This week’s small pleasures #227

This week’s small pleasures comes to you on the Wellington Anniversary holiday. What a treat it is to have a long weekend like this during the summer after being back at work for two weeks! Anyway, there was a surprise midweek trip to the cinema as I mentioned in my last post, cosy evenings with new series (Lupin and the riveting The Investigation, a true crime story about the death of a Swedish journalist onboard a submarine – many of you will remember the event itself I am sure).

On Friday, we met friends for dinner at our local Italian restaurant. We walked home through the Botanic Gardens, stopping to look at the lights and other features that are decorating the gardens at the moment (you may remember I posted daytime pictures last week). Below you can see how lovely things looked, from the glitter balls hanging from the tree and all the lights around the duck pond. The decorations coincide with the series of free, outdoor concerts held in the garden each year.

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And so to food….in this week’s shopping basket there were some colourful radishes, more sweet corn, peaches, raspberries, blueberries…so many good things at this time of the year. I made some marinated aubergine (eggplant) with oregano and lemon, and enjoyed one of my usual favourites on Friday evening, spaghetti carbonara.

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I baked a cake for the first time in ages on Saturday afternoon: a lemon yoghurt cake with blueberries (which I should have dusted in flour so that they didn’t sink…but it tasted good anyway). On Sunday afternoon, we sat outside in the afternoon drinking Earl Grey tea, eating cake and reading – what a small pleasure that was!

As I mentioned at the top of the post, today is a public holiday within the Wellington region, and we headed up to Zealandia with our new membership cards to go for a walk around the sanctuary, spotting kaka, tuatara and three New Zealand robins. It was a lovely way to spend the morning, before an afternoon of reading, popping in a few more jigsaw pieces and relaxing.

So that is it for me…but check out these posts from my fellow bloggers for some other good things and small pleasures:

• Laurie Graves shares some of the highlights from Biden’s inauguration over at her Friday’s Favourites.
• Little Pieces of Me has a lovely little list of things on her Grateful Fridays post.
• I love exploring Toronto through Natalie the Explorer’s posts!
• Trent’s World‘s The Weekly Smile: makes a chilli and I agree that cumin is key!
• Ju Lin goes to an exhibition in Singapore.
• Enjoy some fish and chips with Su over at Zimmerbitch.
• And follow the quilt development over at The Herbalist’s Cottage.

You can find Thistles and Kiwis on Facebook, and also on Instagram@thistleandkiwis.  As for Twitter….am totally inactive these days.  If you want to get in touch, email me on thistlesandkiwis@gmail.com