Life at our place

I was talking to a friend the other day and told her that I'd never been so busy in my life. It's true, I am busier now with family, friends, work, creative projects and a life that makes me feel such gratitude and peace that every day feels like a magnificent gift.  Most people think simple life is quiet and steady, and while it has those periods, it also has times like those we're going through now that are hectic and full of life. There are so many things happening here. You'd think that having two weeks off the blog I'd have a few posts lined up to share with you, but no, time has not allowed me to do that so instead, I want to update you on some of the things going on around our place with a few photos.

Sunny and Jamie are going to Korea today so they can be at Sunny's sister's wedding. Kerry is running the sushi shop while she's away. It's been wonderful having Jamie here every afternoon for the past couple of weeks. He comes in full of stories about what happened at kindy and while I make him a snack and a drink, it takes me back 30 years when I did the same thing for my boys. How time flies.

I've been tested with my cooking skills lately because Hanno has had a tooth out on one side, then next week he has one out on the other side.  Weeks of soft food have left me wondering if we'll ever return to the freedom of selecting whatever we want to eat and not what we have to eat. I've been fiddling around with lemons too, it feels good to see plenty of ripening lemons on the tree. Our new lemon tree is in fruit too this year. There is no such thing as having too many lemon here at our place. I'll show you what I did with them next week.

Pork meatballs with herb gravy, steamed cauliflower and potatoes.

I'm having a love affair with Medjool dates at the moment. Here they are baked in a bar cake with walnuts.

Homemade potato and sweet potato wedges ready to go into the oven. I forgot to take a photo when they came out.

Above and below is the front verandah now. It's been like that for a week. There was concrete cancer in several spots near the front door so we got a tradesman in to get rid of it and tile over the top. I would have liked to tile the entire verandah but we can't afford that so this little area will provide a safe entrance to our home and when everything is back in place, I hope it still looks like an inviting and relaxing place.

And the first of the raspberries crept up on us. Jamie brought in a small handful during the week. They're Heritage raspberries, the first time we've grown them here, and they look like being a good cropper. We haven't done any planting in our garden yet. We usually plant up in March, and we will do that, but we're slower now and planting has to wait until we have the time for it. I hope we have seedlings in the ground by the end of the month and even with our smaller garden we hope to produce enough herbs, lettuce, tomatoes and possibly potatoes to keep us happy for a while.

So there it is in a nutshell. I'll stop here and instead of talking about work, I'll do some of it. I'm sure you get the picture, it's probably the same at your place. It's just life expanding to fill the space provided for it. I hope you have a lovely day.