They are, for the moment, well again! Hooray! I was so fed up with poorly children, tired husband and grouchy mama...
Now we just have the tired husband and grouchy mama!
But at least they are well! Enough to make me start singing and dancing... until they start fighting again and I return to grouch mode. Bah humbug!
Pip got Star-of-the-Day yesterday at school though... amazing! Apparently he was the first to sit nicely and listen EVERY TIME, ALL DAY! Zoinks (as Scooby Doo would say)! So that's great.
And Spike had to go with me to the opticians yesterday because there is no such thing as a day off in the run-up to Christmas! Instead of lounging at home with Daddy and reading books and playing trains he had to go with me because Daddy was out spreading good cheer. And little Spikelet was an angel... sat beautifully while I had my eyes checked. Could not believe it.
TWO children on star behaviour in one day?! And Dude was fine too... just not exceptionally, mention-worthy good. Hoorah!
We had Sloppy Joes for dinner. Good Christmas fare... ho ho ho...
So all in all, things are on the up! How are things with you all?
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Saturday at the Infirmary
Urg.
They are sick again...
Two weeks ago it was Dude & Spike, ending up with Dude missing 3 days of school and Spike having a course of antib's to sort out a chest infection. Then we had a week of relative health... just general snottiness that most kids have at this time of year.
But now we are down again. Spike (again!) and Pip this time. And guess what? GardenBoy was all clammy and shivery and needed breakfast in bed before he could take the ibuprofen (not on an empty stomach!) and enter the land of the living.
Still at least he could cuddle and soothe the stuffy, snotty, hot and miserable Spikelet.
Thought Pip was ok again after having 2 days off school, but around noon he lay down on the sofa under a blanket and refused to move! He has a cough which is really disturbing him (and us) and a low-grade fever.
And to round off this litany of joys, little Dude is bouncy and healthy and happy and getting on the nerves of all the sickies...
Thank God I had my flu shot this year, and here's hoping that it will keep me healthy. Someone needs to keep the Good Ship Household running.
One good thing that happened today though, is that after GardenBoy was revived he went and bought himself a new laptop and so now I won't have to listen to him teach his children rude words as he shouts at the old one! He is a happy bunny now, playing with his new toy.
They are sick again...
Two weeks ago it was Dude & Spike, ending up with Dude missing 3 days of school and Spike having a course of antib's to sort out a chest infection. Then we had a week of relative health... just general snottiness that most kids have at this time of year.
But now we are down again. Spike (again!) and Pip this time. And guess what? GardenBoy was all clammy and shivery and needed breakfast in bed before he could take the ibuprofen (not on an empty stomach!) and enter the land of the living.
Still at least he could cuddle and soothe the stuffy, snotty, hot and miserable Spikelet.
Thought Pip was ok again after having 2 days off school, but around noon he lay down on the sofa under a blanket and refused to move! He has a cough which is really disturbing him (and us) and a low-grade fever.
And to round off this litany of joys, little Dude is bouncy and healthy and happy and getting on the nerves of all the sickies...
Thank God I had my flu shot this year, and here's hoping that it will keep me healthy. Someone needs to keep the Good Ship Household running.
One good thing that happened today though, is that after GardenBoy was revived he went and bought himself a new laptop and so now I won't have to listen to him teach his children rude words as he shouts at the old one! He is a happy bunny now, playing with his new toy.
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Reply to Don's Comment
Allotment (definition C/o Wikipedia): (gardening), in the United Kingdom, a small area of land, let out at a nominal yearly rent by local government or independent allotment associations, for individuals to grow their own food.
So now you know! :)
In my garden veg plot I have onions and garlic at the moment, and plan to grow potatoes (Red Duke of York maybe?), beans & peas, and perhaps some tomatoes and pumpkins/squash (being hopeful about the weather. Really not enough warmth and too much rain this year). And more raspberries since the kids love hunting and eating them. Apples going in the unfenced and so mostly unused (fear of runaway kids and the busy road) front garden, but they won't be bearing for a few years.
In the allotment... everything! More potatoes, carrots, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, more beans, more onions etc etc etc.
We have dreams and plans, you see, now we just need the weather and children to get over colds. They seem to be dropping like flies, in succession. Last night it was Pip and Spike... and as he's not on top form Spike has returned to having naps in the afternoon which is my usual window for allotmenting. So it's a bit of a non-starter for now. Ho hum.
