We sweltered in 13 degrees today while we were in the Garden. I even had to take off my windcheater for the first time this winter! Since we are  plummetting to minus two tonight, the recent onset of light rain is a bit of a worry though. We have more snow forecast for Monday, but tomorrow and the next day are supposed to be warmish. So confusing at times.

My day in the Garden started badly with Syche deciding her family took priority over the Garden, and went downhill (or was it uphill) further when I had a message from Brad asking me to clean a cottage as her next door allegedly had children down with the lurgy (I counted four of them running around gaily in the yard for most of the day - those that were not at school, which is odd when there are only four of them living at home right now). But hey, it's all money so I was off and did that before the children descended on me and needed to be sorted out into their proper garden beds.

Tonight's dinner is pork au poivre (pork chops cooked in the oven on a bed of onion and potato, packed with cracked black pepper and left to marinate in that for a few hours, cream over the top). Hopefully it will be yummy, but since I had to clean the bank it was a bit late going in the oven and I may not dine for another half hour or so. Famished!

A total debasement of all dietary principles last night. They had McCains Chicken Parmiggiana on special, so I had that for dinner - a complete roast dinner on a plastic plate - aaaargh!

Since Seb has been showing some anxiety behaviour lately (not sure if it is lack of exercise or confusion over the sleeping arrangements which have been a bit on-again, off-again with the changeable weather). Assuming it was the former, we went for a nice long walk today, taking advantage of the unexpectedly warm and sunny periods during the day. These alternated with grey, cold and windy, so we were lucky about the timing.

I also washed last week's washing (shirts, sock and jocks, so to speak) and all bar the socks managed to get dry. It is now all piled on the bed, hiding one or two books that need to find homes some time before bedtime.

As you can tell from that, I spent the day in between other activities, sorting books from one shelf to another and back again. Architecture, for example, refuses to fit all on one shelf, so now I must debate how to split it up. I think architectural fittings and details (chimneys and inglenooks - that sort of thing) will need to be separated out and put on another nearby shelf. That should sort it out. Also I seem to have a lot of irritatingly thin books that are self-published by local historical societies which are neither fish nor fowl, and what to do with them will occupy me for hours, I suspect. Still. Sorting through the lower shelves of the sets in the study has freed up a lot of room as I have concluded 'how to do heritage' books from the 1990s (you know the sort of thing, bound in spiral binding with plastic sheets at each end, etc) are probably now redundant and since it is unlikely I will be doing any such work again, I see no point in keeping them cluttering up the shelves. If it was worth knowing I will have remembered it, and if not, it was not worth knowing in the first place!

No idea whats for dinner tonight, but it won't be Yorkshire pudding. Two nights in a row is all I can take. I will make a selection while in cleaning the bank.

I had two cottages to deal with today and one of them was a doddle whereas the second one had left all their dirty dishes behind. The boss arrived while I was there and presented me with a soap dish which I duly installed in the relevant room, stacked the laundry then headed off to sewing.

One of our (thank heavens) less frequent members descended upon us, complete with her husband and made more noise than one would have thought humanly possible, while taking up way more than her fair share of space. So much so that when I popped out to go to the Bargain Centre I came back to find both of them sitting in the area where I had set my work up. I just picked up and removed myself to the other side of the table where things were a little more rational.

Someone donated a couple of boxes of books to the Bargain Centre while I was there, so I rapidly sorted through them and removed all the Nora Roberts books (quite a collection). They are all in almost new condition so I was thrilled when I was sold all ten of them for $20.00.

I am currently reading a biography of Elizabeth the First (Alison Weir author) which is interesting but where she gets all the superlatives and adjectives from is astounding. Clearly a fan of QEI)

A late shower was a bit of a surprise, but at least it is welcome - the tank needs to be full before summer starts, and there is not much sign of that happening any time soon.

Last night, having acquired three pork sausages at the local shop, I decided to cook Toad in the Hole. For those of us who have only read about this in nursery books, and not ever tasted it, it is basically sausages cooked in a yorkshire pudding dough then served with onion gravy.

The recipe I tried had a gravy that is actually more of a sauce - basically onion, garlic sauteed in butter then add some balsamic vinegar and reduce it. Oddly enough this provides quite a thick sauce - who knew! There are a lot of things happening at once when you cook this for the first time - not least of which is running into the loungeroom to check the recipe on the laptop as you go.

As a result I forgot to add the flour to the batter - something I did not realise till this morning when I found it sitting in the container I had weighed it in. I also varied the recipe by cutting the sausages up when they were half cooked (I popped them in the oven as it was heating), and using a muffin tray. When I took the toads out of the oven, the batter was still unexpectedly runny (I had reduced cooking time and relied on colour), so back they went for a few more minutes. A few too many by the looks of things:




 Nothing daunted, and having learned my lesson, I had another go tonight, and I have to say it looks rather a lot better, but still lacks that certain something that the packets of Aunt Bessy's Toad in the Hole I bought frozen in the UK had (probably a lack of preservatives, chemicals and other nasties, but by gee they tasted good! All that excess oil, I hasten to add, has been drained off it before eating. But it tasted alright - not perfect, but OK.

