Lady Godiva

22 January 2012

Suzy celebrated her 30th birthday at the weekend with a ceilidh, which is a party with Scottish or Irish folk music and dancing. It was hilarious fun and I’ll post more about the party, but for now, here’s a taster of the dancing.

1 Comment Posted in: celebrate, friends, video

I love the internet

11 January 2012

Especially when Dr. Todd Quinlan sends me some innuendo.

The Todd

4 Comments Posted in: internet

Two little bandits

7 January 2012

Anya and Lily sort of standing up, with minimal leaning on the sofa and a lot of applause – from both themselves and their audience.

No Comments Posted in: family, twins

Hippeastrum new year!

5 January 2012

It turns out that the flower bulb I was given for my birthday is a hippeastrum. How do I know this? Well, thanks to Ray I knew it would be an amaryllis or hippeastrum, so when it flowered on new year’s day (what show-off timing) I knew what to google.

The flower is a Butterfly Lily and now has two open blooms, with long stamens that dusted my head with pollen when I lifted the plant from my desk to the table to photograph it.

Now I need to get back to Google and find out what the hell to do with the bulb when the flowers give up on me. If I remember correctly, I need to hide it in a box and forget about it. When it’s ready, it’ll come and get me, right?

3 Comments Posted in: garden, photos

Avocado leaves

4 January 2012

A few days after I last blogged the avocado’s progress, I followed the given advice and nipped out the top leaves. The idea being that the avocado now focuses its energy less on the growing long and spindly side of things and more on the work of getting a bit bushier.

I’m not sure the avocado had read the same website as me though. The remaining leaves have just grown bigger and bigger, with little sign of new leaves thickening things up a bit. I think that the tiny leaves on the side may have grown a little, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Evidently we’ve entered into another slow-mo phase, similar to the very first six weeks it took for the stone to sprout.

Or those leaves are plotting to take over the world. Stay alert.

3 Comments Posted in: garden

New Year

1 January 2012

Happy new year, folks. I hope you celebrated appropriately and that someone called you on new year’s eve and said, “Hey, happy new year, let’s go for a walk and have lunch tomorrow!” And that you looked at the weather forecast, saw that it would be cloudy, but dry and agreed to the plan.

That’s what happened to me.

And then morning came and so did the rain. And I looked out of the window at the drizzle/pouring rain, my good hair day resting unsuspectingly on my shoulders, and I thought to myself, “Well, that damn woman’s going to want to go on the walk anyway, so you’d better get used to the idea.” And then she turned up and, yes, we went for the planned walk.

Despite having passed Knole Park maaaany times in my life, always craning to see if any deer can be seen from the road, I’ve barely been into the park and I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen the house before. To get from the car park to the park we had to walk down a steep and very muddy walkway and then finally we were out into the open parkland and the rain went to work on frizzing up our hair and working its way through my coat. But it was fun. The rain doesn’t really bother me now that I wear contact lenses and it no longer affects my ability to see. Sure it was kinda wet and a bit cold, but it all gets outweighed by the smugness one feels at going for a calorie-burning walk at the very start of the year. Hey, look at us, aren’t we virtuous and awe-inspiring?

In fact, after burning off all those calories – most of them on the return journey back up the steep and very muddy path – we had no option but to drive into town and have a long lunch at Café Rouge. Suzy had a croque madame, while I had a delightful little baguette with hummus, spring onion and roasted red pepper. Both dishes also came with a side of the best fries ever. My shunning of the usually employed ketchup is surely a sign of their magnificence.

See how this post started with a healthy walk and ended on a pile of salty fries? Yes, my thighs do too.

No Comments Posted in: food, friends, photos, walks

Elephant sparrow

31 December 2011

We have an occasional visitor to the garden who has a rather unusual beak. This long-beaked sparrow turns up from time to time in the crowds of sparrows who feed on the seeds hung from the laburnum in the front garden.

Despite the excessive length of the top half of his beak, he seems to have no trouble at all taking seed from the feeder and drops no more seed while doing so than any of the others do. He seems healthy enough, so I can only imagine he’s not particularly affected by it – and he can certainly stand his ground at the feeder.

Interestingly, my uncle showed us photos of a sparrow with a deformed beak on Boxing Day too, though it’s not as long as this one. A quick google also shows up reports from all over the place of not just sparrows with deformed beaks – and a bevy (or should that be “a hide?”) of ornithologists trying to work out why it’s happening.

No Comments Posted in: garden, photos

Boxing Day II

28 December 2011

John, Sam, Anya and Lily came to visit for Boxing Day II on the 27th and the twins outdid us all in their festive outfits, with beautiful red dresses and white fur bolero jackets. It rather made me miss my years of having party dresses to wear.

The girls have always had very strong legs and love to stand – which is great when you’re putting frilly-bottomed tights on them, but not so good when you’re trying to get them to bend their legs so you can sit them down. Propped up on the sofa, Anya had a wonderful time standing up, trying to catch Daddy’s tickly hand.

Anything close enough to be grabbed – which is a lot of stuff, as they have a surprising reach – still goes into the mouth for detailed inspection. Toys, paper, Mummy’s new apron, Aunty Doow’s hair, it all needs to be chewed.

The babies will fix you with a somewhat disconcerting stare from time to time if you’re doing something particularly interesting, such as … holding a mug, or sitting on the floor. It takes them a few minutes to get used to being in a new place, so when they arrived, they sat for a while on their parents’ knees and stared expressionlessly at those gathered before them who were trying to make them smile – and who eventually won.

Anya’s tongue spent a lot of time being poked out at people that afternoon.

The babies are getting a bit grabby now and sometimes this is a hilarious game of tug of war with gift ribbon and sometimes it’s a matter of just swiping whatever your sister is holding from her hands and chewing on it yourself.

As if to continue the twin theme, the girls seem to need something in each hand; one thing is rarely enough. So Lily made a racket with her new jingle sticks and Anya joined the percussion with the two maracas, occasionally getting a bit over-enthusiastic and nearly bopping Nanna on the head with them.