Morse

Morse
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Sunday, 12 March 2017

Daylesford Autumn Dispatch - Sunday, 12th March 2017





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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