Alphabet 2020 - X is for Christmas

I know, I know. I really don't like it when Christmas is abbreviated to Xmas but I also need an X word so that I can get this Alphabet 2020 completed this year and not have it drag into next year.

I do have another alphabet type thing for next year, but my intention is to actually have a theme for next year, all about music, which should make it easier to stay on track.

For years, I have been saving quotes from books and sharing them in the lead up to Christmas. I started doing this back when I was hosting the Virtual Advent Tour and it was something that I just continued. When I came back to blogging I deleted more than a dozen Christmas quotes that were sitting in draft.

I have again been collecting quote again this year and I plan to share a couple of quotes each week over the next few weeks!

Speaking of the Virtual Advent Tour, I was super excited to see that Sprite Writes still hosts the tour each year. You can find the details for this year's tour here. I have signed up to post on December 17 and at this point in time I have absolutely no idea what I am going to post but I still have just over a week to come up with something! Actually, I may have just had an idea!

Alphabet 2020: V is for Virtual Garden featuring The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman

I am not really a gardener. It's just really not something that interests me that much. I have a friend who regularly tells me that it is relaxing but I don't really see it.

It's not that we don't have gardens. Currently in the front garden we have the most ginormous bird of paradise, a very old rose bush, as well as some other plants, but they are about to go as we re-landscape the front garden. The plan is to put some flowering plants in, it will be more like native flowers, or contained in planter boxes.

Out the back we put a lot of native plants around the deck and they are even currently flowering but that's more by good luck than good management, I think.

The wildflowers around my deck right now. They are tiny flowers, but pretty.

The gigantic bird of paradise by the front door!

I am really hoping to keep this flower in the new garden. I really should try to get a photo of the front of the flower too

So imagine my surprise when I am reading a book that has me thinking that maybe I am secretly more interested in gardening than I thought I was. The title of the book, The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman, should have given me something of a clue as to the fact that gardens would going to play a big part in the book. What I didn't expect though was to find myself thinking things like, maybe I should see how much x plant will cost? And googling different types of flowers.

Let me tell you a little about the book

When Abby, Cory and their daughter Lily move into their new rental property in Grand Haven, Michigan, there is one thing that is made crystal clear. Their neighbour, Iris, who is also the owner of the house they now live in, is not to be disturbed, ever.

Abby has a lot on her plate. She is starting a new job in a very male dominated enviroment, her husband is not coping with life at all and she's not sure she can trust him to look after her daughter while she's working. Cory is a former soldier who is clearly still grappling with what he saw and experienced in Iraq.

Iris too is still living with the legacy of war. In her case though, it is the death of her husband during World War II and her young daughter not long after. She has struggled for years, to the point where she built a very tall wall around her house, and very rarely emerges outside it. Inside those walls, however, is a garden that reminds her of her loved ones, from her grandmother and mother who taught her to garden, to the rose that she developed in memory of her husband and more. 

Starting in April through to December we spend time with Iris looking at the various phases of her garden, where each bloom has it's season. Iris tends to all of her flowers with meticulous care, often naming them, and all of them bringing her memories back. She is also a master at cross-breeding to create new colours for her flowers. 

Gradually, the neighbours begin to bond, predominantly over their shared love of flowers, but it soon becomes clear that these four people can help each other with their trauma.

I loved this book so much. I really enjoyed reading about Iris, both past and present, and my heart broke for her as she looked back over her life. I also really enjoyed getting to know Abby, Cory and Lily, and loved the way that they were drawn together. 

I also found myself googling Grand Haven to try and see pictures of what was being described. It sounds like such a beautiful place to live.

One of the other things I loved about this book was the way it is structured. Each section is headed by the name of a particular flower, which then features in the section. Along the way the author gives us legends, history and childhood memories that I learnt a lot from. 

For my post today, I thought I would share each of the section titles with some pictures (and other observations in an attempt to share a little of this book!

Roses - As I mentioned, I do have a rose bush in my garden, which does give off lovely blooms, butI suspect it is probably at least 40 years old, so it is gnarled and not possible to prune to a neat shape. It is also right where the driveway is going to be extended into so that we have enough car parking space, so from a practical perspective, it's days are numbered.

Lilac-  It shouldn't be a surprise that I like the lilac coloured lilacs - I mean purple!

