Midweek musing

I had a lovely long weekend, as I took Monday off, and got really lucky with the weather, Monday was absolutely perfect, blue sky, warm, a slight breeze. Rob and I went for a morning stroll around the block before he had to head into work. He’s trained the dogs to react to the word “perimeter”, as soon as he says it they get all excited and start heading for the fence behind the hut to start their walk. They actually don’t like to go on a walk without us. The pack instinct is pretty strong in German Shepherds, they like us all to be together when we’re doing things.

Then I spent the day catching up on washing (perfect weather for it) and cleaning up the hut. I guess that doesn’t sound very exciting, but I quite liked the space and quiet, and was happy enough getting our hut back into order, and I had the dogs for company. It was warm enough that I could open up all the windows, the big bifold doors in the main room, and the French doors in the breezeway, and the hut stayed just the right temperature. I even walked around barefoot on the polished concrete and it was just fine.

Rob did come home early to help prepare dinner for my family. With my niece being baptized on Sunday, my grandmother and aunt were over visiting for a few days from Melbourne. They were keen to see the hut, cause the last time they’d visited was for our wedding, and it was nowhere near complete then. We served soy-toasted almonds, baked olives and gougères (I was hooked on choux pastry after the profiterole tower). Rob cooked a rolled loin of pork stuffed with sage, onions, garlic and prunes in the Weber, and he served it with roast potatoes and red cabbage and apple. I had made my go-to dessert: a steamed marmalade pudding. It was nice to have them visit (with my parents and brother too), to just sit around the table and chat.

After tidying up the breezeway I took a few shots of it. Which is quite hard cause it’s got a cathedral ceiling and is only 3m wide, I tried to lie down to take a shot, but Claudia thought that meant she could come and chew on my ears! We’re pretty happy with this space, our front entrance, we can come in and dump coats, bags and shoes. The dogs love it too; cause the concrete is cool to lie on. It doesn’t normally look this tidy, usually there are baskets of shoes and dog drying towels, and a dog mat, but it’s nice to get it back to it’s original state once a week!

I can’t help but share these two pictures of Nigella and Claudia, you can’t deny they have character!