Happy Birthday to Boo!

On Saturday it was little Hope's second birthday.

She had jelly babies for breakfast!
And we bought her this little tea set.

She enjoyed her party a lot more than she did last year. She revelled in all the attention and ate lots of cake!
Ah. What lovely girls!

The weather here has been quite nice too. I've been growing some seeds on my windowsill and today I planted out a few rows of peas. I start most things off indoors as I don't have much luck with sowing things straight into the ground. However, I have sown some spring onions and radishes straight into the veg patch as they were successful last year.

We have plans to make a simple outdoor kitchen this summer. I am inspired by the Nigel Slater 'Simple Suppers' programme where he is often cooking delicious recipes outdoors at somebody's allotment or veg patch. At the moment I have sown peas, broad beans, runner beans, swiss chard, perpetual spinach, beetroot, salad leaves, spring onions and radishes. Little Hope has helped with a lot of the planting. She has been learning to spoon compost into a container at her Waldorf Steiner toddler group.

We have plans to fix up our indoor kitchen too. I don't know if I mentioned it, but a pipe in the bathroom leaked recently causing damage to the ceiling. So that needs repairing and I think we shall be retiling and putting in new worktops and sink too.

My first harvest.

I was outside, just now, but have had to come running in to keep out of the way of a big swarm of either wasps or bees. I was in the shed when I became aware of a very loud sound, like if you were near a busy motorway. When I came out I could see this huge swarm up in the air about 50 feet away, so I just ran indoors and closed all the windows. I'm now wondering if I did something to disturb them or if it is something else. Will they be after me if I go back outside?

Anyway, yesterday, I picked the first yields from the veg patch, this lettuce and Henry's swiss chard. We had the chard and some of my Mum's home-grown green with our Sunday roast.

This is HM in her Laura Ashley dress that I got at the flea market last week.

How does your garden grow?

It has been a fairly sticky day, weather-wise and so we (the babe and I) have spent a lot of today outside. I cut this jug of flowers, quince and apple blossom, from the garden. Aren't they gorgeous? Hope certainly seems to think so!

Here is a new batch of the stinging nettle tonic I am making for the tomatoes.

I planted these tomato plants in the greenhouse today and fed them the tonic I made earlier. Just as Alys Fowler explained on the 'Edible Garden', it did smell very pooey!

And these are some of my hanging baskets. I planted them up at the beginning of April from small plug plants. They have come on quite a lot in just a couple of weeks.

This is our only chicken. Her two friends died recently, but this one is still laying big, white eggs daily. She does seem lonely, though. We intend to get a few more hens next month. Just hope they will get on together.

And these planters belong to Honor-May and Henry. A few months back they sowed som veg seeds in trays and they are now happpily growing outside. They have radishes, swiss chard, beetroot and sweet peas. They also sowed some tomato seeds which are now plants growing in the greenhouse.

The garden

It has been rather a nice week weather-wise and I've managed to get out into the garden a bit while the baby napped. I was concerned that the broad beans had not yet appeared underneath those little polytunnels so I dug around there to see what was going on. No sign at all of any ever being planted so I suspect the mice may have got them.

These are some that I started off on the windowsill. I shall need to hurry up and get some more... I love broad beans.

So this is how the garden is looking now. Hopefully, in a few months, it will be transformed!

INSET day.

The half term break is extended into this week as the teachers have an Inset day. The weather maybe miserable but we have plenty to keep us busy including sowing these seeds.

The children want their own little gardening plots this year. HM practised her multiplication and fraction knowledge during this activity. She multiplied 8 x 5 to find the total number of cells and then divided the seeds into fifths.

Henry has some sea monkeys which hatched on Friday. Lisa bought them for his Christmas present. Honor wants some of her own and I said she could if she worked hard on her maths this week so it looks as though we'll be off to Pets at Home this afternoon!

Ash Wednesday and today...

I didn't get a chance to sit down and post yesterday so I have some time this evening, now the kids are in bed and Hubby has popped to Tesco to get me some paper plates, to write about the last 2 days. Of course, being Catholic an' all, we got ourselves off to Mass at 9.30am. Honor did the Offertory Procession with her Grandma and I quietly prayed that she wouldn't drop anything. I've never seen anyone do that but it would be my kids to be the first. I should have more faith! She did a good job.

Here she is doing another good job, helping Brown Owl provide the Lenten Lunch at the Village Hall. The soup was great! I had 3 bowls! So much for fasting and abstinence.

Hope enjoyed it too!

And it was a beautiful sunny day. Later that afternoon we visited Supernana's grave at the cemetary as Mum had some peach coloured primulas to plant there. The kids brought their gardening aprons and tools that they got for Christmas and helped out.

To finish off, Honor and I practised some fractions (hee, hee) then snuggled up in bed together and watched Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers. She is very keen to have her own little area of garden to grow her vegetables on. We liked the look of rainbow chard, so we'll try and get some seeds for that.

Today Hubby had a day off. The weather, unfortunately, was miserable and we had trouble making up our minds about what to do. We all had a wander round a garden centre and
ended up buying a selection of vegetable seeds costing around £17. So we need to make sure we get a good return on that little investment!

This afternoon, I went out with my Mum, HM and Hope (the girls!) to Waterstones while the boys stayed at home and put together some flat packed furniture! Inspired by the Percy Jackson film that we saw on Tuesday, HM bought these 2 books from the series. I've just been up to see her ('cos she's in bed) and she has already read a few chapters of the first one and is loving it!

Hubby has just returned with the paper plates... and a chocolate sundae. Mmmmm. So, I'd better go. Bye!