Supper is a cookin!

Saturday night braai

Ready for friends and a braai in Worthing

Yes, it is not quite the same as the 'old days' of braais around the pool with loads of good friends around, but after a full day of working in the garden, I was thankful it was a small one. We enjoyed a very convivial meal with Zimbo friends, the Chiketas, and it felt good to be able to just talk lots about things we all had in common. And you know, the meat for the braai was excellent - British beef and lamb - cooked up deliciously. We are getting used to the fact that the sun is still shining bright at dinner time (this photo was taken at a quarter to six), and as the really terrible garden we moved in with a few months back turns into something much nicer, we are enjoying our first full English summer.

Sunday Sunshine

Narcissus, Tulips, and pansies feature in Rose's first planter in England

Our garden is beginning to look like something we enjoy being in and looking at. It was an untidy mess when we moved into the house, and then came winter, so not much could get done. But spring has created the motivation, and we have had three braais (BBQ to the rest of the world) on our back garden patch. Rose has been busy planting sweet peas, and the bulbs we did plant in winter have come up and bloomed.

Yes, those are bikes up at the other end, and our braai

No, that is not our house, it is 3 houses!

The lawn is recovering nicely after much neglect I am certain! As I type here, I can hear church bells peeling in the near distance, and the broken lock I repaired on the garden shed at the bottom of the garden makes me feel like getting in there and setting up some of my tools and organising the workbench.

Here Comes Erin

This is four-month-old Erin, part Boxer, part Staffordshire Bull Terrier, heading straight for my ear, which she neraly pierced a second or two later. Erin belongs to Julie, ex Zimbo from Gweru. She and brother Robert, attend Grace Community Church, and we invited them back for an impromptu braai after the Easter Sunday service.

It really was impromptu - I needed to quickly clean the old Weber, clean the house up (a lot, really, because Ashleigh is down from Oxford for the weekend!) get the large umbrella unwrapped and up, remind the neighbours to take their washing off the lines, and get the fire going. We did not have any suitable meat for a braai, and Rose struggled to find a store open on Easter Day .. which I actually really was happy about because EVERYTHING being open for business as usual in Johannesburg over the Easter weekend used to really make me cross. She did find some steak and juicy turkey breasts which cooked well and went down even better. Not quite half a cow and twenty five friends and family around the pool, anymore, but it was nice to be eating and laughing and playing with a dog outside again. Rob and Julie have been here for 6 and 5 years respectively, and Julie has recently become a British citizen. Their parents still live in Zimbabwe.

A Kariba Sunset (photo by Jeremy Hayden)

We ended up talking about Kariba, and houseboat holidays we have enjoyed in the past, and even with today's glorious spring weather in Worthing, momentarily pondered fantastic days catching Tiger fish and Bream on the big lake.

First braai in Britain

Today has been a perfectly sunny day - not so warm as we are used to of course - but seeing old friends from Harare drove down from near Horsham to see us today, we decided to unwrap the faithful old Weber and get the briquettes lit. I forgot to take pictures during the actual cooking ... we were so involved in catching up with each other that I forgot about photos until we were saying goodbye!

The picture shows our expansive garden! The grass was about two feet high when we moved in, and you could hardly see the concrete path for the overgrown bushes, so we have made some progress. I managed to get a compost maker from the local FREECYCLE list, and Rose already has it quietly decomposing. A bit like the church we visited in the town centre last Sunday!

At the very back of the garden is a dilapidated garden hut that will soon have a new and weatherproof roof. Beyond that you can see a traffic signal that indicates how close we are to the railway line.