Look away now

The boys have had fun trying to disappear into the mist on the way to school on the past couple of mornings.  It makes a change for them to have something to disappear into, rather than just disappearing.  I do like to start the day by yelling up the road like a fishwife.

After I'd dropped them off yesterday I had some breakfast and went to the allotment.  I'd quite like to have breakfast at the allotment one day, in the summer maybe.

The mist didn't clear the whole time I was there and there weren't many other plotholders around.  I spent some time putting in a new strawberry bed.  I'd pulled up lots of little plantlets from the garden, and I planted them through weed control fabric, to try and give myself less work to do later on.  Twenty-one Cambridge Favourites and the same number of Honeoye.  Hopefully they'll crop one after the other.  I've tried everbearing strawberries that give a continuous supply of fruit, but I much prefer the ones that only last a month or so.  With five of us, I'm happy to have a glut.  If we don't manage to eat them all fresh, I can make jam for putting into swiss rolls and rice pudding in the winter.

Right now I'm trying not to think about cakes and puddings too much though.  I've given up sweet things for Lent, and I'm not quite used to it yet.  In fact right now I'm pretty hungry.  The kitchen is calling.

On my way back up through the allotments I passed this shed.

The ground is sloping down to the left, the shed is sloping up to the right.  It's a fantastic mish-mash of bits of wood and panelling.  I do love to nose round the allotments at these cobbled together creations.  And look at that rhubarb!  Mine should be ready for the end of Lent I hope.  A crumble sounds delicious right now.

The sedum I bought last year at a community plant sale is shooting already.  I think it might be overshadowed by artichokes later on, but right now it's looking good.  I'm hoping it will provide lots of food for bees come summertime.

In the garden the peach tree is blooming.  It will no doubt need hand pollinating with a brush as there aren't many bees around to do the job.  A bit of a design flaw I think, flowering before the insects are ready for it.  It is nice to see the beautiful colour though, it's the first thing in bloom in my garden, which really doesn't have many plants in.

I had a bit of a shock the other evening.  The biggest boy has a lovely bird book, with 365 pictures in it, one for each day of the year.  They are all beautiful photographs of the birds in their natural habitats, and I often glance at the picture of the day.  He likes to read it every night before bed.  We've had all sorts of birds, from all over the world, flying, splashing, eating, swimming.  Beautiful.  Until March 14th.

It's nailed to the wall!  Say what now???  I read the page opposite, and there is not one word of explanation.  Did Philippe J Dubois just wake up one day and think, "I've had enough of this beautiful appreciation of birds in their own natural habitat, let's nail one to the barn door"?  Words fail me.

Eco football and a thought about failure

As usual there's been plenty of football over the past few days.  At one point I managed to pull the car up to the edge of the pitch and knit while I watched the training.  Unimaginable luxury, despite having two smaller boys to keep a grip of.

On Saturday afternoon the two biggest boys went to see their first proper football match, on a trip organised by their headmaster.  It was a Forest Green Rovers game, a local team based up near Nailsworth in Gloucestershire.  Just out of interest, they play in what I would describe more as a rather fetching mint green, rather than an actual forest green, and I did float the suggestion that Mint Green Rovers might have been a better name.  I understand that it's staying as Forest Green for the time being though.

The boys thought the match was absolutely brilliant, but the bit that intrigued me the most was FGR's green credentials.  Apparently they are a sustainable club, and are leading the way when it comes to eco football.  They have organic turf, watered with rainwater, which is also used to flush the toilets.  No chemicals are used on the grass.  The lawn mower is a solar powered robot, and if it breaks down it texts the groundsman!  I saw the possibility to have a little fun with that, if you could access the messaging system...

The chairman is the owner of Ecotricity, a green energy company, and a vegan to boot, which thrilled the eldest.  Apart from fish and chips, all the food at the club is vegetarian.  And the players have all been given electric cars which they can hook up to recharge at the ground.  Two-thirds of the energy used by the club comes from solar panels on the roof.  Really, who knew anything of this sort went on at football?  I'm definitely starting to like this game.  I should probably just mention that all of this information is second-hand, told to me by the other half.  I don't think he's winding me up.

While everyone else was off cheering FGR to victory, over their top-of-the-league opponents, me and the littlest boy wandered into town and down to the allotment.

There was a definite feel of spring in the air, with all sorts of springy things like buds and bees and even the odd butterfly.  It does amaze me how delicate things like butterflies get through the winter.  All that wind and rain.  Nature is so astonishing.  We did some weeding and then went to the park where we ate an ice lolly (the first of the year) and bumped into a little chum.

Yesterday the biggest boy played football again, and even scored a couple of goals.  I was happy for him as he went for a trial a week or so ago, but didn't get picked.  He seems fine about it, but I know he would have loved to be selected.  It got me thinking about failure, especially after I listened to a series of programmes on the Value of Failure on the radio last week.  The one presented by a school headmistress was particularly interesting.  She said that the girls were always taught to embrace failure and that they always talked about it together and learned all they could from it.  It is easy to avoid failure by sitting on the sofa doing nothing, but to have failed means you have tried.  And unless you put yourself out there and try things, nothing will happen.  I'm sure that the biggest boy has already learned and moved on.  It is a good lesson to understand that things aren't always easy and you can't always have what you want straight away.  I'm thinking I need to try a thing or two myself.  Put myself out there a bit.  Implement a Grand Plan.  After all, that's how a new age traveller living in a van with one wind turbine created successful green energy company and bought a football club.

