Thursday 23 March 2023

Lockdown Anniversary, Paintings and Green Soup

 


Angela over on Tracing Rainbows mentioned on her post this morning about it being the anniversary of the first lockdown here in England.  So I thought I would look back at a few of my blog posts around that time and see what I was up to when the world ground to a halt, and we were all sent to our rooms armed with toilet rolls and bags of pasta.  

And as usual, I fell down a rabbit-hole of my own making and had a good read of quite a few old posts.  What I did come across was the original post that showed the picture that I fell in love with.  

I had found the image online, used it for that post and then sent it to my son and asked if he would paint it for me for my 60th birthday, of course never realising at that time that it would be over two years until it actually came into my possession.  Yes, thanks to Covid I never got a sixtieth celebration and my older son missed out on his fortieth, but then we all had far more serious things on our minds.

A couple of days after that blog post, on the 24th March, I had to quickly pack up what I could fit into my car and head back to Wales with Suky as the caravan park closed it's gates for the duration and it made more sense for me to be back on the old homestead and us all to be in the same country.

How things changed, and how much we have all come through in the years since then.


Thanks for all the interest in my £3.50 challenge week on Tuesday's post.  Don't worry I will be posting all about it as soon as I do it, I  just need a couple of days to eat up some of the fresh things that I have in the fridge at the moment.

Lots of green things got made into a pan of soup  yesterday.

And it gave me a cup full of soup for my lunch and three more tubs to go into the freezer.

That should be nice and healthy after a week of limited food groups, and we all know just how precious our health is these days don't we.


Sue xx



21 comments:

  1. Recent events here have brought home to me just how much we take our (normally) good health for granted. I consider myself fortunate to only have relatively minor ailments, however much they irritate (or pain me) at times. Green stuff is very healthy isn't it!! (however offputting it looks to me sometimes! haha).

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    1. Health really is something we take so much for granted until we don't have it, isn't it. Yes at first glance greens are not the best are they, it's only in the last couple of years that I have really grown to appreciate them. This soup tastes delicious.

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  2. It really was Strange Times - and now still having to hear about the Party-gate stuff. Would anyone take any notice of a prime-minister now if we were told to stay at home? - I think not.

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    1. I think that Boris in particular has lost all of our confidence, what a buffoon, but then he always was.

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  3. Your son is so talented!
    It's hard to believe lockdown was three years ago. I remember how glorious the weather was and pottering around in the unseasonably hot weather in a bikini thinking, I could get used to this! xxx

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    1. He really is, and his girlfriend has joined in with his art evenings, their hallway is like an art gallery now. There were a lot of nice aspects to the lockdown, especially for introverts like me.

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  4. Where have 3 years gone?? Lockdown occured the day before our daughter's 45th birthday and now here we are with her 48th birthday tomorrow. Lots of our family missed out on special celebrations too, including us with our Golden Wedding. We ended up shut indoors instead of on our planned river cruise. We will never get those 3 years back will we, and now G is too ill to go on ANY sort of holiday :(
    C'est la vie....
    Your top photo is gorgeous!

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    1. Yes, things changed a lot for most of us after the Covid and lockdown years.

      The photo made me smile, a painting from one son and Mother's Day flowers from the other. It's what makes a house a home.

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  5. My healthy 'green' soup this week was extremely frugal and surprisingly delicious. I foraged wild garlic, nettles and three cornered leek so, for the price of a stock cube and a little left over mashed potato, it made 3 good portions for my lunches and cooked in just about 5 minutes. Have you tried it?

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    1. I used to eat all three of your foraged items a lot when we had our smallholding and they were growing on our own land. There's not much chance to gather them in here though, where the these three grow in particular, are popular dog walking areas.

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  6. I like green soup which is usually made from the leftover green veg in the fridge (including lettuce). I getbit all to myself as DH isn’t keen. Catriona

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    1. Yes, I always include the outer leaves of lettuce in my soups too. In fact it was only a few years ago that I found out how delicious lettuce soup is on it's own.

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  7. I generally cut off those thick green stalks of the broccoli to put in green soup - I love greens of any kind and they are so good for iron and minerals. I had a love hate relationship with the lockdowns - loved being at home for long periods of time and being in the garden so much but hated all the catch up afterwards of other tasks and our cottage garden that became a jungle and which we are still sorting out even now and really hated not being able to celebrate my daughter's 40th birthday.

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    1. Yes, I love broccoli stalks used in soups and pesto, the beautiful deep rich 'greens' flavour is amazing isn't it. This time I just had some leftover sprouting broccoli sprigs so they had to do.

      Lockdown definintely had it's ups and downs for all of us didn't it.

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  8. That looks like broccoli, celery, onions, leeks, maybe? Can I ask what you season it with?

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    1. Yep, pretty spot on, with the addition of lettuce. Happily the leeks were the last of our homegrown ones and they were delicious. To season it I just used a dessertspoon of stock powder, some onion powder and lots of black pepper.

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  9. As a nurse I have different memories of lockdown. Going to work every day not knowing who might be carrying the virus. Having people shun me because I work in a hospital. Driving home on pretty empty streets listening to radio reports full of doom and gloom with the most abysmally depressing introduction music. Of reading about people who had time to reorganize their homes, start exercise programmes, walk around the neighbourhood for limited periods of time.

    Feeling depressed, terrified, and alone. Our daughter in law refused to have any contact with us because of my job, she turned her back if she saw me.

    Laughing because the elderly with multiple medical conditions were told to isolate. While myself and friend were over 60 with a couple different medical diagnosis ourself but were told we could keep working because of PPE.

    Everyone has different memories

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    1. That is terrible. I know everyone was afraid but still.

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    2. Yes there are lots of very sad, and terrifying memories too, and I really do feel for you. It must have taken great courage to keep going day after day.

      I have chosen not to publish the sadder memories of what our family went through during lockdown. With my sons and other close relations working for the essential and emergency services there were a lot of them on the front line, and all caught Covid. That plus cancer treatments etc during those times made life very difficult in very many ways.

      I'm glad you came through those dark days. xx

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  10. We had those in our family that just did not believe in wearing masks and though they should be able to do exactly whatever they wanted. We were never as locked down as the UK or NZ, but still people complained. Drove me crazy. I am of the do what is necessary for those around us group.

    God bless.

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    1. The people that refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated just make me sad. They do not think of others only themselves.

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