Monday, February 2, 2009

Breakfast ... and birdies

Most Sunday mornings I cook an English breakfast. It stems from childhood living in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) .. my Mum always made a big breakfast on Sunday mornings .. fried or poached but usually fried eggs, and bacon. If we were lucky, she added sausages and sometimes tomatoes, and then mum and dad would, as a real treat, have black pudding. Cannot stand the stuff, but they loved it.

Living at that time in Rhodesia with economic sanctions imported foodstuffs were not available and the economy flourished with everything 'made in Rhodesia'. Am not going go into all that history but what I am getting to ... eventually .. is that we always had homemade foods like marmalade, for instance. My mum always made our marmalade and we all loved it on our toast in the mornings. (We come from Scottish descent on my dad's side - hence the marmalade - and oats porridge .. which was our favourite breakfast before going to school). Still love it! My children can't stand it!! but I made them eat it (maybe that's why!)

I have made marmalade in the past and it's very yummy, but now I tend to buy it. Haven't found a decent marmalade until I discovered this one ....



... unfortunately, I can only buy it in Ballito, Kwa Zulu Natal, so I always stock up on bottles whenever we go on holiday there.
So .. that is what our normal Sunday breakfasts consist of now ... fried egg, grilled bacon and grilled tomato and sometimes I add pork cocktail sausages. I then relax ... the others leave the table .. and I sit with a cup of coffee (only sometimes, if we are not popping out to our favourite coffee place up the road run by a super gay chappie - very friendly and a really super guy!) .... and with my 'sometimes' cup of coffee I have a slice of brown toast of my favourite marmalade.
From my seat at our dining room table I watch the birdies through the dining room window .... you can see the bird feeder in the shrubs beyond the hydrangeas which are huge this year. This window is quite high from ground level - I shall take a photo from the outside once the old dead hydrangeas have been cut off and the new ones have taken their place. We've had such hot days that they have all withered and now that the rains have come the days hopefully should be a little cooler .... and there will be a better display of hydgrangeas.

Yesterday there were the usual doves and the usual little birdies having their breakfast ... the little one at the back is the female yellow weaver ..
Always get the Grey Louries coming for the fruit ... (photo taken in spring last year)


Cape Sparrows waiting on the neighbours roof for their turn ...


Yellow Weaver (male) also waiting his turn in the 'Flowering quince' (photo taken in spring)
Crested Barbet waits on telephone wire for his turn ... he is a fruit eater.....

Once a year - also in Spring - we get the odd pigeon. They come to one of the trees in the neighbours garden and eat the fruit. It's an indigenous tree - huge and has masses of bunches of berries in spring. The tree feller says it's a wild cherry or peach (can't remember what he said exactly - nice tree but sooo messy! We get the tree feller in when the huge branches get too big and hang over our washline. The birds, including these pigeons, gorge themselves on the fruit and then poop on my washing! We have to get permission from the neighbour every time to cut the branches ... and WE have to pay for it too!

5 comments:

  1. It is Monday morning - a new day!!!! .... ... not Sunday - as it says on top of this post!!

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  2. LOL! Good Monday to you! Lovely post today. I can just about taste that marmelade and I LOVE the photograph!

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  3. I love the sound of your Sunday breakfast!!
    We do out own thing ( sad ) hubby makes boiled eggs with toast and some bran flakes with milk, I do my usual muesli with yogurt when not dieting - scrambled eggs while dieting...I wish they sold chicken bacon like they do at Woolworths here, as I gave up red meat over 20 years ago...back in SA I can have chicken sausage and chicken bacon!!!!!

    I see here all my neighbors have bird houses in the gardens with food, hubby tells me cause its so cold the birds cant find food to eat so the people help them...think its fanastic. It surprises me when I hear and see a bird fly around in this weather...its so so cold. before winter one can watch the ducks, geese etc migrate to warmer countries, the whole sky is filled with screaching birds, I always forget to get my camera...

    Love all your photo's...

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  4. I love birds in the garden. My problem is that I don't have much shrubs in the garden to attract birds. Maybe I must put out more food to attract them. We do have lots of these big pigeons though. My fav visitor to the garden is the Vleiloerie. I'm a little envious of all your birds. Specially the Grey Loeries. Wow. I need to make a plan.

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  5. I like to look at the birds on my patio from my kitchen table too. But it's snowing here in Belgium, so my view is all white right now!
    Your breakfast makes me hungry, it looks and sounds delicious!

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