Years of dedicated practice have led to very impressive results. (This is a birthday present for one of her best friends, who is a big fan of Titanfall.)

Today was the first day it was warm enough to walk around barefoot indoors, as long as I could keep them in the sun. The sun is hot but the air and the ground are really not.

‘Tis the season for stupid wasps to fly into the house through the gap in the French doors and then bang themselves stupid against the windows instead of making their way out again.

Every year we eat pasha for Easter (and a few days after) and mildly grumble that we don’t get to eat it during the rest of the year. My recipe isn’t super sweet, so it almost feels like a snack more than a dessert, and I could eat it if not every day then at least every week.

Spring scrubbing the wooden deck. I borrowed a power washer this year for the first time, and it kind of helped some, but to get the worst parts clean without blasting the wood to pieces, proper manual scrubbing with a soapy brush still seems to be the way to go.

Devilled eggs, herring of various kinds, fake vegetarian herring, and assorted side dishes.

Pasha with raspberry coulis.

Painted Easter eggs. My mum and I manage stylized but recognizable objects, and pretty patterns. Adrian does his own thing. Ingrid is the only one who actually practices painting and therefore makes more and more impressive designs each year, with just 8 crappy colours.

Adrian and I are making pasha. He chops and measures and mixes; I get the technical tasks of creaming butter with sugar, pressing quark through a sieve, and whipping cream.