Photo diary: week 29, project 366

All the excitement about the last week was it being the end of the strange school year. I sighed with relief that we don't have to do home lessons for several weeks. On the other hand, it will be more upsetting for Sasha, who likes his school routine. He has another couple of days at school, and then we're all officially school-free until September, and then who knows?!

I was trying to find a jar of vanilla paste in the baking section in Waitrose, when I spotted a new product - an Italian cake mix for Torta Caprese (basically, an almond cake). The cake mix inside includes roughly chopped almonds, to which you need to add butter and eggs, and a bit of milk. It was utterly uncooked by the suggested time, so I left it in the oven for longer.
It tasted better the next day. I'm glad I've tried it, but I won't rush to buy it again, unless it's on offer, and then I will add some ingredients to it, to make the texture less coarse and grainy. As a cake mix, it has potential.

I'm cheating with the next photo, as it's pinched from a WhatsApp's chat.
My brother and his family spent Sunday in Ust'-Kachka, by the river Kama, an hour's drive away from the city where I was born and lived until my mid-20s. This photo made me quite nostalgic, as I haven't visited those parts of the world for many-many years.

There are not that many flowers in the garden at the moment, apart from a few phloxes, hollyhocks and echinacea. Almost all the roses are gone, though you can see several white roses up high in the branches of the plum tree (the rose has climbed up the plum).

The wild plum is laden with fruit which is still super sour. I'm not sure which variety of the plum that is, but it's not a sloe. I don't know whether to keep the fruit on the tree until it's ripe and then pick it up, or pick it now and let it ripen in the bowl at home, so that the squirrel thugs won't destroy it. Last year they ruined most of my plums, they just bite the fruit off and drop on the ground.

One of the last school tasks on Thursday was a story of Mary Anning. You had to watch a video about her, answer a short questionnaire and do four drawings, based on the fossils she has found, imagining what they would look like. Eddie spent two days, drawing four creatures, but of course, Friday was the last day, so nobody bothered to actually check what he has done. That's a disappointment.

I needed to pop to M&S to return a belt I bought the day earlier for Sash, as it was too short. Got the next size, and it's huge, and I need to add more holes. Not sure how I'm going to do that, worried that the knife will make ugly cuts rather than neat holes. Eddie was doing his best ninja impersonation.

Have you seen today's shit-storm on Twitter, caused by some journo from The Times, who compared the obligatory wearing of the masks to Nazism. How can she equate masks to gas chambers?!

I don't like wearing a mask, I don't think anyone does, and as a parent of a son with severe autism, I appreciate that not everyone is capable of wearing one, as it might cause a bout of stress.

Passing by one of the shops in High Street, I took a snap of the mannequin, wearing a skirt and top which I really like. I'm very tempted to buy them (minus the scarf, as I have plenty of those). They are rather plain, but I could style them with lots of other bits and pieces.

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