Second summertime.

Goodafternoon everybody!

After some time with more autumnal temperatures and weather we suddenly arrived into a second summertime! Around Friday temperatures were going up quickly and today we have around 30C again! That will stay for at least till Thursday, then there may be a little drop of temperature to around 25C, with may be a small rainshower too.
I hope we will go into September with some weeks of nic e weather say with temperatures around 24C????

Last week we went for the appliances, yeah! That was on Thursday. Talking with the salesman, he suggested that someone came over to check on the possibilities, and take extra measure. so it happened.
We will get soon a phonecall with appointment for placing. I don;t think it will take very long.
We ordered a washing machine, oven, cooktop(on gas), extractor hood and fridge with freezer(yhou know, up the fridge, under the freezer with 3 drawers.
Wow, that will be a change! And all the appliances didn;t cost the money I calculated more or less. I come at the amount that I calculated for the appliances( and I only took 4, even not yet with the washing machine) WITH placing the stuff. They will have to make a few new connections, perhaps change a few things. But all together the appliances weren;t as expensive as I thought. It is a very good shop were we went, it is a family business, and they still have service, they don;t try to sell you the most expensive if you don;t need it. I will have to wait of course how they will do with the placing, but I am sure I will not be disappointed. And they have the good service that if anything might not be working of something like this, you just can call and they will fix it.

Of course I could do with a whole new kitchen, but that is much too expensive. So this is the next best thing. And till now I am already a happy person LOL.
Oh, soon I will be able to make again canelloni in the the oven, or a Boeuf Parmentier( it is a bit like aSheperd's Pie), or Russian Pirog or Piroschki( comes close to a pie, I think) etc. etc. Wonderful!!!!

This weekend we have our guest, meaning the doggie of my friend Heidi.
He's called Tommy,and is no trouble at all. Only thing is I have to get up a bit earlier LOL! As any dog he needs to go out to do his thing. It is only for a couple of days. They will pick him up again on Tuesday.
I think he feels himself rather at ease here. Of course he know me from the times I gave him a walk and was visiting Heidi.
Poor thing suffers a bit from the warm temperatures. Lucky we have a rather cool sitting room, so he is better off there than in the garden(even in the shadow).
I gave him his walk this morning and early afternoon, Jan will do that in the evening. Yes, we devide the task ROFL.

Good time to finish this post. I wil have a little time to do perhaps solitaire game and then will have to prepare something for dinner. Not yet a complete idea of what I will prepare, but be assured it will be something simple and quick.
Hopefully I will be able to tell you next time that the appliances have been placed and that I understood without problems how to operate the oven and washing mashine hahahaa. I am always suspicious with new things, but most of the time it shows that it isn;t compicated.
Wishing you all a very nice week!

Summertime, where are you???

Goodafternoon everybody!

Slept rather late this morning after a not so good night, on and off really.
So I thought as it is Sunday and I don;t have to go anywhere and I can do some things also a bit later, I will try to have some sleep in the morning. And it worked more or less.
Our weather isn;t all too great at the moment, just a bit too cloudy at times, there is some rain, slightly too much wind too. Temperatures aren;t great either, it isn;t cold, but also not summery weather, we have around 20-21C.But by the end of coming week temperatures should rise again to may be 24C and perhaps even stay for a longer time. Now that would be lovely!

Have to take a tiny break now, because I want to see if the washing machine is ready and I have to check a pan with some meat for a stew. Tell you about it when I am back.

............................