Bleeding Hearts - I hadn't heard of this plant before, but they are so pretty. I really enjoyed the Japanese fable that Iris told Lily, which you can read a version of here.

Trillium - This was a new to me flower which is a protected species in Michigan. And it's easy to see why this plant may be called trillium

Iris- The word iris comes from the Greek word for rainbows, because apparently they come in so many colours. Colour me surprised! I love irises and they are one type of flower that I will buy myself, but I had no idea that they weren't just purple with little yellow accents. LEt alone that you can get things like bearded irises.

Peony - How pretty is this flower?

Day Lillies - I found all the different ways that Iris cross bred her day lillies, to create new colours. So fascinating, but also requiring such patience as it took three years before you could see how the new flower looks. But it's kind of sad to think that these beautiful blooms only last a day.

Hollyhocks - "Put you ear next to the bell," my grandma would say. It's just like a seashell. It can tell you the story of it's life"

Ladies Mantle - Whilst this doesn't look as glamourous as some of the other plants,the story of how the water clings to the leaves and looks like sparkling diamonds was a delight.

Surprise Lillies - I often get a surprise when I go out into the garden and find some flowers, but I suspect that my surprise is for a different reasons than why these flowers are called surprises!

Coneflowers - I had no idea where echinacea came from, but I had no idea that it came from such a pretty flower as this.

Hydrangeas - Hydrangeas are one type of flower that I was familiar with. I thought I would share a paragraph to give you a taste of the writng

There was a candy store downtown when I was a little girl - Ye Old Fudge Factory - and the counter ran the entire length of the store. It was lined with glass globes filled with a rainbow world of candy: jelly beans, gumballs, gummy bears, sours, licorice, caramels, chocolates. The colors of my hydrangeas are like cotton candy: iridescent blue, lilac, lim, purple and the most beautiful stawberries-and cream panicle hydrangeas.

Black Eyed Susans - I think this colour just says summer to me! 

Dahlia - I had no idea that dahlia's are the national flower of Mexico!

Christmas Cactus - I tend to buy poinsettas if I am going to buy any new plants for Christmas, but I could be tempted to buy this. I am not sure if we can get them here or not!

In case it isn't clear, I just loved this book so much! And you definitely don't need to be gardener to appreciate this beautiful book!

Definitely a 5/5 read for me!

Alphabet 2020: U is for Unfinished!

 Just like this A-Z challenge.

Move along...nothing more to see here.

Alphabet 2020: T is for Time

via GIFER

Time is funny isn't it?

Every week we have a two day weekend which is never long enough, but when we have a three day weekend that isn't long enough. Have a week long break from work and that often isn't long enough  either. Every weekend there is a list of things to do but we often run out of time to do them all but then you think well what did we achieve? It is sometimes only when you sit down and look back you can see all the things that you have achieved.

In this crazy year that is 2020 it feels like time has been dragging but when I look back this time last year feels like it wasn't that long ago. This time last year we weren't yet married. And yet we have spent far more time together over the last 6 months than we ever would have expected.  We met in January 2017, so coming up to 4 years ago but I can't imagine life with him. I do remember what that is like and I wouldn't want to go back.

My son turns 22 this week. 22! How did that happen? And yet it did, and that is something that we feel both when we look at our own kids and others. Where did that time go?

One of the reasons I am thinking about time is that we both signed up to do a double diploma this week (in different fields). I did a 3 day course a couple of years ago, and a couple of things in the late 90s but really other than that I haven't done any formal learning since the early 90s and even then I dropped out because I couldn't fit it in with work, social life, sport and church (which at the time was important but isn't a factor now). It is something that I have thought about doing several times, and talked about doing, but just haven't quite done anything about it.

In theory the course can take up to two years which sounds like forever, but two years ago my son was living in America, I wasn't engaged let alone married, we had done the kitchen renovation but we hadn't done anything else yet, I was in a different job so a lot can happen in two years!

The question really is how am I going to fit it in? Work is crazy busy and I am working long hours, I still want to read and blog because I have really enjoyed coming back to blogging this year and I feel as though it is filling a need for me right now. There are some things that can go but do I want to let them go. I guess I will see.

