What a week!

Phew! What a week! We've been frantically trying to get our work finished and get our house in order (no mean feat for us!). We're getting ready for our oldest friends from England to come for a visit. So we're trying to make everywhere look nice, and not like a cross between Steptoe & the Good Life, which I sometimes think our place looks like.

So, we've been busy, busy busy ...

On the weekend I went to the Yarralumla Nursery, probably the best nursery in Canberra, and the one place in Canberra that is seriously dangerous to let me loose in. I bought:

2x gooseberries to replace the ones I've killed

1x Tahitian Lime

1x Kaffir Lime

1x Williams Pear

1x white seedless grape

2x roses, one called Elle after my daughter and the other a Honey Dijon

15x pansies cos I love them and I wanted to cheer up the view from the uncovered deck for our English friends who arrive on Wednesday

2x punnets of lettuces cos they were there ( :-))

2x punnets of coriander

2x punnets of colored foxgloves

2x punnets white foxgloves

1x punnet russel lupins

Then I came home and planted everything except one gooseberry and the coriander because it was going dark, and I could barely move!

On Sunday I had a wonderful lunch with a friend, visited my beautiful daughter (BD) and grand-daughter (beautiful son in law (BSIL) was there too!) and collected more lemons from her tree. Went home and juiced most of the lemons after shaving their skins for homemade citrus cleaner - allegedly this stuff is better than spray and wipe. Find the recipe here. I've kept the best lemons to make preserved lemons. I just need to find a container that is exactly the right size for them. DD gave me a couple of old jars that had had bought tomato (pasta) sauce in them, so I filled those up and I have another enormous old Maxwell House coffee jar that oonce held dried pasta. There weren't enough lemons to fill the big jar, but the long tall jars from DD look really elegant with the lemons in them so I'm really glad I bottled them up.

Monday and Tuesday were spent working, cleaning, working. Cleaned the bedrooms, got the beds ready, cleaned out the car, finished our work projects, cooked ready for Wednesday's dinner. Wednesday was Charlie day as well as arrival day for our friends, so we made a lovely mushroom lasagne, and a lemon meringue pie. I made myself feel a bit like a Masterchef contestant once DH had gone to pick up our friends. I raced around feeding Charlie, putting the lasagna together - remembered I'd not put towels on their bed - brushed my hair, collected the eggs, picked up all the food Charlie had spilt on the floor, took the pie out of the oven, put the lasagna in .... Phew!

Then DD arrived and said that the nanny couldn't look after Charlie tomorrow ... Could we? Well, of course I said yes, knowing that our friends would think it was pretty good fun. But then, one of my work clients rang, could I join a teleconference at 830am? So, Thursday it was up at 645 (unheard of these days for me), raced over to pick up Charlie, home again, breakfast oats and fruit for Charlie. Then the teleconference, breakfast for the rest of us - DH poached eggs and they were yummy!

We went to the shopping centre for lunch and then went on a walk round the lake. I expected Charlie would sleep, but she sang and burgled and put her hand out to feel the breeze for 40 minutes. By the time we got home again, she was completely wrecked and was fast asleep when I went to get her up for her tea before Mummy came to collect her. I felt terrible disturbing her, but she was pretty cheerful about it all, just like the little angel she is :)

We're off on the road-trip tomorrow. Canberra to McLaren Vale via the Hay Plain and Mildura. I love a good long drive so it will be so much fun showing parts of Australia to our friends.

Will be back again in a couple of weeks!

Take care everyone - talk soon

Greenie x