In between these culinary adventures I took advantage of a day free of interruptions to unpack all my books. Finally I have every book that I own out of a box and on a shelf. Now all I need to do is sort them into some sort of logical order as presently I have poetry rubbing cheeks with Suetonius, and architecture rubbing shoulders with books on English manners in the 17th century. It freed up a bit of floor space in the spare room also, with the result i may yet be able to move around in there without climbing over stuff. I also found my sketch book that I had thought was lost in transit. Not terribly good sketches, but I did go to a life drawing session in the basement of my office in London, and the results were in there. One, at least, seems worth framing when and if I ever get around to doing that with some of my stuff.

There are now six native plants in my garden. I had intended to use those plastic sleeves that you put around them when you plant them, but realised that while I have lots of them, I have no stakes to hold them in place. So I drove into the servo and collected six tyres which are now protecting the plants. The planting method has involved digging a hole, planting the tree once i hvae removed all grass roots etc from the soil that is going back in, laying a thick layer of newspaper on all sides, placing the tyre and then adding pine bark as a mulch. Hopefully by the time the grass gets through that lot the plants will be established. Now all I have to do is remember to remove the tyres before the plants get too big (a problem in these parts where many a tree is choking on a tyre that is half way up its trunk).

Apart from cutting some firewood that is about all that has been achieved today as I am feeling a little under the weather. Waking early for the last few mornings does not help I have to say. Still, I will clean the bank, grab some food (since I have not got anything defrosted) and get home for an early night.

The best laid plans ... as they say. We had an eighteenth birthday party down at the recreation ground last night - apparently they had a DJ ... enough said.

I had intended to get the wood cut first thing, but out of respect for those aching heads, decided instead that I would head in early to clean the cottages. As there were three of them, I had a good chance of them being vacant, or at least one of them. As it was two were empty but the third had a very chatty guest who could not remember how much she owed. Since I have no idea how much they cost, I had to ring the boss to find out and while we played musical phones I found myself engulfed in conversation rather than getting the cleaning done. She finally left and I passed on to the next cottage where a guest had apparently concluded personal hygiene consisted of sitting on the toilet while dowsing himself in talcum powder, rather than having an actual shower.

Since both of the vacuum cleaners were out of action, that took a while ....

Finally got home at one and cut the wood, then unpacked the whipper snipper to cut a spot for the new plants. I ran out of cord when I only had two square feet cleared, so went to load it and while I was doing that, the phone rang and a friend announced she was in Oatlands and would I like to join her for coffee. So I headed into the house, pulled on a clean top and some proper shoes (as opposed to the steel caps) and dashed into town to do so.

Home once more it was too late to do anything other than walk the dogs (they did get out briefly on my earlier stay) and bring in the wood. Dinner is now re-heating as I am eating leftovers.

I did manage to get the second coat of paint on the bookshelves (no point trying to get to sleep early last night) with the result they are now in their proper place, and - I think - looking good. They will look even better when they have books in them, of course.

The colour (Thunder Ridge) is a dark khaki, so in some lights it looks dark brown and in others it looks green. A good compromise on the various options I considered.

I will close with another pet pic, as they look adorable. Seb and Smidgen compete to see who can get closest to the wood heater, as you can see.

Trying to get comfy on the couch can be a struggle at times. Tonight I discovered a large lump of cat wedged between my shoulderblades. When I pressed back to gain a little more verticality, I was met with groans of dismay. Checked behind me and discovered not one, but two cats sharing the top of the cushion (the down side of having feather cushions on the couch), so gave up and settled for leaning forward slightly.

Today started very early with me waking at 4:30. Since I had to be up at six anyway, and given the chances of me sleeping past that if I went back to sleep, I gave in and got out of bed. It was very foggy, so sunrise did not make its mark until relatively late, however. I got the load of washing on that I wanted to have done today, then took the dogs for their morning constitutional, then came back and pegged it out, then cut some firewood. I cut only lighter wood as I still had a stock of the larger bits from my frenzied efforts before the snow, and these alone do not a fire make. With the lighter wood added they get the fire going a lot more easily (and with fewer firelighter cubes).

So, washing done and wood cut I had time for a cuppa before my friend arrived to take me to the native nursery at Buckland. Wow! What an amazing selection - who knew there were so many pretty native plants? Despite no intention of spending anything, I came home with five plants which I could just not leave in the shop. One is a sheoak from the Grampians  - blue grey foliage and at this time of year it forms endless crimson flowers in the joints - so ideal for winter bee food as well as a spot of colour in the garden. Two grevillias (white and a bronzey red), a cassea (which has tubular red bell flowers with white tips) and a banksia - oh, and a callistemon in pink (oops, that makes six).

These will be planted as the foundation of a cresent of plantings i have in mind to provide a visual barrier between me and psycho-neighbour, so I can enjoy my subtropical climate out the back (where I get sun and no wind).

Then home to apply one coat of paint to the bookshelves - the other coat will have to wait for tomorrow, though, since I now have three cottages to clean tomorrow and wood to cut, it may have to wait one more day. Since it is occupying the kitchen table at present, there is no chance it will have to wait any longer, however.