Even the fact that I normally would post these A-Z things on a Thursday or Friday but today it is Sunday says  something about time I think. This was a good idea at the beginning but because there is no set theme or structure it is easy to skip a week. I do have an idea for another A-Z but that is going to be music based so I will announce that once I get to the Z on this one which could be some time between 6 to 12 weeks or longer

Sounds like a long time right, but that will fly by, because time is funny like that.

Alphabet 2020 - S is for Social Media

I have been thinking a lot lately about social media and blogging, how they interact, how and where I want to spend my time, and more. That's a lot of thinking.

There are so many ways for you to interact with other books lovers I don't think it is even possible to attempt to keep up any more. There is also a lot of ways to catalogue your books, with more emerging every day.

Let's start with the big three:  Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  In theory, I am on all of those, but you couldn't really say I am fully present on them, at least from a book blogging perspective.

I have recently started a Facebook page for my blog and I am really enjoying that. I try and remember to share the links from my posts there although I am sure that there must be a way to automatically feed  links from here to there. I know that you used to be able to do that to Twitter, but that doesn't seem to work anymore, so I need to figure that out. On my Facebook page I also share all sorts of other random book links there as they capture my interest, and I follow several other book bloggers too.  In addition, there are book clubs, book groups, publishers pages and so much more, but the thing is that I don't often read the book club books because I have enough to read without adding another "should read" book to my pile.

I do spend a bit of time on Instagram, but to be fair it is more about non book related things, so there are lots of pictures of cakes. I need to figure out how to put up interesting look blog related content, without it just being a screenshot of the blog post because that just looks a bit boring. Having said that, I don't have the decor, accessories or the imagination to do pretty book posts, especially since most of my reading now is on Kindle which is a black and white screen!  I also never really got into the #bookstagram thing either, even though I am aware that a lot of publicists love Instagram and Facebook for reviews now, rather than the traditional blog reviews.

I have been on Twitter for years, but I really don't do much on there, certainly in comparison to the early days. It really is just my page updates from Goodreads and sometimes an image from Instagram, but not all of the time. I think if I want to use it for images, I do have to go to Google and upload the image rather than just pushing it from Instagram because you just get a link rather than an image doing it that way. I also need to make more of an effort to go on there and share my blog content. I used to spend a lot of time there amongst the blogging community but now when I am on there I feel like I am talking to a void. I used to always post something on Twitter and have it automatically flow through to Facebook. I was all for those types of automated tricks but it doesn't seem to do that anymore.  I am aware that it would feel less like talking into a void if I was more active and more invested, which is true of all of these things. The more you put in the more you get out, but how do you decide where to put in when there are so many options.

Another place where I am somewhat active is Litsy. I do enjoy Litsy but I don't always update there, and again, its hard to make every single book picture look interesting when it is of my Kindle front page.

Finally, from a purely social perspective I have joined a group on Discord, which is another way to chat to people with similar interests. It is popular in the gaming community so maybe it will take off of as a book thing too. Right now, the group I am in is super super busy so I am not sure I have the time to keep up and participate.

I am sure there are many, many more places that we could be talking about here. Even as I was just about to post this I realised I haven't mentioned podcasting or Youtube. There's a whole community of Booktubers out there that I am not really connected to. And are there book communities on Snapchat and Tiktok? Is Snapchat even still a thing? I don't hear much about it anymore. Even if there is I would have no intention of joining either of them, but I am still curious.

You'll notice that I haven't yet mentioned Goodreads yet, and that's because I am going to cover the book cataloguing sites separately.  I have been a member of Goodreads since 2009 and it is just a part of my reading experience. Every couple of days I go in and update my reading progress and when I finish a book I add it to my spreadsheets, and then I go to Goodreads and mark it as read. If I write a review I do put part of my review there and then link back to here but I am not sure if I should just copy the whole review over there and not worry about linking back here.

The thing is though, there are other options out there. Many years ago I had a Librarything account but I haven't been there for years but I guess it is still a viable option, especially seeing as Librarything now own Litsy. Just this week though I found out about two more sites that could have potential. One is called Bookhype and the other is Storygraph.

Bookhype's tagline is Never Miss a New Book Release and it says that you can log your books, see upcoming new releases, add new books in a series to your library and more, which I have to say does sound promising.

Storygraph is currently in beta, but from what I have seen of it is another book cataloguing site. but it's points of differences are that it gives you targeted recommendations and that you can easily access lots of stats and graphs at the touch of the button. I do love a good graph and statistics, so I think this is the one that I will try for now. Actually I did play with it a little bit and I really like it so far! The graphs are fun to play with! For example, this is the mood graph for all the books I have just imported into it.

