...Antipasti!

One good thing about Mr Kat going to Glastonbury (and they're aren't many - sniff....) is that I get to stock up the fridge with all kinds of wonderful and indulgent non-vegetarian treats. It's not that my semi-vegetarian diet causes me any great hardship - I'm actually quite fussy about meat products these days anyway - it's just that, as an all-round appreciator of food, it's nice to be able to eat exactly what I fancy once in a while, meat or no meat. And so this is exactly what I did last night. Sitting on my back step in the sunshine, I devoured the biggest plate of parma ham, olives and mozzarella cheese I think I've ever seen. 'Twas bellisimo!

The only thing to hamper my al fresco dinner was the sight (and faint smell) of a wheelie bin approximately 3 ft from my dinner plate (we have a very small back yard). However, this is something I am hoping to attend to over the course of this Summer. There's not much I can do about the size of the yard, but I have many grand plans for prettifying it up a bit. This is going to involve lots of pots, brimming over with bright colourful flowers, a couple of small troughs for Mr Kat's vegetable selection, a spot of decking to cover the rather grim-looking exposed manhole cover in the corner of the yard, a nice wheelie bin store to disguise our ugly old wheelie bin and a lovely new table and chair set, which I hope to adorn with all kinds of beautiful handmade things (a nice tablecloth and napkin set might be a good place to start).

We moved into the house last September and, what with the unpredictable British weather and the mountain of other jobs that we needed to do around the house, the yard has pretty much been ignored until now - I can't wait to get stuck into it! I'm going to try and keep a photographic record of our progress (something that I wish I'd done more of in relation to the house itself) and will post some pictures when they're available.

In the meantime, I will continue to eat my dinner off my knee on the back step in the sunshine and just try to ignore the big green monstrosity which lurks in the corner......

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