power of plants

Our exuberant ficus elastica - once rescued at the plant store in the 'damaged houseplant corner' with a only a few (broken) leaves - has been joined by a clivia, which is about to bloom in orange.

The way i see it, the house is never too green and are the stacks of plates are never too high...

easter bouquet

This morning we woke up from a huge racket in the kitchen.
It was already light outside so I dared to walk down, haha...

I immediately noticed that it was lighter in the corner of the bay window.
The huge Monstera in the kitchen corner, had toppled over because it was top-heavy...
What a mess!
The serving cart and tableware were buried under potting soil, but oddly enough, nothing was broken (thank goodness the tamegroute crockery was unharmed) and the Monstera was still intact.
Luckily it didn't happen in the middle of the night.

I've put the Monstera in a shady spot in the backyard for the time being. I looked it up and it should be possible to put the houseplant outside from May to September.

Today was my day off, but we didn't sleep long in our bedroom, because of the sudden early 'wake up call'. So we had a super early Easter breakfast in bed.

Well tomorrow I have a late shift, so another chance to sleep a little longer.

In the meantime, the 'normal life' at my workspace Villa Augustus is still going on, at least a bit. The kitchen still prepares daily room service meals for the few hotel guests, as well as the fresh antipasti and take-away pizza's, we sell in the market. And also in the bakery, they make fresh bread, cakes and cookies as usual. Only the restaurant is closed. Currently the whole interior is being refreshed, with help from the staff from all departments. Quite a special time and atmosphere.

I'm happy to be able to work in the market 3 days a week since the crisis began, so I can still make myself useful at work and don't have to stay home every day.

Matter of course we follow the guidelines of the RIVM (the National Institute for Health and Environment). Besides the regular 'market' activities, there is enough time for other stuff, like painting furniture, arranging extra flower bouquets to sell in the market shop.

For the Easter weekend I made bouquets with spring flowers from the auction.

And of course a bouquet for our kitchen table, which now has moved to replace the empty 'Monstera' space.

they all want to stand in the bay window

The plants all want to stand in the bay window.

doing the dishes

The kitchen table full of dishes, a beautiful sight!

The vintage serving cart in our kitchen is the perfect place to store the dishes.
Some of them we use daily, most of them we use very often, but some we hardly ever use.
Because the kitchen cart is open, every now and than the cart including stacks need to be cleaned.
Doing the dishes is not as much work as it might seem, thank goodness we have a dishwasher.

Everything is cleaned up and tidy and all the stacks are back on the cart again.

what's for dinner?

I don't allow myself to buy another cookbook for the time being.
As long as there are at least four cookbooks on the cart, from which we have not tried a single recipe yet...
We have so many wonderful cookbooks and yet I do not know what to make for dinner tonight?

paniers d'oeufs de pâques