the shape changes from week to end

We did it. The end of the week is here. At lunchtime I collected Favourite Handyman from work and we did some family things which needed doing during regular working hours. Fionn had the rare treat of being collected by his Daddy and slowly we all wound down into homeness.

Dinner: polish sausages from Blackball, baked in the oven. Nice. I tried a new vegetable combo and sauteed sliced carrots and ginger in lots of butter until they were soft enough to pulverise with my whizzy stick. After a bit of cooking, I decided to add some silverbeet and anchovies. So omega 3 from the anchovies and the butter providing the fat and vitamin a for the fat soluble vitamins in the carrots and silverbeet. It whizzed up to a very nice soft mash. I had cooked pasta because I thought the girl would eat it (wrong) and the texture effect of the mash spread through the pasta was rather baby food like. again.

But the anchovies definitely lifted the taste out of babyfood land and I am going to make that again, only not put it with macaroni. I think if I was a restaurant chef I would call it mash and have it with fancy whole vegetables alongside chops. I know chops aren't restaurant fare, but fancy mash is and chops seem the right taste match rather than the more expensive and voluptuous steak.

We looked at a perfectly nice child care centre which comes recommended by friends whose opinions on such things I respect. But it is still an institution. I'm hoping that it will turn out that our Kimberley who has moved out of her parents' home will find that it works for her to come back with her daughter to look after Brighid on Monday and Friday mornings. When Fionn was four and five (and three and two now I think about it), we seriously considered home schooling and leant towards an unstructured, free learning process, 'unschooling' it seemed to be called. We have the good fortune currently to be involved with fantastically run institutions in the form of Fionn's school and Brighid's kindy, but the general reservation about involving more institutions in our family life remains.

Garden finds. When I was rearranging the things which line the wall opposite the potting/chook food shed, I found the missing bag of snowdrop bulbs. May is rather late to plant them, but they will prosper eventually, if not this spring. Late last winter, we found snowdrops from a plant which must have been dormant and unloved for many years and finally we had returned the soil and surrounding garden to the conditions for it to thrive again.

The front door step. I pass by the almost shoulder high weeds in front of the miniature roses (also the strong and persistent survivors of many years of rental home neglect) and ignore the gunnera until I have a day to slash and bag (it is beginning to flower which is a noxious no no). What I see is the green of the bulbs now ten centimetres outside our bedroom window. I see the many parsley seedlings, sprung from last year's huge parsley plant which went to seed after one year instead of two. They are the seedlings of promise. Several have been transferred to the back garden with room to grow huge and there are plenty more to gift to friends. As winter pulls in and even the kitchen windowsill basil fades, parsley provides vitamin c, flavour and green flecks to my hummous. Usually I have too much and give long sprays to friends but last year the weather conditions conspired the other way and we missed it at least every week.

The weekend. A space with the promise of soem gardening time. Perhaps the kohlrabi and purple sprouting broccoli, which also await me on the front porch step, will be in the garden by next nightfall.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

McCalls 7288 & altered Style Arc Barb pants

Livingstone daisies

Heartburn & Paris Etc