Sheila's first week

Long time no blogging, but when one is somewhat busy, then blogging goes to the end of the list. I did put some pictures up on FB in the meantime, but always something happened as I was going to post on the blog.  So here goes:

Sheila arrived safely on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning we went to the market to get our regular supply of tomato and pepper plants to go out into the garden. The market was very colourful, with fruit, vegetables, cut and potted flowers and plants for the fruit and vegetable garden on display. I managed to get some dill and marrow (latter not in the market) and 20 plants each of tomatoes and peppers. We originally meant to go out to dinner after shopping, but we were so quick that it was too early to eat yet.

On our return we had to plant everything we bought, which took us until evening, but it was worth it, as it was pleasure to see the neat lines of tomatoes and peppers.  Let's hope the crop is going to be good. Unfortunately the weather is all over the place and while we have not yet had another hailstorm, they are threatening it on and off most days.  We did have some torrential rain though, interspersed with lovely sunshine.  During the latter we managed to get outside with Sheila and we sat either in the gazebo or on Mike's bench in the corridor.

The herb patch provides endless pots of mint and lemon balm tea, although - as you can see in this photo - Roy and Sheila prefer a nice bottle of wine.

Tradition has it in our household that visitors are expected to earn their keep, so Sheila was put to work on the walnut cracking production line. I had the mallet for breaking the shells, Sheila weedled the nuts out of the shells and into the jar. We ended up with one and a half large jars of walnut kernels. Yum, yum!! One of my secret sins (not so secret after I've been to my homeopath who told me I have elevated blood sugar levels and other nasties!) is putting into a small ball some dried apricots, small bits of 70% dark chocolate and lots and lots of walnuts. Once together this mixture gets nibbled while I am working on the computer. Nice, but very, very naughty!!

Another lovely thing that happened this week, was that one of the gypsy guys who Roy occasionally gives work to appeared with an embroidered picture of some flowers, which we gladly bought. Then he appeared with another one, which was a bit bigger, so we paid a bit more for that, but by then we were a bit puzzled where to put it. We are, unfortunately, very short of wall space in this house. We have hundreds of books on bookshelves, my medals take up a lot of space and the rest is covered by pictures, maps and bits of furniture.  Still, the biggest problem arrived in the shape of his wife/girlfriend who then brought to us the peacock (see above!), which is perfection itself.  I love the black background and the slightly primitive, but glorious design and execution.  This is now proudly on the wall right opposite the entrance, so as far as peasant art was concerned, this week was ace!

On the TV front, The Crimson Field had finished. I still think that Oona Chaplin is fantastic.  She is a real stunner and an excellent actress. I have read somewhere that there might be another series.  I doubt it, but if they contrive to have one I will watch it, especially if she is still in it.

Another recent favourite of mine is Dr. Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, as I recently started watching her latest series The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain. It had definitely surprised me that I liked her, as she is precisely the type of "expert" that I normally can't stand. Young, pretty and desperately trying to appeal to the great British public by being "with it". I will never forgive Ch4 for first dumming down Time Team with pretty dollybird "experts" and then killing it.  It was that woman on Time Team that made me very biased towards good looking presenters, who look good, but without much substance.  Admittedly I was probably the most avid fan of Prof Mick Aston who left the program in disgust, due to the above, even before it was scrapped, but I have to admit that Dr. Lucy is another kettle of fish altogether.  Yes, she is trying her best to use XXIst century popular language while presenting, which grates on occasions, but the substance, that was clearly lacking in the Time Team dollybird, is definitely there is spades with her. The program and she are both great and I am looking forward to the next episode.  I think that is the last, but hopefully I am wrong!

Yesterday I drove into town to a recital given by Nikolay Lugansky in the Music Academy. He played Cesar Franck and Sergey Prokofiev in the first half, which were good, but the tour de force was in the second half when we were all treated to a virtuoso performance of Rachmaninov's 13 Preludes op.32. Fantastic hardly begins to describe it. He also gave us no less than 5 encores, including some brilliant Chopin, so I was a happy bunny on my return from the concert.

Now I am back in the village and tomorrow, assuming the weather is decent, we will go out for a drive and lunch at the Wildflower, a lovely restaurant 5 villages along.