Summer's goodness

What a lovely weekend, we had such warm sunny weather - summer arrived! We planned a weekend at home with friends visiting on Saturday and a relaxing day just the four of us on Sunday and that's exactly what we got. A simple weekend sharing food, laughter and sunshine with friends. Do you see the apples on the apple tree, they're just ready for picking. My dad came to stay last week and was happily sitting under the tree and narrowly missed being concussed by a falling apple. I think we're going to have to find another shady spot to sit in for the next few weeks.


Our friends came late afternoon on Saturday and it was good to sit and chat and catch up on news and, yes, drink the odd glass or two of Pimms (well, it is summer and I'd been looking forward to doing this for months now).

We had good old Delia's "tart's spaghetti" (tomatoes, olives, capers, garlic and chilli sauce) for supper and M's delicious homemade herb focaccia - gorgeous. Fresh strawberries, blueberries, meringues and cream for pud - doesn't get much better. We sat out in the garden till late with our children playing board games and laughing.


Look what our friends brought with them for us, lots of lovely fresh runner beans, courgettes and onions from their garden - a real taste of summer.

For those of you following our paddling pool escapades, the saga continued on Sunday. M successfully inflated the pool and sat holding leaky hose to tap for far too long, only to discover that the pool was deflating and leaking. Successfully found two holes. Return trip to B&Q again for another paddling pool and brand new hose. Mission finally accomplished and girls shrieking with delight in the icy cold water. Only six hours of our weekend taken up trying to get the pool inflated and full of water ....


I managed to finish some cosies too and M finally got to read the papers on the hammock whilst the girls spent the rest of the afternoon changing in and out of dry/wet clothes. Supper outside again and just before we started to pack up to come indoors we noticed the figs .... these figs that we've been waiting a year for were soft, ripe and ready to be picked. The seagulls and bluetits have been kind to us this year and we picked our first dozen figs last night. Fig tart, figs with greek yogurt and honey, anyone have any other good fig recipes? In a few weeks time there'll be enough to make a repeat of last year's fig chutney too. I love summer.