A Few Things That Currently Rock My Socks...

1. Phil's marathon minestrone.  I've had it three times in three days and I've got to say, it's one of my favourite ever soups! Borlotti beans are officially my new favourite bean :-)

2. Freckles. My freckles have appeared! Or Sommersprossen ("summer flecks") as the Germans so delightfully name them! I can never understand why some people try so hard to cover freckles up - they're so cute in a rustic, country-bumpkin kind of way. They make me want to wear a long flowing dress and a straw hat, and wander lustfully through cornfields.

3. My garden yard. I'll let you in to a secret: we have started referring to our plants as if they were our babies. I think I actually addressed them as 'the children' outloud earlier. But I feel a pride that I imagine is akin to that of a mother at a school play; our strawberry plans has flowers, our tomato plant has flowers, our lemon thyme has flowers! Everything is thriving, they all look so glorious! I am actually living the dream (or part of it, at least), visiting the yard every now and then for a sprig of mint to go in my bulgur wheat salad.

4. Short shorts and long cardis. Now the jumpers are (hopefully) hidden away for the summer, I'm loving wearing my big knitted vintage cardi over real summer outfits. I know it's only April, but the short shorts were out on Monday, and the cardi wasn't even required until the early evening.

5. Virginia Woolf. I thought the stream of consciousness thing had been taken to its limit with To The Lighthouse, but I started reading The Waves over the bank holiday, and this is a new level of reading that I'm not sure I'll ever succeed in. Still, I love to imagine how Virginia Woolf thought when she wrote - how on earth she ever imagined that seven different streams of consciousness on one single page throughout a 200-page novel could ever come to be a 200-page novel. She intruiges me, and though I am utterly confused, I must keep reading. [if anyone has succeeded in completing this book, feedback would be much appreciated!]