The Simple Bare Necessities feat. Gratitude & Recipes

Good Evening :hello:

Upsidedown Bear - i've only managed a small cup of coffee today - out of the thermos at that! - DH seems to have made me several thousand cups of tea since 4.00pm. I'm not a huge fan of tea........ Have certainly drunk more of it since Baby Greying put in an appearance, and sometimes a good cuppa is just what you need, but I think my tolerance of it is beginning to wane..... or perhaps I'm just awash with the stuff today.

Moneywhizz - thank you. I try not to be too 'everything is always peachy in my patch'. Because I'm human and it ain't. But we are blessed, and reminding myself of that, frequently, certainly helps to not dwell on the things out of my control.

Well, we went off adventurising. The weather stayed resolutely sulky, which was a shame in that it didn't help the trees to show off their colours to their true advantage. But it most certainly didn't stop us doing anything that we wanted. So no complaints.

We went to an 'old bit' of country park (ie we'd been to it before, but not with BG) and had a lovely time walking along an 'easy' bit of track. Took some lovely pics - a great reminder of the day. Then we moved on to a reservoir, using a route that we'd never been on before. Wonderful. We saw plenty of wildlife up close. Including a buzzard, which was nervous of the car (we were on a single track road), but curious too, so it would let us get almost to it, and then fly on several fence posts, land on the post, and then take off when we got 'too close' again. When I got out of the car to take some scenery pics, I saw some birds that I think were fieldfares. Unfortunately, the 'in-car' binoculars (only NT ones) seem to have migrated out of the car into the house, so I couldn't get a good look, but I'm sure that is what they were. A big flock of them. In addition, there was a huge flock of starlings also sitting in the trees alongside the fieldfares (ie separate trees, but all together) - my goodness they are noisy birds!

We had a picnic in a quiet spot and listened to the food prog on R4 - all about pumpkins

We had a wonderful day out, all free apart from the cost of the fuel in the car. We've some wonderful pictures - including several half decent ones of me & BG - a rarity, as I am usually the 'right' side of the camera :rotfl:- and we've the memories of the birds, the tree colours and each others company The other advantage was that the country park, the road to the resevoir and the resevoir itself weren't over-run with visitors. We didn't quite have the place to ourselves - the country park is popular with dog owners - but it was about as near as you can get....

Tea was NOT as described earlier I'd forgotten that the piece of baked orzo was more of a portion for 1, and I've not got ooodles of veg to pad it out (got veg, but stuff like spianch and chopped leeks etc). So instead, I dug some lemony spinach hotpot out of the freezer and teamed it up with some brown basmati rice. OK, we had rice last night too, but brown rice is pretty distinct in its taste, so it didn't feel too repetitious. We have had a magnUm for dessert.

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

getting to see flora and fauna up close

that we have a car to take us places - even if it is old, and we have to keep to tight budgets to keep it on the road, and pack a lunch........

that we hadn't planned a hike - someone* forgot to put the sling carrier in the car :whistle: :rotfl:

Ta for popping by and joining in. Mucho appreciated.

Greying X

* clue - t'weren't me!