After the storm

It was a bit windy last weekend. And rainy. You heard about that in the previous post about the camping.

Well, this is the result on my garden.

Beat up pea plants.

Leaves stripped off the black currant bush...

And yet the peas that survived are still growing happily. Amazing.

And the bees are still entrancing Spike.

Bee in the centre... can you see it?

Happy cardoon flower developing.

Spike enjoying the slide. BLUE sky!

Borage coming into flower

Raspberry ripening.

Lovely double poppy beaten down by the wind, but still managing to flower.

What a testament to the resilience and regenerative power of nature!

Mid-Summer Camping Trip

We went camping last weekend.

The weather on friday was one of those beautiful mid-summer evenings where shadows lengthen impossibly in golden light that lingers way past 10pm. The children played football, flew kites, ran around happily in gangs while the adults sat in a circle nursing glasses of wine or bottles of beer. Idyllic.

Saturday morning was overcast. No problem. We got up and went out for the day to Brimham Rocks. We all had a wonderful time clambering over and through these amazing rock formations before stopping at the cafe for a sausage roll lunch. Children taking off in gangs, playing hide and seek, exploring, being adventurous. What childhood is all about.

Bacon butties for breakfast... one of camping's great treats.

But then it started to rain. And it didn't stop. By the time we got back to the campsite it was raining in our tent. Not a good thing.

We hadn't slept brilliantly the night before. I think we had all been slightly cold. Not really really cold, but just enough that you don't sleep well. So the boys were restless, and so it seemed that every time we managed to drift off then someone started moaning. At one point I found Dude on the floor having been shuffled off the double air-mattress he was sharing with Pip and out of his sleeping bag. No wonder he was cold. Then Spike started fussing and wouldn't stop. So we brought him in with us. Wrapped in a big blanket and snuggled between his parents he slept angelically for the next 5 hours. From 3 to 8am. But since Dude and Pip were awake from 5:45 we didn't even have that much sleep.

So anyway, come Saturday night and the prospect of cold, wet, disturbed sleep we decided to turn tail. We packed up in the rain (the boys were being fed barbecue by our friends) and drove home (only an hour) to our warm, dry house.

Everyone has said we made the right decision, and that the weather got a lot worse during the night.

Sunday was clear, but there were GALES. The tent, trying to be dried on the line in the garden tried to turn itself into a parachute and take off. Aaaagh! So I laid it on the grass and held it fast with chairs so it wouldn't blow away.

Still, everyone enjoyed themselves, despite the weather and our aborted evening's soiree, and we are all set to try again.

But with a properly waterproofed tent this time.

Early potatoes

We have potatoes! I have been wondering how to tell when the potatoes were ready. I have been trying to scrabble around under the biggest potato plant to see what I could come up with - which was nada.

So today I thought I would just bite the bullet and perhaps just find bullet-sized potatoes... Dug up biggest potato plant. And we have potatoes! Thirty, to be exact!

Ok, so some of them were bullet-sized, but a good half of them were decent new potato sizes. They were beautiful. And they tasted FABULOUS.

Freshly dug.

Being washed.

Pip, my gardening son, was so proud of our harvest!

Aren't these beautiful?

Yum!

Pea Flowers and Pea Weevils

Peas in bloom!



Found this little guy on my pea plants. I think he is a pea weevil... but the Daughter of the Soil (who knows a lot about peas) says he shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as he doesn't bring lots and lots of friends. That's good news.



Our first roses. They not only look beautiful, they are wonderfully scented too. I have no idea what variety they are... they came with the house.

It's finally happening

We have flowers!



The pea flowers have finally arrived. Well, they're still buds as yet, but perhaps tomorrow they'll open.



And the potato flowers are opening too!



And in other news, we got sand for the sandpit. So Spike decided to do a little light reading on the beach (as he calls it).

Happy to be alive.

We had a lovely day in the garden, pootling around, pulling weeds, watching bumblebees, finding frogs, eating ice-lollies. It was a good day with no agenda but to relax and enjoy being in the world.











GardenBoy's dahlia is growing!



The friend who gave this plant to us calle it the 'loo brush' plant. What a pretty loo brush!



Pea tendrils reaching for the sky.



Our lone allium. The boys call it the firework flower. They're right!



Don't know that this pretty thing is, but it lives in our rockery. And it's covered in buds!

Some pictures

It finally stopped raining, so here are some pictures we took in our joy of being released from our cage:



Middley and Littlest on the slide.



Middley and Biggest playing with the bike.



Littlest working on that scooter...



Biggest showing how tall the sugar snap peas are getting.



Potato rows getting lush.



Bee pollinating our raspberries. Thank you bee!



Carrots and onions, with potatoes in the background.



Potatoes about to start flowering!

Half Term Week

We had half-term last week, and so regularly scheduled programming went out the window. We got to do all kinds of fun things, and the weather stayed fine until the end of the week, so that was great.

Mon: Tropical World near Leeds with some friends and 2 out of their 4 children.

Tues: Up to Newcastle to help my Auntie move some furniture out of her house she is leaving. Furniture to be donated to incoming work colleague of GardenBoy - hooray!

Wed: Failed attempts to get more trugs (they only had them in violent pink!) and sand for GardenKids' sandpit. Very frustrating for all involved.

Thurs: Day out with friends in York, including a trip to the National Railway Museum which the kids loved, but is one place that I really don't need to ever go to again... We did hit the Museum Gardens afterwards and let them play in the sun. Totally over-dressed we allowed them to strip off their tops and run around like urchins. Luckily one clever mum (not me) had brought suncream...

Fri: I know it was only a few days ago, but I really can't remember what we did. Suggests it was not much. I suspect we played in the garden. Biggest has become chief aphid hunter and has been making sure our roses stay clear as much as possible. I am keeping them off the sugar-snaps which we can't spray because they are going to be eaten!

Sat: Biggest was going 'camping' with the Beaver Scouts. I say 'camping' because they stay in dorms because they are too little to be let loose in tents. They get to do that when they are Cubs, from age 8. One of his buddies was dropped off here and I took the two of them, plus Middley off to the campsite in the North York Moors. Littlest was being babysat by two of his favourite people, and was totally happy. Middley was really disappointed he didn't get to go camping, so we after we 'got rid of the kids' (his words!) we went off for ice-cream, just him and me. We fed the ducks and ate cheese straws... He got to be an Only Child for a few hours, which I think he really enjoyed.

It poured over-night that night, soaking the laundry I had foolishly left on the line. I had come down with an icky tummy that evening and couldn't drag myself out of bed to pull them in. 'They'll be ok' I thought to myself. Famous last words. They finally dried by Mon eve, and I got them in, which was lucky because it poured again last night, and is still pouring.

Still, Monday was a dry day, and I got my potatoes earthed up since they were getting very tall and have even started getting buds on them! The sugar snaps are about up to my waist, but no flower buds yet. Looking very happy and lush though. Garden Boy got his Passion Flowers in the ground which made him happy. They have been waiting to be dug in for about 2 weeks, but we have been lacking compost. So now they're done.

When the rain stops (!) I will take pictures for you to see the garden.

But here's one of Biggest's Beaver uniform, with the TEN new badges he has got! All the yellow ones are new. He's so proud. And I have sore fingers from sewing them all on!