Sunday Sevens #35

I don’t think I was meant to write this post. With half a page written, I was adding pictures when I noticed all the text had gone!! 😦 So take two! Here’s a quick recap of my week in a Sunday Sevens devised by Natalie at Threads and bobbins.

#Walk1000miles: I’ll get my abysmal mileage out of the way first. It’s been a lazy week for both walking and exercising. I have just felt so tired! This week I have managed 22 miles. Bringing my annual total to 759 miles.

Foraging: One mile of my weekly total was strolling around Liverpool’s Festival Gardens. David, Riley and I went in search of blackberries! There were tons of brambles! We managed to collect a small bag full but there were loads left to ripen. Do you have any ideas on what I can do with my small haul of blackberries?

Foraged Blackberries

And the Mountains Echoed

Book I am reading: This week I have picked up And the Mountains Echoed, the third novel by Khaled Hosseini. Though written in a different style to his first two books, I am enjoying it so far. It keeps me distracted while on the daily commutte. Have you read this book, what were your impressions?

Common carder bee

Centurion Onions

Wildflower seeds

Wildlife and yarden: This week I noticed a common carder bee enjoying the flowers on the delilah. The wildflowers from the 30 Days Wild pack seem to be growing well! I wonder what flowers will bud? We also pulled up the centurion onions. Some hadn’t developed so we discarded them. Of the few we salvaged, we just have to leave them to dry and then I will try one. We haven’t be at all successful this year with growing our own. What do you suggest we try and grow next year?

Cooking: This week I have been very busy in the kitchen, cooking and making our meals from scratch. I have come across two vegan blogs (Yup it’s Vegan and Vegan Richa) with some wonderful recipes. I was inspired by The Gourmet Vegan’s recipe of a spicy butter bean and sausage casserole. However I didn’t have any mushrooms or butter beans, so substituted them for peppers and cannellini beans.

Bear-mingham: This weekend David and I drove the two hours from Liverpool to the UK’s second largest city, Birmingham. Our journey took half an hour longer than usual as we found that junction 6 of the M6 was closed at weekends, until September! The diversion was long and the return journey via junction 7 was stressful to navigate. However we did have a nice time once in Birmingham. We visited the city two years ago to see The Big Hoot! This time we visited their sleuth of 100 sun bears! You can read about past trails we’ve visited here. In the two hours we walked the city’s streets, we saw 28 colourful bears. I’ll end the post with a collage of our favourite ones. Which ones are your favourite?

David and Spock

That was my week, how was yours?

Thanks for reading,

Christine x

Sunday Sevens #24

I thought I’d scrape some pictures together and participate once again in this weeks Sunday Sevens devised by Natalie.

Baking: I ended last week’s Sunday Sevens with a picture of David’s endeavours. I’ll begin this week with another of his creations. It took five hours to make, baking in the oven for 1.5 hours but the result was a bouncy sponge with soft coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache to decorate.

Coffee cake and chocolate ganache

The English Girl

Reading: This week I finished Katherine Webb’s The English Girl. Susanna from Fred the Needle asked if I would review the book, so here’s some of my thoughts. Despite the story not being as strong as Webb’s first two books The Legacy and The Unseen, The English Girl was a far better story than The Night Falling. Webb used the Jebel War of 1958-59 as the backdrop to the novel. It is another of those weaving dual narratives. The two protagonists are Maude Vickary in the 1900’s and Joan Seabrook in the 1950’s. The main theme is adventure, of two women breaking the bonds of society and finding themselves (or losing themselves) to the desert wastes of Oman. I found Joan’s character rather wishy-washy and I wished she would stop faffing about and make a decision. I preferred reading the story of Maude and her adventures of trying to be the first woman/Westerner to cross the Empty Quarter. Her struggle across huge dunes and facing sheer exhaustion was well described. I had my hand to my mouth when she encountered a camel spider (look them up) and shocked at her betrayal, but I won’t spoil the end for you! All in all it wasn’t a bad read. It took me a whole year to read The Night Falling. I read The English Girl in a fraction of that time. If you enjoy Arabian adventures then this novel is for you!

Have you read it? Let me know what you think?

Walk 1000 miles: I’ve walked 21.4 miles this week, a touch better than last week. While on my daily walk to the bus stop to work, I noticed the central reservation was awash with the golden heads of daffodils. It certainly brought to mind the iconic William Wordsworth poem. ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’

Wildlife: On Thursday my eyes spied a small green/brown bird flitting around the yarden. It was the size of a blue tit, but it wasn’t a blue tit. It was a chiffchaff. I only see these birds once a year. They must pass through the city on way to woodland for the summer. I reached for my camcorder but the camera wasn’t charged, so an old video I took in 2013 will just have to do!

Pets: This weekend has been a stressful one! On Saturday I witnessed our new parrot finch, Leaf attacking our other newbie, Gouldian finch, Set! Afterwards, David managed to pick Set up and noticed the damage Leaf had done. His feathers around his head and eyes had been plucked, leaving red skin exposed. Poor Set was scared so much he just sat in David’s hand. We noticed that Set still had his baby mouth. He must only be as young as six months old!

Image from Pinterest

Set

I have read that if there is an aggressor in an aviary, then the only course of action is to take the aggressor away. That was when our problem began. We managed to isolate Leaf and his other parrot friend, Forrest from the aviary, but the only other cage we had was the hospital cage which was where Set was recovering in. Our other cage, the one in which our aviary had begun five years ago was at David’s Mum’s housing their two budgies.

Leaf and Forrest’s new home

Kindly, David’s Mum and Dad said that we could have our cage back as they had one which could house their budgies until they got a bigger cage. I was so relieved, more so when back at home the two parrot finches explored the cage and were soon housed in it.

Set has recovered from his ordeal and though still looking a little worse for wear he has been reintegrated into the aviary with the more placid finches. Leaf and Forrest are flitting about their new home, they never keep still for long, hence needing a bigger cage to house them.

Who would have guessed such small birds would cause so much distress!

Cooking: For Saturday’s dinner I cooked a three bean quinoa chili. The recipe was very versatile and I substituted a few ingredients to what I had in the store-cupboard. I served it with oven baked tortillas and a crisp glass of white wine. It made for a healthy and filling meal. Definitely one to make again.

Three bean quinoa chili

Stellata magnolia

Dwarf Rhododendron

Gardening: This Sunday David and I spent some time in the yarden planting our Centurion onions. I snapped some pictures of Stellata magnolia and dwarf rhododendron flowers. The yarden is definitely awakening!

So that was my week. How have you spent yours?

Thanks for reading,

Christine x