This pandemic has challenged us on so many levels over the past—how many?—months, but there’ve been unexpected rewards along the way to compensate.

For example, the realisation that owning a dog means escaping lockdown whenever an excuse is needed to leave the house was a lightbulb moment for many. Similarly, it’s been a real eyeopener for many businesses to discover that all workers don’t have to battle peak-hour traffic twice a day when they can work effectively from home.

As the world contracts and international travel fades into memory, one way to extract the best out of life is to:

#100 Appreciate Small Discoveries

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Parking in a side street a couple of weeks before Easter, I came across this cute rabbit painted on an inconspicuous wall.

It brightened my day no end:

Another unexpected offering appeared alongside the entry to a car park. This sunny butterfly frieze greets passers-by like a welcoming smile, so thanks, Kristina and Albury City:

Its personal significance was enhanced exponentially when a matching beauty landed in my garden a couple of days later:

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The pandemic threw up another joy recently when Warburtons, a UK company that bakes much loved crumpets, released their secret recipe to comfort suffering compatriots during the depths of winter.

With a rallying cry of

who could resist giving it a go?

My first batch, cooked in a pan on the stove top, resulted in terribly mismatched crumpets, until the idea of repurposing my pie maker into a crumpet maker seemed a worthy experiment.

Woohoo! Yessir!

Have a look at them cooking:

Here’s the adapted recipe if you want to give it a try:

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An innocuous visit to my GP this week threw up another new and exciting discovery when the doc asked me if I’d like eScripts sent to my phone instead of handing me the usual paper ones. (She’d noticed I was using earpods in the waiting room, she said, so assumed I was tech savvy. 🤣)

Heart thumping, I agreed to the eScripts, not wanting her to know the truth about my dread of technology and its propensity to go bad. Of course, the minute I walked out of the surgery, I checked my messages, convinced it wouldn’t have worked, but to my surprise …

So now all I have to do is show the pharmacist the super trendy eScripts on my mobile to get them dispensed.

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There are so many wonderful small discoveries to be found at our new Harris Farm Market that I don’t know where to start, but the little lime-green kale/silverbeet/herb stripper has to be up there with the best. It rips out the pesky central stalk in milliseconds.

Harris Farm sells assorted native finger limes, too …

And what this means is that I can now amass any and all ingredients needed for my latest craze: the home made poke bowl with added crispy kale and finger lime bubbles topped with sriracha mayo.

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And a final discovery has been the talented Marsh family from Faversham in the UK, who’ve been coping during lockdown by repurposing songs and posting them on YouTube.

Here’s their performance at the BBC Comic Relief concert. They re-worded Total Eclipse of the Heart to reflect what everyone can relate to on some level during the pandemic.

Who’d have thought small discoveries could give so much pleasure?