Dear Friends, when I
left you last week, we were looking forward to Bob White’s birthday lunch at Annie
Smithers’ restaurant, Du Fermier, at Trentham. And we weren’t disappointed. It
was a very happy event & we were glad to have been included in Bob’s group
of 35 family & friends. Wes was MC & had spent a lot of time
researching important & not so important events that occurred when Bob was
born & during his lifetime, as part of his introduction.
Bob with his daughter, Natalie, and son, Brendan
Annie produced a
stunning meal – smoked trout with salad, followed by mussels, which was
followed by lamb cooked four ways or a chick pea casserole for us non-meat eaters.
Her pièce de resistance was a stunning berry roulade, which is almost as good
as her finest sweets ever (in our humble opinion) – rose pavlova.
On Monday, I had a
great session at gym and am really enjoying my current programme, which is
helping with my strength, stamina & asthma. Wes had a good morning in the
garden and the highlight was planting a new hybrid tea rose that I had brought
home from Ken Rae at the Sunday Market the day before. It is called Governor
Macquarie and I snapped up the only one that Ken had, as I thought the blooms
were exquisite and have a perfume to match!
While Wes prepared at
the Daylesford Cinema to show the Oscar winning film, ‘Moonlight’, I had a
lovely catch up with Gillie at Muffins & More. I was so pleased I went to
see the film as it is absolutely stunning & totally engrossing. It would
have been a travesty if ‘La La Land’ had beaten it for the award. In the
afternoon, we were totally entranced by the cricket in Bangalore again – what
an amazing Test this has been.
After gym on Wednesday
I played Mah Jong with Dot in Muffins & More, which was great fun as
always. I think the honours were even by the time we parted. Wes spent the
morning helping Barbara, including filling her car up with petrol. He cooked us
a beautiful lunch, then headed off to spend the afternoon with Brian Nash
discussing their project.
I visited Leanne on
Thursday – left at 7am as it was going to be a very hot day & I needed to
do some painting for her before the temperature reached 33˚. We had a busy and
productive time together and I was pleased to sit quietly when I got home again
in the afternoon.
We were both tired on
Friday morning, but did our early walk around the Lake, and I went shopping at
Coles, before we both decided to have a quiet morning instead of the activities
we had each planned. Below is a photo of our first ever cucumber, with our best
zucchini & the first of our grosse lisse tomatoes.
Our street has been as
busy as it has ever been over the past couple of weeks. Technicians have been
installing NBN cables everywhere and there has been a Ditch Witch parked at the
bottom of Houston Street, making access quite tricky. As well Mark & Lesley
have been doing renovations to no 74 and there have been 5 or 6 tradesman vans
parked along either side of our road, which also makes access difficult.
Finally, over the past two nights, there have been two enormous moving trucks
parked next door to us at no 76 and getting out of our place has been fun &
games. Those of us living here are driving very slowly in and out as the
visiting tradesmen all drive too fast & it can be quite dangerous if we
should meet going in opposite directions, as our little bit of Duke Street is
really only wide enough for one vehicle at a time.
Fortunately, most of
them have disappeared for the Long Weekend, but their places have been taken by
the many who flock here for the Annual ChillOut Festival, now in its 20th
year in Daylesford. I’ll have photos from this morning’s parade in next week’s
Dispatch.
Just love this cartoon – Snoopy at his most
delusional perhaps!
Yesterday, after the
walk, we got stuck into the house & garden. Wes spent the morning watering,
pruning & tidying up the back, while I fed all the vegetable plants &
did the washing & ironing.
We watched Collingwood
& Richmond play a thriller at Moe before Wes went to be the projectionist
for a special screening of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in celebration of ChillOut.
Overnight, we finally
had some rain – not much, but enough to make everywhere look so much better. As
well there was a full moon, so our walk wasn’t in pitch dark as it has been all
week. Bilbo & I are about to head off to the Sunday Market, then we will
leave early for breakfast at The Food Gallery and park somewhere that allows us
an easy escape after the parade has finished.
We woke to find that
the ALP had a landslide victory in Western Australia – the Liberals had made a
deal with Pauline Hanson & it turned out to be a monumental error of
judgement.
Finally, we were very
sad, along with thousands of others, to read that this beautiful Azure Arch in
Malta had disappeared without trace overnight during the week. This photo of
cousin Leigh, me & Wes was taken in March 2010, when we had a wonderful
visit together to this stunning country.
Enjoy your week and I’ll
be back in touch next Sunday.
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