So now you know! :)
In my garden veg plot I have onions and garlic at the moment, and plan to grow potatoes (Red Duke of York maybe?), beans & peas, and perhaps some tomatoes and pumpkins/squash (being hopeful about the weather. Really not enough warmth and too much rain this year). And more raspberries since the kids love hunting and eating them. Apples going in the unfenced and so mostly unused (fear of runaway kids and the busy road) front garden, but they won't be bearing for a few years.
In the allotment... everything! More potatoes, carrots, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, more beans, more onions etc etc etc.
We have dreams and plans, you see, now we just need the weather and children to get over colds. They seem to be dropping like flies, in succession. Last night it was Pip and Spike... and as he's not on top form Spike has returned to having naps in the afternoon which is my usual window for allotmenting. So it's a bit of a non-starter for now. Ho hum.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Allotment Betrayal
We are sharing our allotment plot with a local school. We have been given half, they have been given half. We have been working darn hard on our half... well we had, up until about the middle of Oct, when it turned yucky and muddy and very cold. So I haven't been down there since. But up until then we had worked very hard to clear the surface and dig it over etc. The half claimed by the school was untouched.
BUT NOW... my partner in allotmenting went down there yesterday because a friend of hers was delivering a bunch of rubble for us to use to help our pathetic drainage. And the school side is completely cleared, completely dug over and even has drainage pipes running through it and out the other side to where, allegedly, the allotment chiefs are going to be running some drainage pipes.
I am really peeved because now we look like complete slackers and like we are totally unworthy of our half-plot. How have they done this? I mean, it is totally flooded, and theirs is worse than ours (even with the drainage pipes, because they don't drain anywhere yet). They have ice on top of their flooded mud. So HOW have they got it cleared and dug and drainage piped so quickly in such foul weather?
I bet they paid some gardening company to do it for them. That must be it, rather than just being two over-worked mums who have to bring children with them who are liable to fall in muddy puddles and need a complete change of clothes. And so by cheating and paying to get it done they have made us look unworthy...
I don't like it one bit. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I was rather hoping they would be as... what word am I looking for? Overworked? Slow? Useless? Not keen on the cold and wet? Perhaps 'normal' is what I want. Please let our neighbours (who we haven't met, I hasten to add) be normal and not show us up every step of the way. Please, God?
BUT NOW... my partner in allotmenting went down there yesterday because a friend of hers was delivering a bunch of rubble for us to use to help our pathetic drainage. And the school side is completely cleared, completely dug over and even has drainage pipes running through it and out the other side to where, allegedly, the allotment chiefs are going to be running some drainage pipes.
I am really peeved because now we look like complete slackers and like we are totally unworthy of our half-plot. How have they done this? I mean, it is totally flooded, and theirs is worse than ours (even with the drainage pipes, because they don't drain anywhere yet). They have ice on top of their flooded mud. So HOW have they got it cleared and dug and drainage piped so quickly in such foul weather?
I bet they paid some gardening company to do it for them. That must be it, rather than just being two over-worked mums who have to bring children with them who are liable to fall in muddy puddles and need a complete change of clothes. And so by cheating and paying to get it done they have made us look unworthy...
I don't like it one bit. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I was rather hoping they would be as... what word am I looking for? Overworked? Slow? Useless? Not keen on the cold and wet? Perhaps 'normal' is what I want. Please let our neighbours (who we haven't met, I hasten to add) be normal and not show us up every step of the way. Please, God?
Friday, 28 November 2008
Veg-Plot Review
I was doing a bit of clearing out of the garden veg-plot the other day, getting rid of the cosmos skeletons etc, and I found a treasure! One last onion which had been hiding under the thickets of dead scrub. It started out as an onion-and-carrot bed. Then I planted some cosmos seedlings in among, just to add interest later on... and then the cosmos got huge. They loved all the rain, I guess! They grew and grew and fell over and grew some more and sprouted roots from the stem and kept growing. I managed to get (what I thought was) all the onions and carrots out from underneath them, but yesterday I discovered I was wrong. Hooray! It's like finding a fiver in the pocket of a coat you don't wear often... well, maybe not quite the same financially, but I was chuffed to bits to find an extra bonus onion. And it was oh-so-oniony too... Not damaged from neglect and full of flavour. It was eaten that night. Yum.
So now the veg-plot has come to the end of the cycle and is bare again... well almost. I have planted 4 rows of red onions and 3 rows of garlic, which are all starting to sprout. So even in the depths of dark November (which according to a friend's gardening calendar is NOT a gardening month!) we have the hints of what is yet to come, if we can hold on through the horrid cold and wet and dark.
