Photo diary: week 37, project 366

The second week of school went relatively smoothly. Eddie is getting used to the new school arrangements and is less anxious, compared to the first few days. I'm relishing peace and quiet at home, when I'm on my own. I don't even bother to watch anything on TV. I read, potter in the garden, do chores like mending and decluttering.

I've been growing nasturtiums from seeds since spring. Though I had plenty of leaves, the flowers didn't start to appear until recently. I was quite disappointed with the lack of blooms, as I see them growing around in town in big splashes of colour, and they are supposed to be easy to grow.
I was hoping that I could pick both flowers and leaves for salads, but there are so few flowers, I only eat an occasional leaf or two. They have a nice peppery taste.

I'm not comping as much as I used to do, but I still enter book competitions, mainly on Twitter and Instagram. A couple of weeks ago I won a new book by Angela Britnell and a little Lindt bar.
The author is Cornish-born, and lives in Tennessee now. I read one of her books earlier this year, A Summer to Remember in Herring Bay (my review is scheduled for tomorrow as part of the blog tour, if you are curious to read it, I will add a link, once the post goes live).

I walked to Sainsbury's in the morning, after taking Eddie to school, and snapped St Mary's Church. It was quite misty earlier, but getting clearer by the minute.

When my husband was in Venice last week, he stayed with a friend. It brought back memories of our stay at her father's villa in Agropoli, when our Sasha was four years old, and their daughter was a baby. It started as a Greek colony, and there's the famous Greek temples in Paestum not far from the town.
I was looking at the old photos from that trip. Sash was so cute then. Here he is, sitting among the ruins of Paestum, a little boy lost in his own world.
I love this photo. My Mum did a beautiful painting using this image, only she placed Sasha by the sea, with the waves behind him. If you want to see her artwork, I wrote a post about it several years ago, called Boy-Island.

Meeting with my friend for coffee at Blue Boar. She is another Russian lady, whose son goes to the same school as Eddie, and they were both born on the same day, a year apart. How's that for a coincidence?! For the last few months I missed meeting her for a natter and a good moan about our husbands.

She has told me of a new Romanian shop in town, called Gusturi Romanesti. I loved browsing in the shop, and will definitely be back. I bought some biscuits, breadsticks, pickled vegetables and a jar of peach jam. Next time I go there, I should take a bag on wheels so I can get some heavy jars of honey and pickles.

On Thursday Eddie and I were watching a live talk with Ross Sayers on YouTube. He was talking about his new book called Daisy on the outer line. It's written in Scots. We liked the idea of the plot, but the question is - will I be able to understand the written Scots?!

A friend brought me a DVD of The Small Hand, with Douglas Henshall (love him in Shetland!). I read Susan Hill's book years ago, and found it wonderfully creepy. The film turned to be a bit of a disappointment. The actors were mumbling a lot, I couldn't catch everything they were saying, and there were no subtitles on the DVD. Also they changed the plotline quite a bit from what I remember. And I really hated the ending.

Eddie said it was not scary enough. He likes scary films (last week we were watching Locke & Key on Netflix), and keeps telling me we should watch IT and Pet Sematary, as apparently many of his class mates watched them. I told him there is no way we're going to watch either.
I've seen the original Pet Sematary many years ago, and that scarred me for life. For me it's one of the creepiest, scariest horror films ever. I shiver just thinking about it.

My darling husband came back from his holidays in Italy. Guess what he brought me as a gift for coping with the guys on my own for almost two weeks?!
A bleeping fridge magnet! (insert a long mental stream of expletives) Actually, Eddie and I laughed at him. What a thoughtful gift.

Yesterday I baked an apple tart, with our own apples and the peach jam I bought in the Romanian shop. I served it with Rodda's clotted cream. Now that we have so many apples in the garden, I will be using them in cooking for months ahead. I might make a batch of apple jelly too.

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