Another Giant Courgette.

It's been cloudy in the morning, sunnier in the afternoon.

We were just enjoying a cup of tea in bed this morning when we realised the builder had turned up to clean off the pavement. By the time I had dressed rain had set in and the poor junior builder was out there getting wet, again. The rain lasted for as long as he was here and it hasn't rained since. I'm sure he's used to it and no doubt the tea and biscuits helped. He did his best to scrub down the asphalt with an acid cleaner, fitted the letterbox and removed the bags of rubble that had been left behind the wall. All that's left is for the same guy that did our rendering to come and spray the cement walls. 

Today the postman put two packages through our brand new letter box. A shame they were for the house next door. He could hardly have missed our house name right above the letter-box. I expect he was too rushed to go back and put them through next-door's letter-box.

 

As everything was wet outside in the morning I harvested our second large courgette and used it to make a cheese and courgette loaf and two chocolate and courgette cakes. For once I happened to have all the right ingredients, even golden castor sugar and virgin olive oil. The only substitution was broken walnut pieces instead of chopped toasted hazel nuts. Oh and I added some grated  parmesan to the loaf simply because I have a chunk sitting in the fridge. I had a slice of the cheesy loaf with extra butter earlier and it was delicious. And for the sake of the blog I've just had a small slice of the cake which even without the chocolate ganache called for by the recipe is also very tasty. The larger cake can go in the freezer and I'll probably take the smaller one to share with our fellow Vikings at the carnival.

Although we didn't have the usual seagulls' nest to watch this year this past week two fledglings have been 'parked' next-door. They can fly and the older more confident one is often on the ridge of the house but home seems to be the garage roof. They are still dependent on the adults for food and spend a lot of time calling for food with their high pitched peeping.

The nest is usually on the flat roof behind the metal chimney pipe but this year in the spring the chimney stack was taken down and rebuilt to a lower height. I watched the builders working very carefully with spirit levels as they laid the bricks and they did a grand job but judging by the mess someone slapdash must have been sent to put the slab on the top. 

In the afternoon I made a start on cutting the hedges. I used the normal trimmer to go over the hedge at the side of the terrace and then took the extra long trimmer down to do the hedge at the bottom of the garden. I'm still not getting on with it, even carrying it down the garden felt like too much. My neighbour wants to come out next time to see if he can show me a better way to work with it but I really feel it is too heavy and unwieldy for me. I think I'll let him show Peter how to use it. If Peter can cut the hedge I'm happy to supervise (he cut great chunks out of the hedge with the trimmer the last time I let him cut the hedge) and sweep up.

Cutting the hedge with two trimmers and the secateurs plus a morning of baking and a bad night has worn me right out and I've decided not to go to choir. I need to spend the evening flopped on the sofa.