My thinking around these different options is about the practicalities like if I decide to start with one of these other sites, is it replacing Goodreads, or does it become in addition to it and therefore becomes another place that I have to remember to update going forward.

The key to all of these things is trying to keep a bit of balance between blogging, visiting other people's blogs which I think is important but time consuming, spending time on social media, work, life and, oh yes, still finding time to read. And throw in there the fact that we are talking about doing some work related study and that is even less time to do everything. Except for today. Today I am going to be playing with Storygraph.

How do you balance this? How do you manage with all the different social media sites? Are you interested in all of these new sites? Are there other new sites that we should be checking out??

I'm not sure if I have come up with any answers by putting all these thoughts in writing, but maybe it will help clarify my thinking a bit. Oh, and if you are interested, click on the socials links on the right to follow me at any of these sites. Depending on which one you click you may or may not see lots of content! I think I am Margreads on just about all of them!

Alphabet 2020: R is for a review of The Switch by Beth O'Leary

What's this? A review? Why yes it is! And there could be another in the next couple of days! Definitely worth including in my Alphabet 2020 themes for this year! Yes, I confess, I am trying to meet two objectives with one post! It's a bit of a stretch but I am counting it.

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Last year, we went on holidays to America. Remember holidays? I do. What that means for those of us living in Australia is very, very long flights. On that occasions the flights were delayed for a day, then we flew from Melbourne to Sydney, then to Houston and then finally to New Orleans. What do you need for so many and such long flights? Entertainment! And that was when I read Beth O'Leary's debut novel, The Flatshare. It was a perfect plane book. I laughed, I cried, and it was my only 5/5 read last year. There was therefore never any doubt that i was going read this book when it came out.

When Netgalley announced that they were starting to provide audiobooks for review through their new app, and I saw that this was one of the audiobooks, I jumped at the opportunity to listen to it.

Leena Cotton is the perfect career woman. She is driven, respected, ambitious, with a handsome and loving boyfriend. She has it all!  So what if she is having panic attacks before major presentations and her performance is dropping. So what if her relationship with her mother is non existent? So what if she is still struggling to deal with the loss of her beloved sister to cancer the year before.  It turns out that those are major issues, so much so that she is ordered to take a two month sabbatical from her job in London.

Leena's 79 year old grandmother Eileen lives in a small village in Yorkshire. She is one of the people who keeps the village going. She's a member of the Neighbourhood Watch, she helps organise the village fete every year, she watches out for those around her. She is, however, lonely, after her husband of many years leaves her. She is ready to get back on the dating scene, but there are slim pickings in the small town. The local doctor....no. Her grumpy next door neighbour Arnold. Absolutely not!

When Leena comes to visit her grandmother, the idea that they should swap lives is born. Leena can take the time to rest and recuperate, and maybe fix her relationship with her mother while Eileen can try life in London for two month and while she is there she might get a second chance at love.

It isn't quite as simple as that. For Leena, life in a small village is very busy. She has to take on the responsibilities that Eileen has left behind, which means committee meetings, organising others, walking the handsome school teacher's boisterous dog. And of course, small villages being as they are, finding herself in the middle of the village gossip circles. Leena doesn't necessarily get off to the best start, especially with Arnold and Eileen's best friend Betsy. And as for a long distance relationship with her equally career driven boyfriend - the plans to have him visit on weekends didn't last very long. There were always excuses as to why he couldn't make the trip up north.

For Eileen living in London is an eye-opening experience. She doesn't understand how her new flatmates live their lives, barely acknowledging the other people who live in the flats, unsuccessfully  trying to date with unreal expectations as to what or who they were looking for. It doesn't take Eileen long to start organising the people around her, coming up with the idea to create a safe place for other older people in the local community to meet up as a social club., Once Leena's bestie gives Eileen a lesson in online dating, she is also launched onto the dating scene. But Eileen hasn't yet learnt to look out for the warning signs, given that she accepts everyone at face value.

