This, That and the Other

Just general boring news…

We have lots of apples in our garden, so I made chutney at the weekend. It sat marinating in our kitchen until Wednesday, when I jarred it. It smelled very nice and tasted nice too.

Making chutney is so fun! I would seriously recommend it! This is the third batch of apple chutney made this year, albeit to a different recipe. I love the idea of the jars sitting maturing in the cupboard in our garage. And I hope it tastes nice. I look forward to eating it with cheese later this year. And giving it away to relatives at Christmas (whether or not it tastes nice!).

I said we had lots of apples. To prove this, last weekend we succeeded in picking 3 boxes full of apples from the tree, making two apple crumbles, and stewing over 4 kg of apples. I got a little tired of wrapping the apples in newspaper.

On Tuesday I decided I was going to ‘kill’ all those bruised apples that needed chopping. I had almost completed chopping them all when I discovered that my dear brother had shaken a further bagful off the tree. Does he really think I enjoy peeling apples that much?

However, today I succeeded in my goal. Deserves a victory dance! Though I was greatly aided by my mother chopping some yesterday afternoon.

My attitude towards cutting these apples has decidedly changed. At the beginning of summer I disliked the very thought of cutting them up, but now I can sit to cut up apples with a cheerful spirit, and I almost enjoy chopping and peeling them, even the little ones!

Anyhow, enough about apples.

I discovered a large spider…

…and photographed it.

My brother is scared of spiders!

My violin lessons are going fairly well. I started in July and my teacher says I’m Grade 1 standard already. She thinks I have made quick progress: have I? However I have had and still have my hurdles, my especial favourite at present being catching the D string while playing on the A string.

So far we have done five days of school out of nine. I settled into my work well, just in time to have 3 days off. Thankfully I settled into my work fairly quickly today. Little sister has begun her preschool and she quite enjoys it!

I am planning to type up some more interesting posts. And I still have to tackle my email inbox and feed reader; the idea daunts me… I haven’t checked up for a week.