Family stuff in lockdown

Our son Tim and his partner Dana are living on nb Waka Huia at the moment - they are at North Kilworth Marina which they tell us has the most wonderful facilities. They have planted some of the salad greens seeds I had left over in a drawer in the galley and they are coming up nicely in the warm spring sunshine. They have done a giant clean of the vinyl on the floor throughout the boat - I have always hated that vinyl: it is a woodgrain look and was laid cross ways so the ridges in it are across the narrows, so to speak. That makes it impossible to keep really clean unless you do it on hands and knees, which is exactly what Tim and Dana have done. I've done that once, but then decided that sterilising and bleaching the dirt was easier and less painful a process. But Tim is going to replace the vinyl for us which we are delighted about. I do need to see what he thinks I would be happy with though before he purchases! Got that, Tim?

For a while, until he went back to work as an essential worker, they had the boys with them. But a couple of weeks ago now, Tim took the boys back up to Dalry to their mum, Marta.

Even though both of the boys are very social animals and are separated by 5 years in age, they have kept busy quite happily together. I understand that they have been cooking meals, and when I saw Olek this morning on his bi-weekly maths session with David, he didn't look like he was malnourished ...

One day Olek apparently asked his mum if she needed the timber in the basement, because if not, he had an idea... Karol has long had the desire for a treehouse, and Olek thought they could make one. So a couple of phone calls for advice and to score some coach bolts, and away they went. Marta said it took 4 half days. As Marta described it: Olek had the idea, Karol had the desire and Marta had the materials. And the three of them did the planning and construction.

The first crossbar/support is up and Olek is clearing the branches that are in the way of construction.

Three crossbars are in place. Marta said the first one took a couple of hours but once they got the idea, the others went up much much faster. Olek still on trimming ...

Framing in place - look at that beautiful blue Scottish sky!!

Marta using the multi-tool to trim

The flooring is going on and Karol is going up to check it out. And Olek is off to fetch something else.

Karol carefully using the saw to cut the platform pieces - I am sure Marta was within a couple of feet to effect a rescue if required!

Platform on, support struts bolted in place, one happy boy. See how the branch comes through the platform?

I understand that a guard rail is the next step as Karol wants to be able to sleep out there on summer nights - rolling over could be disastrous. However they could reposition the trampoline, I guess...

What a great thing to do during lockdown!

David and I had a call with Marta and Karol after the construction project and somehow I managed to touch a function on the screen that allowed different faces to be attached to those on the call. I started out with a dragon face that breathed fire - excellent! But we didn't know how to do snapshots of it at that point. We did get these though ...

Marta and Karol at the top, David as Pizza face and me with the quiff (?!?) - it was in the morning for us and we were still in bed ...

On Friday last week David turned 71 - hard to believe but it's true.

I made this cake for him - banana with lemon cream cheese icing, sultanas and toasted pumpkin seeds. Very yummy!

Ann made a cake for his birthday too and they put up decorations! So we celebrated by FaceTime. Lovely friends. They had to eat the cake themselves though - Ann deliberately made it only half-sized to save them from themselves, sensible woman.

David and I had cake and bubbly with Bruce and Gary by FaceTime later that day.

The following day would have been David's dad's 93rd birthday.

Cake for breakfast to celebrate John's birthday on 18 April. This photo was for Ginny.

To save us from eating half a banana cake each in this time of social distancing with Cafe Rata closed, I did a swap with Bruce and Gary - a large chuck of the remaining cake for feijoas; plus I took a slice over to Kay. That just left a decent sized piece each for dessert.

Today I sampled the latest lot of tomato soup that I made a few days ago with the acid-free tomatoes delivered by Penray Gardens late last week. It was so yummy I rang to see if they still had some. Yes, they do, so 3 boxes are being delivered tomorrow and more soup and probably more chilli chutney and possibly some capsicum chutney will be made.

Life under lockdown is plenty active enough, I reckon, and there is still heaps I could do out in the garden when the desire to weed and trim and plant overtakes me - yeah, right! Like that'll ever happen!