It’s the sixth week of quarantine/ lockdown. It’s been a good distraction to be so busy at work. The girls have enjoyed the relaxed timeframes with just a zoom lesson at 9.30 am then a few exercises that they tend to have completed before noon, so they read or play computer games for the rest of the day, apart from a game of tips we play for an hour or more at the end of the day at the local school or oval, and then playtime for half an hour at night, their choice of game.
Mum had her 75th birthday this week. Not the restaurant celebration we had planned, but we dropped over to say hello and run around the garden which is in full spring bloom with a magnificent magnolia, daffodils, silver birch and a dark green lawn that Rhea did cartwheels on (a skill I never mastered). We had a video chat with champagne and nibbles on Saturday night with a connection to mum and dad; Becky and Duncan in Singapore; and Maggie, Peter and Ol; almost as good as the real thing. In a couple of years, mum’s oldest children will be fifty – how time flies.
Lara and I had had an expedition to the local supermarket yesterday to stock up for the week and for the hors d’oeuvres. It was the first time I’d been to a shop for six weeks as we have continued on with shopping deliveries to avoid the risk of being in a COVID hotspot and having to quarantine again. I hadn’t realized until recently that even being in a hotspot would only mean a COVID test and isolating until the result rather than another two week quarantine period, so I will be venturing out a little more from now on.
We both made the most of it: Lara rushed around choosing lollies to buy for a planned movie night tonight, and I agreed to buy some of their favourite things like corn chips, tim tams and baked biscuits. I bought my own favourites too: lindt chocolate at half price; watermelon (the mangoes are small and green so I gave them a miss); some tiramisu; dried apricots; strawberries and blueberries. We have white bread left over from my white diet this week (prior to having a colonoscopy and endoscopy investigating possible causes for my anemia – all good on that front) so I might make a summer pudding and use up all the cream we seem to have in the fridge. This afternoon, I rode over to the spring flower show that was still on and took my time enjoying the rich plantings of dffodils, tulips, jonquils, and many other scented flowers in all their rainbow colours, sunning themselves like me.
Now on holidays at home for a week – a rare occurrence – I am planning to do a lot of work in the garden weeding, planting, and replanting, including in the new pebble side garden. I feel uplifted looking at it, with its white pebbles broken up by a pathway of charcoal-coloured round stepping stones, and the petostrum filling out to screen the fence. The two Japanese maples and one pomegranate in large pots there are starting to develop leaves, and after some recent rain, the hellebores that Maggie gave me from her garden and I dotted under the shady tree, under the petostrum and in the pot on the steps are growing small green leaves. Hanging out the washing there is now even more of a pleasure, so I’m looking forward to filling out the flower bed outside the kitchen window with lavender and hydrangeas, interspersed with sage which I will move from our vegetable garden so the girls can plant whatever they want in one plot each, making the whole area more interesting for them, and hopefully engaging them in the garden a bit more.
Mum and her magnolia have inspired me to plant one in our front garden where I’ll be able to see it from our room. Her love of gardens, work ethic and pleasure in growing and appreciating flowers and vegetables have been a restorative influence on my approach to the garden, which has been an important grounding influence in this time of COVID and in my life, and I hope the girls’ life too.
As well as gardening, I might have another bike ride; I’ll catch up with family and friends again, including with a friend with children; do some cooking; and see whether we can do a bit of spring cleaning as well. We will find out what sort of extensions might be possible on our house, given it’s made of monocrete and we are wondering about building up a storey.
Lara asked the other day, after a week of holidays in which we have mostly been working without paying much attention to either of the girls, ‘why are holidays so boring?’
I hope by the end of next week they will say that they both enjoyed this time.