It is interesting to me that the story that I was most interested in was Eileen's. She is thirty years older than I am and definitely has way more get up and go than I do!  She took the opportunities that came her way, getting to know the other occupants in the building far more than Leena and her flatmates ever had. She embraced dating and sex with a joy that was a bit surprising given that she is nearly 80 and soon was helping out her flatmates with their lives as well. But there was always going to be a time when she had to go home. And what then? Is that it for love and adventure for Eileen? And will her desire to protect her daughter and grand daughter at any cost go awry?

Leena was a bit more problematic for me. I got that she was grieving and mentally exhausted. She just didn't seem to have the ability to really see the people around her. Whilst that was initially understandable, it did seem to drag on for a while and there were times that I wanted to just lean into the book and tell her to wake up!

Whereas The Flatshare was a 5 star read for me, this was a good read without being spectacular. Having said that, am I already excited about this author's next book, The Roadtrip, which is due out next year? You bet I am!

I mentioned that I listened to this book. The narrators were Alison Steadman as Eileen and Daisy Edgar-Jones from Normal People as Leena and I did enjoy their performances. However, the Netgalley app itself was a bit glitchy. It kept on stopping every time I got a notification on my phone or when I got to the end of a chapter. I am hopeful that these issues will be resolved as the app gets developed further.

Rating 4/5

Goodreads Description

Eileen is sick of being 79.
Leena's tired of life in her twenties.
Maybe it's time they swapped places.. 

When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen's house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She'd like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn't offer many eligible gentlemen.

Once Leena learns of Eileen's romantic predicament, she proposes a solution: a two-month swap. Eileen can live in London and look for love. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire. But with gossiping neighbours and difficult family dynamics to navigate up north, and trendy London flatmates and online dating to contend with in the city, stepping into one another's shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected.

Leena learns that a long-distance relationship isn't as romantic as she hoped it would be, and then there is the annoyingly perfect - and distractingly handsome - school teacher, who keeps showing up to outdo her efforts to impress the local villagers. Back in London, Eileen is a huge hit with her new neighbours, but is her perfect match nearer home than she first thought?

Alphabet 2020: Q for Quiet Please!

Actually, what I am hunting is reading time

As I have mentioned before here in Melbourne we are currently in stage 4 lockdown which basically means that we are only able to leave the house for only a couple of reasons, and we have a curfew from 8pm to 5am every night.

I have been working from home for 5 months now and, if anything, it is even more intense now than it was at the beginning. I have so much happening in the work space and there is still more coming. I am working long hours and it's really full on so by the end of the day it's all I can do to sit in front of the TV with the laptop on my lap and visit other people's blogs. Some days even that is too much.

This means that actual reading is suffering. The only time when I am getting any reading done tends to be in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping. It's even too intense during working hours to really listen to audiobooks.

Of course, there are things that I could do to create some reading time. I have some games that I play everyday and I could stop doing those, but I like doing them. I could go to bed earlier but then I will probably go to sleep too early and be awake in the middle of the night, even more than I am right now.

Yesterday I was part of a leadership session and we were talking about how do you relax. Do you do anything creative?Some times on the weekend I am baking but during the week it is blogging that is my creative outlet. What that means though is that I turn off my work laptop and then come out and pick up my own laptop. And then I try to read on a Kindle or my phone. That's a lot of screen time.

Are you reading more or less now than you normally would have done?

Weekend Cooking: P is for Pizza

One of the things I haven't generally been good at is using leftovers. I mean, we eat them, often for lunch but usually it is in the same format so I am in envy of people who can look at their leftovers and think up something different.

An exception to this is when we make up a big batch of butter chicken, which is a mild curry. Rather than just reheating it and cooking more rice, we tend to make butter chicken pizza. We use the sauce from the curry as the sauce on the pizza base is very tasty.

I think the first time I saw this recipe it was in a small pamphlet that featured everyday recipes from Masterchef contestants and I thought it sounded a bit odd, but curry pizzas are now definitely  I think the original recipe included things like curry leaves, but the reality is that we have dumbed our version of it down a bit. I therefore don't have an exact recipe. It's more like a guide!

We have also been known to buy prepared butter chicken from the supermarket for those nights when we just want something super quick and tasty.

We start with a pre-prepared pizza base and cover it with the curry sauce and chicken. We then add red onion, baby spinach and then cover it liberally with cheese and then cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

Do you have a favourite way to use up your leftovers?




