Sunday 19th March 2017

Welcome to the weekend. Again.

For various reasons, we both have been washed out thanks to the previous week, so the choice not to do too much was not a hard one to take. And in truth the weather was not going to be too good anyway, so let us just stay around the house, do the garden and me do some cooking.

Of course, there is some football to watch, so I sit with a coffee on the sofa and begin to watch. Outside the birds are busy eating the seed i had put on. When people walk by, or they hear a strange noise, they fly away. At one point, when there is a large number of starlings in the garden, they all take off as one, and a split second later, I see a brown shadow fly by, just under the level of the top of the window. I get up to investigate, and on the fence the other side of the road sits a Sparrowhawk, just resting and looking about.

I am stunned for a while, then Jools having come down when I called out to her, asks why I don't take a shot. So I grab the camera which has the macro lens fitted, just to get something. Then, as Jools watches the hawk, I fir the large lens, telling myself all the while he will be gone when I have the lens ready.

But, walking to the window, it is still there, I fire off some shots before, with a flourish, it flies off into the garden, but I get one last shot with it's tail feather spread out, but no head in the shot as it was partially hidden by fir trees.

Wow, excitement.

But back to the football and the coffee. I do check the fence from time to time, and certainly there are few birds about feeding in the garden for a couple of hours.

I had gone back to Tesco later on Saturday to pick up some olive trees, as you do, and also got croissants, so in a major change we have them on Sunday instead of bacon. Still good mind.

Then it is back out into the garden, and the problem of finding a way to train wisteria up the shelter, and how to hang a terracotta jar for birds to nest in (don't ask). Turns out that the latter was beyond us, as we did not have the right fixings, and also turns out that wisteria will grow and grow and serious thought must be given as to how it will be there in the longterm, and attached to the shelter. Jools moves plants in pots from the patio in preparation for planting in the old raspberry bed, all exciting stuff I'm sure you'd agree, but all necessary.

For lunch, I tried something new, something else from the Long Weekend book; chickpea and fennel seed fritters. They are made with chickpea flour: who knew there was such a thing, you mix the flour, water and seeds in a pan until it makes a paste, put it in a tin, slice when cold and shallow fry. Once golden brown you put three or four slices in a bread roll, squeeze lemon juice on them and sprinkle with salt crystals. Not sure if it was quite as good as hoped, but interesting, and worth doing. Good news is that I have enough flour to have them three more times.

It was afternoon, and it would have been easy to have carry on working, but in fact, Jools went for a snooze and I retired to the sofa to listen to football, and so the afternoon passes in rather a pleasant way.

Evening comes, and instead of something cooked, we have the last of the bread we had with insalata caprese on Saturday. We know how to live.

It might have been a quiet weekend, but there is some interesting stuff coming up over the next couple of months, I promise you. We round the day off on the sofa watching a documentary about sound, and learn much, then it is robot wars, which is good and non-taxing, as it should be.