13/52

Maggie: her pixie face. A baby of contrasts. Recently swinging between funny, laughing clown to growling rage-filled, frustrated baby in seconds. Her new teeth are proving useful for eating. Today she stood up from squatting without anything to hold onto. We all clapped her achievement, Elisabeth included, and her face broke into the proudest smile.
Elisabeth: nothing heralds the start of autumn to me as much as the sweet and distinctive perfume of ripe quinces. These are from a friend's tree, Rob is using them to make quince jelly, a favourite conserve at the hut. 

Her little hands here remind me of her father; this link between generations is particularly poignant to me this week as Rob's own father passed away last Sunday. We farewelled him on Thursday, with a celebration of his life with family and friends. I took this photo of him with Nigella in 2009 walking amongst the vineyard he planted 30 years earlier. Vale Graham.


Joining in with Jodi's 52 portrait project at her blog Practising Simplicity. Can you believe we are a quarter of the way through the year?

Friday...wardrobe

Sorry no flowers this week.
A quiet week for me.
A little baking; Rob's favourite carrot cake recipe (Vogue Living from 1978) with, of course, cream cheese frosting. Our friend came to stay last night, so we ate soy baked almonds and huge fresh oysters with chilli, lime zest and juice and salt whilst Rob prepared a seafood paella. (We're still getting through the 5 kilos of Spanish paella rice I bought last year!) Throw in a bottle of bubbly and a Spanish Albarino and we had a very nice evening thank you very much.
Yesterday the builder delivered a myrtle wardrobe we bought well over a year ago. He has been storing it in his shed, and we've never gotten around to picking it up. I'd forgotten how stunning it is. It is a beautiful piece of furniture, although not mid-century like the rest of our collection. It has a bit of a story behind it, and I love that. When we went to look at it, we realized the man was speaking in the past tense about his wife, "my wife loved Tasmanian timber furniture", sadly he told us that she had passed away a few months before from cancer. They had only just moved into a brand new house when she was diagnosed, so he was selling off the large pieces as he wanted to downsize to a smaller home. That was it for me, I wanted to look after this wardrobe and appreciate it just as much as his wife. It was a well travelled robe too, made by Lifestyle furniture in Salamanca, it was then shipped to the United States and back as they moved around because of his work.
There is only one little problem, and this is partly why we have been reluctant to pick it up. We envisage it in our spare room, and deliberately didn't have a built-in installed. But it is too big to move into the room! So we are going to attempt to take it apart and then rebuild it in the room. A little crazy maybe. Stay tuned, I hope it works out ok!
Happy weekend, I'll try to get back into a blogging groove again.