Goodwill And All That

This may look like a picture of our gorgeous bougainvillea, but it's actually of the boys, hard at work next door. I organized for them to go and clear our 80 year old neighbour's garden, which we noticed was suddenly waist high. If it's left through a NZ summer it's going to be almost impossible to get on top of. Actually, it was already pretty hard. However, it's really easy to be full of seasonal goodwill for your neighbours when you don't actually have to do the grunt work. 

They did spend most of the time over there accepting his hospitality for a beer, a lemonade and a chat. I suspect that chat was even more welcomed than the garden work.

After I volunteered them, I decided I'd better spend the time cooking up something yum so they weren't mad at me, so P5 and I got to work on peppermint bark. This is just to make you drool - white chocolate, crushed candy canes (used in place of the peppermints which we couldn't find, being in the wrong country and all), more chocolate, thickened cream, and mmmmm. . . 

I'm hoping a couple will do for teacher Christmas gifts once we pretty up the jars. If we can resist scoffing that is . . .