Martha's Marvellous Munchies

This is a beautiful time of year in North Texas, when the days are warm and the nights are still cool; when the grass is green and the flowers compete to bloom before the heat sets in; when butterflies emerge in clouds of bright colours and proud mother ducks shepherd little balls of fluff around the lake.  We haven't made any big excursions, but like most people, have been making the most of the time before the wilting heat drives us inside. A few miles north of us, the small town of Roanoke markets itself as "The Unique Dining Capital of Texas", and recently put on a "Unique Week".  The festivities included live music for several evenings, so we went to hear a group called Brave Combo .  They play dance music in the widest sense of the word - their website boasts that they can turn their instruments to polka, salsa, rock, chacha and much more - and they do so with vigour!  One thing I love about Texans is that they're not ashamed to dance in public.  Any...

No, not great-grandparents, though Toby has some of those too.  But he also has two sets of just great grandparents, and one pair came to spend a few days with us last week.  All that Skyping certainly paid off; he didn't seem shy of my parents at all.  They had hardly stepped off the plane before they were reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar fifteen times over and being invited to admire every truck within sight.  In return Toby provided endless entertainment (almost literally; he didn't want to go to bed at all) and we took them to see a few pretty parts of North Texas. One of the prettiest has got to be the Botanic Gardens Conservatory when the butterflies are in residence.  Dainty white paper kites sip delicately from flowers, while fearless blue morphos swoop past your nose.  A giant atlas moth, one of the largest moths in the world, sat at the base of a tree.  Toby's favourite spot, though, was underneath the overhang where a waterfal...