Back again!
Laundry was ready, so it is hanging to dry now.
Stew isn;t ready yet. I was yesterday at the market, we needed a b it of fruit and veggies and I bought there some goats meat. Yes, you read it well.
I had it before and it was wonderful. After letting it to stew for an hour or two, depends what part of the goat you have, it becomes so tender and I like the taste of it. I have 3 slices of the upper leg, it isn;t too fat, lots of meat on it and it is on the cooker right now, with some onions and mushrooms. And I rubbed the meat with some Ras el Hanouit, a Morrocan mix of spices, without salt.
You hardly need any salt with it, wonderful. Just added a bit of dried chilipepper to it to make it a little bit more spicy.
I also made some fresh apple sauce well, it is more apple compote, because i like to have some small pieces of apple still in it), with some raisins in it and cinnamon.
So I only will have to boil some potatoes later. or I can add some chinks to the stew later. That also is nice, because the potatoes will take a bit of the taste of the gravy. I haven;t decided yet, LOL.
And as desert we will have some melon. Yummie!

Oh, it looks as if slowly the sun is coming through the slouds. That would be nice. Everything looks so much friendlier with a little bit of sunshine.
Next week Jan and I should do something in the garden. I try to keep it up a ittle bit, you know, the deadheading and watering the pots(although at the moment we have enough rain to keep them wet). But there is some pruning to do, specially the ivy, that grow like almost mad! It is nice to have something green on the fences, but it needs a lot of pruning to keep it nice.
And there are a couple of bushes that need replacing. I have an azale, that stands to hiddenwhich is a pity. It has such a wonderful color when it blooms, it must been seen more. And then I have a hortensia, i once made a cutting of, standing now in a big pot, but is growind out of it. I like to put it in the "free"ground, next to our white one(this is a dark red one). i think it will look wonderful.
It is nice to spend some time in the garden, doing some minor jobs, it makes your head clear.

I am not yet in a very designing mood, I think I will wait with it till I will have another laptop. yes, I know, I am talking about it already for some time, but first we will have to g for the appliances(hopefully we will go to the shop next week), then we will have to see how much money that will cost. Hopefully we will have some more savings left for the new laptops.
Don;t want to wait all too long with it, we must have them still this year, because on ours we have the Windows 7 and that will not be supported anymore buy next year.
First the appliances and installed well, we hope. That already would be something wonderful.
Having an oven again will be fantastic and makes life a little bit easier, cooking wise spoken LOL!

Okay, not very much more to ramble about, so better I finish this post.
I might take a cup of tea and perhaps a sandwich or so, watch a bit of tv and take it easy for the rest of the afternoon.
Have a wonderful week, you all, take care and stay safe.

Changing weather, what a pity!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Yes, the weather is definately changing over here. The temperatures dropped a lot, and as it seems next week even some more.! Now tht is a bit too much for me. Seems we may only reach just 20 C, with some sun some clouds, some rain, etc. Not much for summer weather.
kay, temperatures of 35C isn;t necessary but I would like for some more time something around 23-25C.
But who knows, may be somewhere next week they will suddenly find another high pressure area that will bring nicer weather.

If all went well, my friend Heidi is home from vacation again.  understand she doesn;t phone me right away during the weekend. She probably is happy to be home and can unpack the suitcases and first relax after the journey.
So i wait for her call later this week and then certainly we will meet to have a catch up chat.

It was again a quiet week here. Although I made a phonecall concerning a pension payment of Jan, it is just a small amount, so I asked to pay it in one amount. I needed to fill in some forms, I will send them next week and then in a few weeks tiime we will receive the payment (if all goes well).
So a little job done.
Now next week I shall phone the hospital to hear if there is a result already of Jan;s heart tests. I know they are extremely busy and have a lot of appointments to do, but still I think it all takes much too much time. He is busy with it from the month of March and still doesn;t know anything. I assume, no critical things are found, otherwise we should have had an appointment with the heartdoctor already. But still, all shouldn;t take that long. And that is where I cone in, making a phonecall and put some pressure there LOL.

