Catch up and looking forward

It has been a little while since I posted. I could say I have been busy and it is true, but I seem to say that every time I do post. And I could not believe how many spam comments there were waiting for me to delete. I do enjoy it when I find that a real person has commented but these spam comments are a nuisance and I find them really irritating.

We have been to Cambridge for my husband's meeting three times since I last posted. Thankfully, we are not usually so well travelled. It takes a lot of effort to get my coffeeshop cooking ahead enough to go away and then I have to play catch up when I come back too. And our minister has been ill in hospital so my husband has been filling in for him as well. And then there is the exam marking which takes over life at this time of year....

My new little hens took a long time to learn to go up the ladder to the perch area to go to bed but thankfully they have now all learnt. The last two are obviously bears (well, hens) of little brain. They used to sit at the entrance to the run and wait to be shown how to go up the ladder to get to the perch area. I don't know why they just couldn't follow the others. It would have been so much easier for everybody.

One of my new little hens was obviously older than the others and has been laying for almost a month now. Just little tiny "fairy" eggs but very tasty just the same. The other girls are showing no signs of being ready to lay yet a while but I keep hoping. My older hens are not laying many eggs at the moment as we are approaching winter. The youngest of that lot are very middle aged now and the old ones are very old. My oldest is eight years old and she is lovely - a real character but I am aware that we are probably on borrowed time now. She moulted very heavily in September/October and has grown a really lovely coat back. Very pretty. I am always amazed at how warm a hen is. I really shouldn't wonder at it because I would be cosy too if I wore a feather duvet all day, every day : )

I have not got around to making any marmalade yet this year so I need to get to it soon to be ready to go into Christmas presents. I have a couple of people who would be disappointed if they did not get any homemade jams and marmalade from me. I often do a batch of sweet orange marmalade and a batch of Mamade marmalade and mix them at the "boil to a set "stage. The sweet orange marmalade does not have a good set but does have a lovely flavour. Mixing the two batches deals with the problem of setting but still leaves a good flavour.  The Mamade is quite expensive but the cost is offset by a net of yellow stickered oranges for the sweet orange part of it. But I need to get a move on before life speeds up even more with church things in December as it always does.

We are planning a big family Christmas this year and there will be 19 of us this time. We have booked my daughter's church for the afternoon after the Christmas Day service. We did this once before and it worked very well although dinner has to be just a little bit later than we would all like. Everybody is assigned a dish to bring which just needs to cook or reheat. My daughter will do the turkey and just rush it up the road in the car when it is at the "resting" stage. I am really looking forward to seeing everybody on Christmas Day and watching the grandchildren open their presents. The youngest one will be 20 months so old enough to join in a bit. Being at this church works well because there is a room with tables big enough to be pushed together and seat us all. There is also room enough for excited small people to run off a bit of that overexcited energy and space for we older ones to sit on comfortable chairs and watch. I've just got to get those presents organised now...

Mad March

It has been a mad March so far. We had snow and lots of things cancelled and difficulty getting to other things that were not cancelled.  The hens just didn't like all that cold white stuff and I'm not sure I did either. the cats were not overly keen either and spent more time than usual in front of the fire. (So did I.)

Life had got frantic last week and this, with the normal load of meetings and busy-ness and rescheduled things from the snow time on top. We are having the kitchen at church redone from next Monday and so there will be no access to cooking facilities for the coffee shop for four weeks. So I've been cooking soup to get enough for the four weeks in the freezer. I've done that now so I'm on to making cakes. Four weeks' worth of cakes for a coffee shop is a lot of cake to be made! I'm glad I didn't have to bake all of them by myself : )

On Mothers' Day all the females in the family got together for a meal as a kind of not-baby-shower for my daughter whose first baby is due in four weeks. It was a really nice evening together. It was supposed to happen the weekend before but snow stopped play. It was quite fitting for it to happen on Mothers' day, though.

We've had a second lot of snow this month. On Friday afternoon my car thermometer said it was 16.5'C but on Saturday the temperature plummeted and the snow began. On Sunday, we awoke to four inches of snow and the temperature never rose above -3'C. That is a drop of 19.5'C in 48 hours. Brrr! I'm sure you have a similar story to tell.  I wore my hiking boots to church for the second time this month.

On Saturday, when the snow was just starting, we went to my son's for my Mothers' Day treat - brunch (French toast) with the grandchildren. That was lovely! Of course, the bread had been bought seriously yellowstickered by me earlier in the week and my hens laid the eggs. My son did the cooking and had produced some fruit compote to go with the French toast. That was a lovely treat and I enjoyed it far more than the more traditional bunch of flowers. And when I got home, my daughter had been round in my absence and planted up my planter at the front door with pansies. It was a lovely surprise but I don't think that the freshly planted pansies will survive the snow.

Today the work in the church kitchen is beginning and I had a day off from baking and cooking. I celebrated by going for a little walk and not doing anything much useful at all in the house. That is what a day off is for : )

Anniversary Party Footnote

We had a lovely surprise present for our anniversary from our children this week.  They were disappointed that it arrived after it was supposed to because they wanted to give it to us at the party.

Our daughter invited us round for tea a few weeks back.  While we were out, our son nipped round to our house, borrowed the photo albums, scanned the photos and then returned the albums so that we were none the wiser.  Then this week we were presented with a properly bound book of photos telling the story of our wedding and all the years since.  It is absolutely lovely and so nicely done.  I've looked through it so many times this week and I still smile at all the memories.

: )