This week’s small pleasures #306

I’m writing this post on the Labour Day Monday holiday in New Zealand. The sun has been shining and I had time to sit out in the garden, reading, watching the bees visit the lavender and listening to the birds. However, all is not so well in the world of our little cat Charlie, who got bitten and attacked by another cat late on Saturday night. We had to take him to the emergency vet where he got something for the pain, some antibiotics and had his eyes checked out. He is still not good this evening, so we will call our own vet in the morning. Poor Charlie – he really has not had a good time recently.

So we move on to this week’s small pleasures. On Tuesday, I spotted this duck in the greenery (note the hellebores!) next to the pond in the Botanic Gardens, and then another one just popped up just next to him…they certainly made me smile on the way to work.

On Wednesday I went to the City Art Gallery, pictured below on the left with the giant hand (Quasi by Ronnie van Hout) on the roof. The gallery is housed in what used to be the central library building in Civic Square. My goal was to see the the Joanna Margaret Paul exhibition Imagined in the Context of a Room, covering her career from the 1970s to the 2000s. I loved her pictures of the ordinary and the mundane, such as a pile of dishes drying by a kitchen sink. I’ve put a couple of her works below to give you an idea.

From there I walked along to the ‘bottom end ‘ of Cuba Street, where you can see the early 20th century Kennedy Buildings (read more here), the sculpture The Philantropist’s Stone by Scott Eady and this lovely art nouveau building from 1903.

I continued to walk up Cuba Street and stopped at Floridita’s for lunch, enjoying their green eggs and ham, which at this time of the year sits on a bed of asparagus. During the week, I made a rather good lamb burger topped with halloumi – a lot of eating and I should not have bought such big buns! In Saturday’s basket this week there was the citrus trio of grapefruit, lemons and oranges, asparagus (of course). spinach, green beans and fennel.

On Friday, I attended the leaving reception for the former owner of the Pilates studio I go to – a sad event but time for her to enter a new phase in her life. We then had dinner at Olive on Cuba Street, with me opting for a lovely mushroom starter, while Karl a venison carpaccio. We both had a lamb based past dish which was really good. In fact, there has been a lot of good food this week, with lunch at a colleague’s on Saturday which included the Jordanian dish mansaf as well as the most delicious home made baklava.

Away from food, and I picked up these gorgeous tulips on Saturday – the check out lady thought they looked like Brussels sprouts – what do you think? Other beautiful flowers can be seen in the featured image – a whole bank of lavender in Kelburn, the heady smell greeting me on my walk to the cable car on Wednesday morning.

So, what were your small pleasures this week? Here are some other blog posts from a few fellow bloggers looking at the good things in life. 

• Take a moment to catch up with Carol Ann over at Fashioned for Joy. Always interesting.
• Ju Lyn at Touring my Backyard goes on an art outing.
• Natalie the Explorer gives us a tour of Ward’s Island.
• Anne over at Something Over Tea looks at things plump and round.
• Share a coffee over at Trent’s World and hear about his week.
• Laurie over at Notes from the Hinterland treats us to a walk up to her house as part of Walktober.
• And Popsicle Society motivates us for Monday.
• Green Dreams shares lovely autumnal pictures.
• Southern Patches shares her Friday Favourites.
• Check out Retirement Reflections post What’s on Your Bookshelf
• And Deb shares Sunday stills.

Thistles and Kiwis is a Wellington, New Zealand based blog written by Barbara, who likes cats, summer, good food and pretends to garden.

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