This week’s small pleasures #359

Here we are at the end of October already, and warmer days are slowly approaching. In a week full of terrible tragedies in the news, it is even more important I think to look for the good things in life, from the gorgeous peony at the top of the post to just taking a moment to watch a tui enjoy some late kowhai flowers.

Wellington Jazz Festival

It was a good week on the cultural front. On Wednesday evening, we headed out to the opening night of the Wellington Jazz Festival to see the UK band, GoGo Penguin. It was a fabulous concert, with a well deserved standing ovation at the end. If you want to hear them, try them on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert (a special nod to Laurie for introducing me to that series). The picture below was taken as the audience were coming in – the event was sold out.

Eating out and eating in

There were two sandwich lunches out – a salami, olive, and other good things roll at perennial favourite Squirrel and another regular lunchtime bite, the chicken apple, almond and rocket flat bread from the cafe in the library. Before the concert, we stopped off at The Ram, a recently opened bar owned by the same folk behind Fred’s Sandwiches. I had a really excellent fish burger (slightly obscured by all those chips) and Karl the lasagne which was also really good. It made a good start to the evening.

In our Wonky Box delivery this week was a large cabbage half (not pictured), half of which made a ‘will last all week’ coleslaw, a cos lettuce, a couple of capsicum, bunch of carrots, turnips, radishes, asparagus and a bunch of caulilini which is really like baby cauliflower. I also bought some ‘normal’ carrots (see coleslaw!), lemons, oranges, golden kiwi fruit, and our first strawberries of the season. I picked up this lovely sounding honey with ginger from the Hillside Market on Saturday morning, polenta for Wednesday’s dinner and Baron Hasselhoff’s Christmas chocolate bar with custard, raspberry and brandy trifle, which we have yet to try.

Dance

On Saturday evening, I went to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s final show of the year, Hansel and Gretel. First performed in 2019, the choreography is by Loughlan Prior, choreographer in residence, music composed by Claire Cowan and designs by Kate Hawley. It is a fantastical production with laughter, some beautiful pas de deux for the parents and the queen and king of the Dew Fairies, and just lots of fun and spectacle. This is the trailer. We were lucky to see Shaun James Kelly and Kirby Selchow in the title roles, and the every ethereal Mayu Tanigaito as the Queen of the Dew Farieis.

Sunday evening saw a very different experience, An Honest Conversation between Sacha Copland and Loughlan Prior. Copland, the creator of this series, invites another dancer to come and talk, dance and have an honest conversation in the space of an hour. It was a funny, at times touching, and interesting, and brought together a contemporary and a classical dancer in the same space. Of course, there was a link to what we saw on Saturday!

Simple Things

• Sitting on the balcony, reading in the sun on Sunday.
• Booking a summer holiday.
• Buying the first peonies of the season – see featured image at the top of the post.
• Enjoying Pilates as usual.
• Baking a cake – more on that on Wednesday.
• Learning that our visiting cat is called Minchkin and lives next door.

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.

• There was a rainy day for Mr Tootlepedal of Tootlepedal’s Blog 
• Trent was in New Hampshire and of course makes us a good cup of coffee.
• Anne at Something Over Tea celebrates the rain.
• Laurie over at Notes from the Hinterland lives in Maine. The recent incident there wasn’t far from where she lives.
• Deb has some frightening things from Australia….
• Donna over at Retirement Reflections shares postcards from October.
• Jo wraps up October.
• Sue celebrates a month of worthy causes.
• It is lovely to see Natalie back too giving gratitude for October.
• .…and all the other lovely bloggers out there. Sorry if I have missed anyone…..

Also entered in the weekend coffee share hosted by Natalie.

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. If you want to get in touch, email me on thistlesandkiwis@gmail.com or lofgren@thistlesandkiwis.com