Whew, where did that month go? just as well this is not a widely read blog since there are so few posts to date.
Over the month I've begun nipping my grape plants in the bud. I am determined to have grapes to eat, myself, this year. I always start off with millions and eat two or three while pruning and nipping over summer - the rest go to the birds. This year I'm actually going to read up on pruning grapes and get a few bunches.
I'm also determined not to become a hopeless frail old woman, and so have begun working out on free weights again with my buddy and personal trainer, Barbara Faust. Oh did my pecs hurt...not to mention my soon to be wee thighs.
I've had help exchange visitors from Illinois and with my friend Nora's help, we've begun rennovating the portacom, picture here and the place I lived while building my house 12 years ago. It had been a manager's cottage at the Marsden Point Oil Refinery near here and someone else's home before I had it moved on site. I recently realised that it was rusting away on the outside and moulding away on the inside thanks to various unreported leaks so the team got cracking.
Visitor Jacob is an accomplished musician and artist so he somewhat happily painted a fern leaf on the one side of the portacom (portable accomodation - a trailer sort of affair in American speak - a one bedroom with corrugated steel exterior walls.
Nora rebuilt the bathroom and Jacob's fiancee, Rachel did a lot of interior painting. They've gone off now to travel and ride horses while I continue painting penetrol and killrust on the screws in hopes of getting the exterior painted before summer.
Short and sweet, but I've made pozole, one of my favourite Mexican soups, for dinner and it is calling to me. I can only make it when I've had guests who bring me hominy from America. Hominy is the main food I haven't found here...other than Heinz dill pickles, but I've recently found some delicious Dutch pickles that will do nicely. The only cucumber type pickles otherwise availabel here are sweet gherkins. yuk. They do seem to be available in the USA too, because I remember my mother calling them jerkins (soft j sound as opposed to hard g sound) and I thought it was really funny.
I can't buy tomatillo either, but I can grow them, which reminds me I'd better get seed!
Bye for now..
