Summer is here!

It's official! Summer is here! And none too soon since school holidays started yesterday...

We started off yesterday trying to pick strawberries at our local Pick Your Own, but the season had finished. We were only there 2 weeks ago, but strawberries are definitely a here-and-now type of fruit. Luckily there is a great park right next to the strawberry farm, so we went there instead, staying for a picnic and having a great time.

Today was another busy day - hair cuts, library, picnic by the river... and it was so hot that we just had to go and buy a paddling pool. Our most recent version had bit the dust when we moved last year. And last summer was such a miserable washout that we didn't need one before now.

But this one is a doozey... just look at it! It's FAB!

Just the right size for a GardenMummy to sit in and lean back and relax. Great backrest!

And great for splashing in, even if you don't put much water in.

But after a while it's back to the drawing board for Dude, who is never far from his pens, pencils and scissors these days.

But Spike decided he couldn't stay away, even without his suit on...

Spike and Pip are such good buddies.

Can you spot the Hiding Dude under the hiding bush?

And the Motoring Dude, driving between our abundantly flowering Hebes?

And a porthole view of the waterbaby.

GardenBoy talking to his Mama

Blackcurrants ripening.

Hopefully the weather will hold and we will have lots of warm sunshine for weeks to come.

Yay Summer!

Happy Birthday to GardenBoy

We managed to have GardenBoy's birthday barbecue in the sunshiney hours between downpours on Saturday. It was very tasty! We had a few friends over, ones who don't mind helping our children with their chocolate cake, obviously. A good time was had by all.

Mid July Garden News

Guess what, guess what, guess what?!



Yes, we are the proud parents of a huge but fairly undeveloped onion and two very twisted carrots! But boy did they taste good!

It is so great. Pip is getting so into the vegetable gardening and is really getting to taste how much better they taste when they've grown in your own garden. This is not just us being biased - they actually DO taste better than supermarket vegetables!

We are eating our own potatoes nearly every day, and our own sugar-snap peas ever time there's enough to provide more than 3 a piece... It's such a great feeling, and the best part? SO easy... Just stick 'em in the ground and watch them grow!


After all that rain and miserable weather we finally had some dry, and even some sunshine, so I panicked and washed two whole loads of laundry and hung it out to dry, quick before it could rain again. We don't have a dryer, which is fine mostly. In the winter it all goes over radiators and dries in no time, and in summer we have three washing lines. The only problem comes when it is really really rainy in summer because (of course) the radiators aren't on! But today I am looking at the bottom of a laundry basket - a sight I don't get to see all that often. Hooray!


Before


During


After.

Aren't poppies wonderful? They come for free, look beautiful in bloom and elegant afterwards.

In other news...


We had a slug attack on one of the pumpkin seedlings. Hope it survives and starts looking more healthy than this!




The sugar snap peas are hugely prolific. I have learned a lot about growing peas this year. First time I have done it, and so not surprisingly it was a learning experience.

Lesson 1. Don't plant so many around one teepee. They start out small, but they get big and they get tangled and they get prolific and you can't see, let alone get to all the peas for all the greenery.

Lesson 2. Plant more peas! We really really like them. Must plant more, just more spread out... I envision LOTS of teepees in my future.

Lesson 3. Don't try and grow the beans up the pea poles at the same time. Yes, they grow slower, and produce later, probably after the peas are finished, so I thought I was being clever about successional sowing but even so they are getting really lost in among the peas... hopefully they'll make it through!

The hebe and the borage are both covered in flowers and covered in bees and very happy. Which is great because the perennial geraniums (which Spike so enjoyed watching the bees on) have finished flowering and have been cut back which the hopes that they will put forth another flowering later in the year.



And that's about the size of it. It's a busy time of year in the garden. Lots of weeding, but also lots of wonderful flowers and lots of delicious food being produced. Hooray!

Wet weather activities

Oh what rainy weather we have been having. The children have been like caged animals! I let them out this afternoon when it finally stopped raining. I stuck waterproofs and wellies on them and set them free. Of course the first thing they did was find a huge puddle in the garden and stomp all in it. Which is fine by me, but...

they seem to think that wearing waterproofs means that they are totally impervious to water. They can't possibly get wet.

What they don't seem to realise is that they are only wearing wellies, which are calf high. Not chest waders. And that if you stomp really hard in a nice deep puddle chances are you will get water into your wellies... and splashed all over your face. Which is fine by me, but apparently not fine by them!

Playing in mud and water, eating raspberries washed by the rain and hunting for frogs and worms is great fun. Just what they needed.

What I didn't need is for them to wander through the house still wearing all this wet, muddy water-gear... after I had JUST mopped the floors this morning.

Makes me seriously wonder why I even bother.

On a seperate subject, one of Pip's godmothers came over this afternoon bearing very belated birthday presents for Pip and Dude... Uno for Pip and Ooky Spooky for Dude





Remember this one? I have memories of playing it for hours during those everlasting summer holidays we used to have when I was little. Was it just me, or did time actually go slower back then?

This is a new one on us, but it is a good one for numeracy. There are two games you can play with it, and we only tried one out but it was fun. You have to put a card with the same number as the player before you laid, or one more than, or use multiple cards to add up to the right number. All good skills being snuck in with a game!

So after we put Spike to bed we played both games once each instead of having stories. We all had fun, and both boys played well, even losing well, which is a really good skill to learn.

So anyway, despite the muddy floors, it was a good day all in all.

Oh, by the way, lucky old GardenBoy is out camping tonight with the Youth Group... hope they don't get too wet, muddy and cold. At least the rain has stopped now...

Happy 4th!

Just to start things off, GardenBoy turned into CycleBoy and did a 'nearly 80 mile' ride with 4 of his friends! The weather was perfect!

After that we had a barbecue and picnic at some American friends house...



It was a great day! Hope yours was just as good.

Oh how I love free flowers!

Just to start us off, here's that lovely little boy enjoying the pavement chalks.

These are my 'volunteer' poppies. They are have self-seeded and are sprouting everywhere (in this pic they are in with the carrots and onions), and produce the most beautiful, glossy red flowers. Some are double, some single and some a mixture. The bees love them.

And here are my potatoes, grown of course for their edible yummies, but aren't the flowers prettty? An added bonus.

More freebie flowers. The poppy came as a bonus freebie from a friend who was really trying to give me some other freebie flowers... Yay! And the Lobelias self-seeded under our bench!

And these little lovelies came free with the garden we inherited!