A bright Monday

All the days seem to merge into one at the moment so apart from the food we eat it is hard to differentiate between them.  So having had roast yesterday that meant today was Monday and I had nothing planned.  John had some things earmarked which he wanted to do if it was dry so I decided I would get come paintings knocked out for this week's challenge which is Berries.  It is so pleasant sitting in the conservatory if we get some sunshine and although it was a slow start it gradually warmed up reaching a peak of 26 degrees which isn't bad bearing in mind it is January.  I fiddled around on a couple of ideas but I am short on watercolour paper and the cheap stuff I brought over has a right old bumpy finish to it.

The weather conditions today afforded us a pretty spectacular display of clouds overhead.  I wandered up onto the roof terrace to take this one - down below on the coast you could see a flurry of white horses racing onto the shoreline which meant that it was a bit windy down there - windy and chilly I would have thought except I see that my friend Melanie is still swimming in the sea and what's more her two little girls are accompanying her - well good for them not feeling the cold and having no fear and still enjoying the joys of the seaside even in winter.

I managed to get a bit of gardening done tackling the green bush which hides the 'glory hole'.  It had put on a right old spurt so I got the shears to get it under control and posted the waste into the field next door as the goats are being walked regularly so they will get something a bit different to eat next time they pass through.

John gave me a hand and then I sent him on a mission as I discovered that most, if not all, of my little mosquito fish had died in my little pond - I think it is because we thought it might be an idea to put a cover over the top and even though it had some air holes it might not have been enough anyway whatever happened I had to remove half a dozen dead ones.  John's mission was to reach over into next door's abandoned pool and get me some replacements as I could see them swimming around in the sunshine - the only problem is that they are currently sharing their murky water with hundreds of things that look like leeches or some such long wriggling creatures which I don't want to get too close to.  I had to pick out the little fishes from the net avoiding the wriggly things which was rather disgusting but eventually I got about a dozen replacements which have gone back into my pool without the lid on so fingers crossed they will survive, they survive in the rancid leech infested water next door after all.

My culinary skills were redundant this evening as John had decided he was going to get creative with the leftover silverside from yesterday.  He decided to do a stir fry using a recipe had found on tintyweb this morning which was Beef Stir-Fry with Onions and Peppers but as our meat was already cooked he decided not to cut into dainty strips but more like man-sized slabs but I have to say it was absolutely delicious particularly the bits which had got caramelised.  This time the beef had loads of flavour and we have decided we really should do stir-fry more often.  He made a couple of tweaks to the recipe - using port instead of cooking wine and adding some waterchestnuts and strips of cucumber for colour.  I have told him I will retire from the kitchen in future - he did a grand job.  

Early night for us as we are both walking in the morning although not together - that would be a recipe for disaster!!!