This is also my post this week for my Alphabet 2020 post.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

Alphabet 2020: N and O

I have missed a couple of weeks of my Alphabet 2020 so this week I am combining N and O together.

Together it could be NO. NO going out, NO leaving the house without having a mask with us at all times, NO commute - so many NOs that I could do.

But instead, I am going to do a bit of a New and Old feature, talking about the work we have done around the house over the last couple of years.  I have mentioned a few things here on the blog but this will be the post where I put them all together.

When my now husband moved in, I am not sure if he bought his checklist of things to be renovated with him or if that has just evolved over time. I have made the joke that when he finishes renovating this house then we either need a new house to work on or he might need to find a new wife! He assures me that neither of these are true though. That's when he can turn his attention to his hobbies.

The very first thing on the the agenda was to tidy up the laundry, adding in a bench top that we can use for folding clothes and things, or at least that's the theory! And then we added solar panels.

The first major reno job that we did was the kitchen and it was completed just over two years ago, and I have to say I still love the way it looks, and the benchtops! I quite often stand at the stone benchtops and just caress it! I did a quite lengthy post about the reno process which you can read here, but here are just a couple of pictures.

One of the clever things that Bob the builder did was to take the kitchen cabinet you can see on the left and repurposed it for more storage in the laundry!

The next major job that we did was the deck. My intention was always to completely close the deck in. As you can see from the before photos it was kind of closed in and that was definitely what I thought would happen, until one day I had the brain wave to open it out. That was the time when I learnt that I need to have ensured that I had thought things through before I say anything because within a few days of suggesting it we were already ripping out shrubs and flower beds.

And what we ended up was this great outdoor space that gets used way more than the old deck ever did, and we even had it all decorated for our wedding celebration last year. And those plants on the edge of the deck. I hadn't realised just how much they have grown since we put those in.  We have subsequently removed the washing line and put in a fire pit which we love too.

Next job was the flooring. You can see in the before photos for kitchen the floor tiles were very 1970s so doing the flooring made all the difference!

Next stop was my son's bedroom. It's amazing what a difference moving a wardrobe makes because I would never have thought that we could have fitted a queen sized bed in that room the way it was configured before. Unfortunately,  it appears we didn't take before or after photos which is odd.

The next projects were the laundry/toilet

And then the bathroom which is a job that was very overdue. We are super pleased with how the bathroom has turned out. It feels so much bigger than it was, just by taking out a lot of the brown, and by moving the bath around.

So the parts of the house that are still old are the spare bedroom which we are currently using as an office, our bedroom and the ensuite. One of the biggest changes when we get to our ensuite will be the removal of a chocolate brown toilet suite - no I am not joking!

We also plan to change the heating/cooling in the whole house, the window coverings, replacing the front door which features lovely orange frosted glass, and now we need to clear the frontyard so that we can create another car parking space.  This is the before of that particular project. Who knows when we will finish the after!

The amazing thing about all of this is that my husband has done the vast majority of the work. He loves the research and planning, and then the ripping out and fixing up and the sense of satisfaction when the job is done.

So there we have the New and Old of our house. If I had to gauge I would suggest that we are more New than Old but there's still plenty to do. Guess that means the husband will be here a bit longer yet!

Alphabet 2020: M is for Melbourne

I have lived in Melbourne now for around 19 years. It's a place I love, and I can't really imagine living anywhere else. The city regularly tops the polls for the best place to live in the world for good reason. If you want sport, there is normally plenty on. If you want theatre, then there is a vibrant theatre and music scent. Culture? We've got it. We often say that if you can't find something good to eat in Melbourne then you aren't really trying hard enough.

My husband has lived here for about 10 years, and I remember one of our early conversations where we were talking about why we liked living here and he described it as a living city, and I really like that description. The reality is that there is something for everyone really, whatever you are interested in.

This week, though, has been a tough one for us Melburnians.  As of yesterday we have gone back into lockdown as a result of a second wave of COVID 19.  For us, lockdown means that we can only leave the house for four approved reasons: to work if you can't work from home, for medical treatment, for physical fitness reasons and essential shopping

I know that in comparison to many places around the world, our numbers are miniscule, but by Australian standards our infection numbers have skyrocketed and therefore drastic measures have had to be taken. At the moment we have around 800 active cases, but some of the daily numbers of cases identified are higher than they were at any time during the virus, which is why everyone is concerned.