Oh, there is a little sad news to tell. we had a parakeet coming here, that was already of age, so we gave him the name of "Der Alte" (the old one, and it is the name of a German detective serie, long running also).
Beginning last week Jan looked at him when he was sitting on the rosebow and said to me:"Kyra, this one isn;t going to live for a long time anymore, read my lips". and two days later I found him lying in our garden, stonedead, poor thing.
 I think he was happy to live his last days in our garden, feeling rather safe here and having his last meal. Ahhhhhh, I was so sad when i found him.
I picked him up and put him in a plastic bag for a moment and told Jan the news.
And you know what? Jan burried Der Alte in our garden. Now isn;t that sweet?????
(You see, we are quite some softies LOL).

I have so much fun watching the birds, specially at the moment the sparrows. I think we have a colony of about 15-20 sparrows coming to our garden and more or less fighting over the seed in the seedcontainer. Gosh, they can make a noise! And  have to watch out when I fill the container, because sometimes some younger ones are less cautious and as soon as they notice the container is being filled, the take a kind of dive to it like a jetplain and I am almost torpedoed by a sparrow ROFL. I did feel sometimes the wind of their wings trough my hair!

Yesterday we had a really delicous meal. There was a discount of mussels in the supermarket, so I bought us a package with 2 kgs. They tasted so good, yummie. with two dipsauces and some french bread with garlic butter, it was a good meal. We like to eat them, if possible a few times a year.
And it is quickly done, you only have to cook them for a few minutes, that's all.

Good, no more things to tell today, last thing to do is giving you the 2nd part of Arlene's clusters.
Have a wonderful week and stay safe please.

Download  HERE

Easy living does the thing at the moment LOL

Goodafternoon everybody!

Glad the heatwave is gone, it was just too much. For now we have rather typical dutch summer weather, temperatures around 22-25C, nights around 13-15C.
sometimes a little bit of rain, good periods with sunshine, at times some clouds. All together not bad at all. I can go on like this for much longer.

We had a really quiet week, not much happenening. I had planned to go looking for the new appliances for the kitchen, but found out that the shop is closed for holiday, so we will have to wait till after the 12th of August. Oh well, we have done for quite some time without and oven, and the gas top is still working, and the fridge too, so we can add a few weeks to it(hopefully, I say this, because things have the ability to just finish their lives just a tiny wee bit too early if you are unlucky ROFL).

I did the usual homestuff here, every day a little bit, not too much because something around the shoulder is bothering me, I think I perhaps strained some muscle, or may be catched a cold on a muscle and had a little inflammation or something. It isn;t really hurting, but at times bothering, not enough for me to go to the doctor. We'll see how it goes during the next week.
It are always little things that pop up and suddenly go away too.
I only noticed, that the last year or even two, things are taking longer time to heal with me. I see it when I have a little cut, or when I fell on the knee for example and have a bruise on it.
Perhaps it is just the age, or it has to do with the medicins I am taking. Well, as long as things still heal and leave no mark, I am happy, hahaha.

The b irdies are really funny, you know. Not only we have visits from the parakeets, but we get more and more sparrow at the moment, You could say it is an extended family of sometimes 15 or 20. And they can make lots of noise too! And  love them.
Also we have again some tits. We've lost them for some time but now some young ones come feeding from the fatballs I hand close to the little shed.
I think they also will come nearer in autumn and winter, when I hand some fatballs on the rosebow.

I've made a few photos from the garden, specially the new plants.
Here is the little rosebush( species is named Rosa Magic Rokoko.

here a Rudbeckia "Happy Smileyz"

And I;ve made a photo of a clematis. Usually we have two species on the rosebow, but this year only one came to bloom, but it is a lovely one.

And last photo is of our hollyhocj. t is one that grwe from seed I collected somewhere from a garden where they were standing at a gate.
t took two years but this year we had flowers on it.

That's about it for today. But, as promised, I have some clusters from Arlene for you, made with the Mysteries of the Woods kit.
She made several more, so today you have part one and next week will be part two(that will be a clusters and a quickpage).
She isn;t feeling all too good at the moment, so hold her in your thoughts every now and then.
Thanks in advance!
See you next week, stay cool and safe!

Download   HERE part one of the clusters