And I thought I would have a look back through my photos and see if I could pull together some pictures taken in roughly the same spot of the veg-plot through the months of this year. So here you go:
April. Newly planted potatoes, onions & carrots
May: Potatoes coming through nicely
June: Baby carrots and onions... and weeds
June: Potatoes geting taller
June
July
So now the veg-plot has come to the end of the cycle and is bare again... well almost. I have planted 4 rows of red onions and 3 rows of garlic, which are all starting to sprout. So even in the depths of dark November (which according to a friend's gardening calendar is NOT a gardening month!) we have the hints of what is yet to come, if we can hold on through the horrid cold and wet and dark.
And I thought I would have a look back through my photos and see if I could pull together some pictures taken in roughly the same spot of the veg-plot through the months of this year. So here you go:
April. Newly planted potatoes, onions & carrots
May: Potatoes coming through nicely
June: Baby carrots and onions... and weeds
June: Potatoes geting taller
June
July
Sept
And finally here we are in November.
And finally here we are in November.
We wait patiently through the darkness for the turning of the seasons back to lengthening days and months which ARE gardening months. Not November though. And I am not too hopeful for December either...
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Cold: virus and weather
We have had the lurgey again. This time it was Spike and Dude who came down with it. They are mostly over it, and just full of snot and coughing (as opposed to full of snot, coughing, fever and lethargy). Here's one of poor little Dude, who fell asleep on the landing half way up the stairs... Couldn't even make it to his bed. Must sleep now...
We have also had snow... ok, so only half an inch, and nothing like the exciting thickness that the Canadian cousins had been enjoying, but still very exciting. Exciting enough to stir Dude from his lethargy and send him hurtling outside to play... only to come back in 5 minutes later and spend the rest of the day on the sofa with a fleecy blanket absolutely exhausted!
Pip made a very impressive (?) mini snowman. Well, very impressive considering what he had to work with!
He also got the Chief Scout's Bronze Award at Beavers the other night... highest award a Beaver Scout can get! It means that he had got all of the Challenge Badges. Very proud mummy... Considering that I was a Brownie in my time, and a sixer, and only managed to get 2 badges. We were a very lax group and mostly just played games! So to have a son whose arms are covered in badges rather makes up for my underachievement.
We have also had snow... ok, so only half an inch, and nothing like the exciting thickness that the Canadian cousins had been enjoying, but still very exciting. Exciting enough to stir Dude from his lethargy and send him hurtling outside to play... only to come back in 5 minutes later and spend the rest of the day on the sofa with a fleecy blanket absolutely exhausted!
Pip made a very impressive (?) mini snowman. Well, very impressive considering what he had to work with!
He also got the Chief Scout's Bronze Award at Beavers the other night... highest award a Beaver Scout can get! It means that he had got all of the Challenge Badges. Very proud mummy... Considering that I was a Brownie in my time, and a sixer, and only managed to get 2 badges. We were a very lax group and mostly just played games! So to have a son whose arms are covered in badges rather makes up for my underachievement.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Romanesco Broccoli
We found the coolest vegetable ever in a greengrocers in a nearby town... It was fractal broccoli! I searched for it on the internet and found out that it is actually called Romanesco Broccoli, and it definitely wins the prize for worlds coolest vegetable.
It is now our favourite vegetable, but it is not sold in our local supermarket, so we have to go to the other town to get it. So we haven't had it since and I hope that next time I go to the green grocers they have it again. They didn't have it in another grocers in another town, so here's hoping.
In other news...
We had a wonderful trip away over half term with our church... We went to a Youth Hostel and took over the whole place for three days.
Edinburgh Zoo
Bamburgh beach with friends
We had a halloween party for Pip which was a great.
Eating doughnuts off a stick
And Spike moved into a big-boy bed. Which means he can now get out of bed at 6:30 with the big ones... so they have been put under a new regime and are not allowed to get up until 7. Which I think is reasonable, but they think is tortuous. Hopefully they will get used to it soon!
No gardening news, I am afraid, because, as a friend's gardening calendar says 'November is NOT a gardening month'. Too much rain, wind and general nastiness for me. We have lost all the leaves off our bird-feeding tree though, which means we can see the bird feeders now, so we have started filling them again, and are enjoying watching the birds. We get greenfinches, sparrows, blue tits, great tits, goldfinches, and have even had a woodpecker (but not at the birdfeeders). And robins, blackbirds and collared doves pick up whatever falls out onto the grass below.
And that's the news from Lake Wobegon...
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