So what does that mean for us. We have now been working from home for nearly 4 months, and so that will continue now for quite some time. Given that we hadn't gone back into the office after the last lockdown even though that finished a month ago, I can't see us getting back into the building until maybe the end of October but I am thinking later. It is a bit demoralising to be going backwards after we were able to start to go back to normal. I am grateful that we took the opportunity to do some normal things like having brunch and going for a drive in the country while we could  - always following the rules around social distancing and washing our hands.

When we realised that we were going to end up working from home, I wasn't really looking forward to it at all, but it turns out that I have quite enjoyed it. I like not having to do the 90 minute commute each way every day on public transport. I like being able to get up later and I like seeing my husband all day, or at least being able to hear him as we aren't always in the same room.

One of the things that I would never have imagined is the fact that the state borders have closed between the states. Right now, my state is basically isolated with all our adjoining state borders closed to Victorians. Apparently this is the first time that the borders between New South Wales and Victoria has been closed for around 100 years.

One of the interesting things about the way that Australia is dealing with the crisis is that there are no instructions at all to advise us that we should be wearing masks. I know that will shock a lot of people who have very strong opinions about the wearing of masks, but even the medical professionals in my organisation said that it wasn't necessary. I do think it will come soon, but for now, there are very few people wearing masks as we go about our business, when we can.

It is going to be tough over the next six weeks for the people in this city, but hopefully this further period of lockdown will have the necessary effect, and we can get back to enjoying life in this wonderful city!

Alphabet 2020: L is for Launch of Paris in July

So I know that this is a lame effort to find a theme for the letter L, but what can I say, I am trying to kill two birds with one stone, as they say.

Paris in July is an annual event that is hosted by Tamara at Thyme for Tea.  This is the tenth year that the event has been run. I think I have done it maybe three times over that period. I always intended to do more.

When I started blogging again this year, one of the things I was looking forward to was this event. A whole month of posts about Paris and France, and the bonus was I would have been in Paris in April so would have lots of our own stories to tell about the fabulous time we had in Normandy and Paris! Alas, destiny had other ideas!

Instead, my plan is to share some quotes, some memories, maybe a little of this and a little of that. I do have a ton of books set in Paris on my ereader so maybe I will read one of those. Your guess is as good as mine, but there will be something over the next few weeks!

And I am looking forward to seeing what the other participants share over the current month.

Weeking Cooking/Alphabet 2020: K is for Kitchen Gadgets

It's hard to believe that it has been nearly two years since our kitchen reno was done, and I still love it, especially the stone bench.  Because we have no intention of redoing the kitchen again any time, now we need to start looking at the inside of our cupboards!

Over the last couple of weeks we have acquired a couple more kitchen gadgets. Now my challenge is to learn how to use them.

I will freely admit that it takes me a long time to come around to a trend. Do you remember the days before ballet flats first became a thing? Yeah, it took me about five years to start wearing them. And now, I don't wear anything but ballet flats. Well, not at the moment because I only wear ugg boots most days. That's me with most trends. This means that in five years time I will finally think about starting to make sourdough bread. It also means that we just got a pasta maker! So I am about 10 years too late on that one?

We've used it a couple of times now. Once for fettucine and once for spaghetti and oh my goodness the pasta was good! We are planning to try make ravioli soon as we got a mould to use for that, and now we get to play around with a few sauces.

The other gadget that we got is a combined slow cooker/pressure cooker/steamer thingy. Well, I guess what it is is a Crockpot combo. We have only made a chicken curry so far, but I think that the plan is to try to do pork belly this week of some description.

I am really curious as to how much we are going to use the pressure cooker function. If the current series of Masterchef is anything to go by then we should be using it for just about every cook to make broths and stocks and add depth and FLAVOUR!. Or maybe we will just use it to cook dinner every now and again. I guess it will depend on how long it takes us to figure out what all the buttons do.

We have had a slow cooker for a long time, so it will be a case of just using this one rather than the other. I do love that this one has a time delay function which we will be taking advantage of when things get back to normal.

So, do you have a favourite new kitchen gadget in your life? Or a favourite recipe for either of these new gadgets in my life?

By way of explanation for the title of this post, I have been writing a weekly series of posts each starting with a different letter of the alphabet. This week, we are up to K and K is for Kitchen Gadgets.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.