Just getting things done...

This morning I had to rescue a rather large praying mantis from one of the cat's water bowls.  I thought it was dead but on closer inspection it was still hanging on - I am not sure how long it had been in the water.  I fished it out and put it on one of the ferns in the garden to dry out and hopefully fly away to live another day.

It took some time for the poor thing to dry out sufficiently enough to move to a place of safety.  Hopefully it will survive - I hate to see anything perish through no fault of its own.

I needed to go out to the Garden Centre today to pick up the indoor plant I had ordered. I wanted to get a Herringbone Plant - latin name Maranta Leuconeura.  Marianna at the Garden Centre had ordered one for me.  I offered to give Belinda a lift down to the beach en route as she had the day off.  I had to return a bowl and a bag of nuts which we had inadvertently packed and taken home with us last night.

I also stopped at the Charity Shop to drop some things off.  Whilst I was there I had a phone call from John because I had locked him out of the house.  I thought he might not have taken any keys with him on his bike road so I left the gate open but locked the front door.  I forgot that our emergency keys do not have a house key on them so they really aren't any good in an emergency are they?

I did buy something in the Charity Shop - there was a nice wooden cookery book stand for a whole 3 euros and although I find most recipes I need on my phone I do have some favourites in books that I still use - for example page 78 of Kopiaste (which is covered in spillages) is my failsafe go-to recipe for stifado!!!

I spent some time in the garden clearing away the annuals that have become rather leggy and before they all set seed and swamp the borders!  It was windy and changeable again today - nowhere near as settled as we would expect but we have done better than expected with the electricity and our bill for the last two months was only 20 euros so we really cannot complain and we have some units to carry over - there was a point midway through the month when I didn't think that was going to happen.

We are heading towards a very busy few of weeks.  Mike and Mel arrived today staying at the Souli, Carole and Paul arrive on Friday staying at the Souli and then on Saturday week Hazel arrives for a week and I cannot wait she is, of course, staying with us!

We had planned a week of eating out of the freezer but that went out the window when we were invited to eat at Lakis and Argy's on Thursday and Nicky and Mark's on Friday.

Tonight though I used up some halloumi, chorizo and bacon to make one of our favourite pasta dishes and it was lovely with enough left over for us to have as a snack lunch tomorrow.

We settled down to watch a couple of episodes of Succession - we are really enjoying it and have managed to avoid all the spoilers in the press so far.