My own Charlotte's Web

A few weeks ago I was taking a shower and I turned around and looked up in the corner of the room and saw a spider looking down on me. 

It wasn't very big, but I'm not keen on spiders so I planned to go and get the flyspray as soon as I got out of the shower.  But I forgot all about it.

The next day I took another shower (I'm good like that) and out came the spider to sit on the wall to look down on me.  Again, I planned to get rid of it and again I forgot.

This went on for several days.  Occasionally while cleaning my teeth or brushing my hair, I would remember the spider and look up in the corner - but I never saw any sight of it. I don't know where it was hiding and I never saw it unless I was actually in the shower.

Eventually there came a day when I realised why the spider was hiding and why it came out every time I had a shower.  She'd laid a nest of eggs. And they'd hatched into dozens of tiny little speck-sized baby spiders.

"Well now it's really time to get rid of them!" I thought. 

But something held me back.

Each day when I showered, the mother spider would climb out on the web over her babies, looking down on them (and me) and making sure that everything was ok.  She was never aggressive and she never came anywhere near me.  The baby spiders would sprawl out across the window sill, no doubt picking up tiny drops of water and mist from the shower and maybe having their own little baths.  It was kind of endearing and I couldn't make up my mind to take any action on them while they were so small.

In true Charlotte's Web fashion, the mother spider died yesterday, still protectively hanging over her web. 

I think I'll wait for the babies to grow a little bit bigger and then I'll find a way to get them safely out into the garden.  It's the least I can do for her.

Sunday breakfast

One of the great pleasures of Sunday mornings is taking your brekkie back to bed to enjoy a few hours of unfettered laziness.

While bacon and eggs are always delicious, it puts a bit too much work into what is meant to be a lazy day, so for my money you can't go past some delicious avocado on toast.

I make my avo and toast a little special with grainy, crunchy toast and then a generous slathering of creamy avocado.  Drench the whole thing with a big squeeze of lime juice (a lovely change from lemon), a good grind of pepper and a sprinkling of chilli salt. I love the sharp taste of the lime and the heat of the chilli to offset the smooth avocado. I get my chilli salt from Gewurzhaus in Melbourne (they deliver). No MSG or nasties and the chilli is spicy but not too burny.

Top it off with a giant mug of coffee and a good book and you have the perfect start to a happy day.

      

Bad blogging, a new look and moving on

Ok, I'm a bad blogger.  If you knew how often I think, 'oh I should put that on the blog', you'd probably be surprised. But lately those thoughts have been followed by - 'noooo - I can't do anything till I post about Ireland!' And with one thing and another, it just seemed to be too big a mountain to pass over. 

So I'm not going to. If you are on Facebook you'll have cobbled together snatches of my trip around the beautiful Emerald Isle from my occasional posts.  And if you weren't - well here's the short version: A patchwork of green, lovely people and beautiful sights everywhere.  The food was nice, but having just come from France, nothing could really compete.  Highlights were the Aran Islands, Galway, Sneem, Dingle, and a day spent in Dublin with a dear friend. It's beautiful, visit it one day.

Gosh, that feels so much better! Now onwards and upwards to other things. 

Have you noticed how beautiful my blog is looking now?  If you are looking at it through a reader, jump across to the web version and admire it. I engaged the very talented Rita from the CoffeeShop Designs to do some much needed tweaking and design and I'm so happy with the outcome. I've followed Rita's CoffeShop Blog for years (and if you are into photography and design you should be a fan as well) and it was a great partnership. I love the way the web brings everyone together. We live on different continents and different time zones, but it was a super easy process and now my little blog really looks like a blog! Perhaps I should actually feed it some posts and make it even happier :-)

This year has really been one of change and evolution for me.  But for all the stress and angst that has come from pulling life up by the roots and transplanting it into something new, there has been a strange exhilaration that has come with the process.  I don't know quite where my life is headed at the moment, but it's moving on - not standing still and that is a really good thing. Maybe once things have settled a little more I'll write something about it. So thank you dear readers for sticking around (if you are still out there) and let's see where this wind takes us.  Right now it's sending wafts of the prawn bisque that is simmering on the stove to me so I'm going to have some dinner. Hope you are having a lovely night. xxx

Every doorway leads somewhere.