tell him to call back later and that I'll call Sarndra to have a chat this afternoon, he is off to work now.

10.15am Continue knitting. I'm knitting black mittens for a friend's birthday.

12.30pm Banana for lunch.

1.15pm Phoned Sarndra for a chat. I love my DIL dearly. She's smart and funny, creative and a hard worker. Most of all, she makes Shane very happy and that alone is worth its weight. ♥

2.05 pm I have just sorted through some notes for the new soap making workshop I'm putting together for the Centre. I need to do a touch more research and add some soap calculators and recipes. I wrap some of my soap for Hanno's sister and niece in Hamburg.

2.30pm Made the bed with clean sheets. Started to think about dinner. We're having soup again, the pea and ham soup I made last night. Hanno said it was too salty so I'm adding more water. If that doesn't fix it I'll add a couple of potatoes to soak up the salt. Dessert will be fresh strawberries.

It's still raining and overcast.

3pm Phone calls from Shane and to a friend and then I sit with my knitting listening to the rain fall. It is such a soothing sound, I know its doing the garden good and my thoughts start to focus on work this week. I'm starting to think very seriously about my Living Skills workshops. It's a series of classes I want to give on cooking, baking, soap making, gardening and making green cleaners, in addition to The Frugal Home workshop I've been running for over a year. I think it would be a very worthwhile exercise to get our community cooking from scratch, baking bread and growing their own food. I feel really good about being in a position to offer these workshops, to have a venue in which to do it and the support of a committee who think it's a great idea. Our clients are mainly low income people and I'd rather share some life skills with them than apply patch ups later on. I hope the classes turn out close to the vision I have in my head. If so, they'll be a real community builder.


Late in the afternoon, I heat the soup up and clean and cut the strawberries ready for eating. Dinner over, Hanno puts the chooks to bed, feeds Alice and Hettie and we both start winding down. Another quiet Sunday to prepare us for the coming week.

The last thing I hear as I drift into sleep is rain falling on the roof.

I hope you have a productive week and that the next seven days are kind to us all.