The sap must be rising. After a frugal winter we have this week splurged on:
1. Lunch out
2. A lemon tree, a nectarine tree and two lavender bushes
3. A non-essential new toilet seat.

This last was for what Mr F has recently taken to calling 'my bathroom'. It's the little shower room next door to my office. He's sort of colonised it. I wouldn't really mind except he assumes he still has visiting towel and toothpaste rights to Bathroom A, in particular when I'm enthroned there. I know I should just lock the door but I suffer from an affliction wincingly similar to my mother's ever-open bedroom door. You know how it is. When your children are small the very moment you lock the bathroom door a child will start howling with separation anxiety. So you just stop bothering. You make yourself available 24/7. Eventually you forget that normal grownups shower and defecate in solitude. I really have to give myself a talking to about this. And Mr F too. Call me territorial but I think it's time he decided where he's going store his hair products. Pee in the pot or get off the fancy new toilet seat, I say.

The lunch was a letdown. Thirty five Euro for four tiny grilled squid, hardly old enough to leave their mother, and a wodge of yuckyuck polenta. I could have had pizza for less money. I should have had pizza. Actually, we should have come home for one of Mr F's jaw-stretching sandwiches. A BLT minus the B, it being Lent and all. How wise I am after the event.

But my new lavender bushes are looking full of fragrant promise and worth every penny. I love lavender. I once tried to grow some on our bit of Friulian mountainside but it drowned. These potted beauties for the terrace should be safe with me though, preferring dry conditions as they do. I am the world's most neglectful plant waterer.
I have a vague notion of baking lavender shortbread some time in the summer. And vague notions, once committed to blog, acquire more weight. Somebody out there might actually read this. Come August they might chime in. Whatever happened to the lavender shortbread, Laurie? Hunh?