The kitchen and the garden

The biggest boy has gone vegan for Lent.  I'm finishing off some Greek yoghurt, then I think I'll join him.  The middle boy has given up chocolate and the littlest boy isn't quite sure what he's going to give up yet.  He did suggest that vegetables might be a goer.  I vetoed that one.  Truth to tell, he's not really a giver-upper of things he enjoys.  

I've been remembering the things I used to make during the twenty-five years that I was a vegan, and tweaking a few favourite recipes as well.  These are the cookies I always keep in the fridge, adapted to use a couple of tablespoons of ground linseeds steeped in five tablespoons of hot water instead of eggs.

I also made a jar of sunflower and pumpkin seeds sauteed in sunflower oil and shoyu.  Everyone loves these, and they're pretty nutritious as well.  Better than crisps.

They're dead easy to make.  Just heat a little oil then add the seeds and drizzle over some shoyu (soy sauce, but one made without sugar or other nasties).  Keep stirring every minute or so until they're browned.  Brilliant as a snack or sprinkled over salad.

Out in the garden there are signs of life and more than a little sunshine.

The pond has frog spawn, and a spider that's walking on the surface, back and forth, back and forth.  

Apologies if a close up of frog spawn is a little too much for you.  There are buds too.  Much prettier.

This is my little peach tree.  Unfortunately it is used as a football goal post and it's leaning quite a bit and missing a few branches.  I'm not expecting peaches any time soon.

I hear that warm weather is coming.  The guinea pigs have been out on the grass already and washing has been drying on the line.  Shoots are shooting and small boys and woodlice are once more reunited.

In fact, they all are desperate to keep woodlice as pets.  They have an RSPB book called "Wild Things to do with Woodlice" which apparently suggests that it's a fantastic thing to do.  I am trying very hard to stand firm on this one, but they have ganged up on me and they have the RSPB on their side and I can feel my fingernail grip starting to slide.  But really, woodlice, do I have to?

I'm wishing you all a good weekend, in the warmth and the sun.  Sunday in particular looks absolutely stonking.  Enjoy!

Tomatoes, and why I might not be a very good female role model

I haven't been in this space much for a while.  There's been a little gloom, and it's been hard to get it together.  But today things are looking a touch more positive, so here I am.  I could write about how tough things are right now, I could tell you about little worries and stresses that have eaten away at my confidence and left me lying awake at night and in a state of anxiety in the day.  Or I could tell you about tomatoes.  Yes.  Let's do that.

I planted some.  It was late February and it seemed like the right time.  I'm sure I did it about this time last year.  It's tricky to get it just right.  Too early and they get very spindly, too late and you just end up with green tomatoes.  As always I have too many packets, although to be fair I never seem to end up with too many actual tomatoes.  I have Tigerella, Essex Wonder, Ferline (supposedly with some blight resistance), Golden Sunrise (thank you Flighty), Gardener's Delight, Red Alert, Marmande, Alicante, Sungold and Striped Stuffer (how could I not?).  Now I've listed them it seems slightly embarrassing.  Ten varieties.  I don't know how this happens.  Last year I was fairly controlled about tomatoes, but I think my self-discipline is pretty non-existent at the moment and somehow all of these seeds have appeared, although to be fair several of them were left over from previous years.

I planted them a week ago, and today I noticed the first teeny tiny loop pushing up through the surface of the soil.  A Sungold, my number one choice for reliability.  Even in the very worst year there are Sungold tomatoes to be had.  (I'm hardly superstitious at all, saying this won't in any way curse us to the worst summer on record and a year of abject nationwide tomato failure I am sure).

In other news, there has been some den building around here.  I'd quite like a den of my own actually.  I don't think it's something you ever grow out of, that love of a tiny, cosy space to curl up in.

Some painting of flags.  I'd quite like to sit and paint for a bit too.   In fact being five must be brilliant.

We went to look at the sea again.  Much calmer now.

I spotted this lovely beech arch.  I'm really getting quite fond of beech, it has a nice traditional quality to it and it always looks good, winter, spring, summer or fall.

Nighttime in the city.  I'm almost never in the city any more, let alone after dark.  This shot was taken outside of Bristol Children's Hospital.  A quick check-up was required - no treatment needed thankfully.  The doctor we saw was absolutely fantastic.  Fantastic.

A happy parcel in the post, all the way from the other side of the pond.  The lovely Katie at Life With The Crew had a giveaway for this wonderful pendant, and I won.  It's made by Samantha of Pipodoll.  I love the natural themes and materials Samantha uses.

Another treat - hot chocolate in a cafe in Wotton-under-Edge.  A rare treat as we always take our own drinks and snacks when we go out, but the biggest boy was in need of a sit down, so we had a delicious moment together, just me and him and two cups of hot chocolate with shortbread.  Blissful.

An early morning glimpse of the moon.  I opened the window to take some pictures, and was amazed to hear how loud the dawn chorus was.  It was still quite dark, but birdsong was everywhere.  It was utterly enchanting.  I stayed listening for so long I was frozen, but it was worth it.

I'll leave you with a little conversation I had with the two biggest boys this morning as we got ready for the school run.  To give you some context, I always consider myself fairly low maintenance.  I do all the odd jobs around the place, the mending, the building, the heavy lifting, the putting out of rubbish, the garden etc.    And I don't shop much or do particularly girly things, although I do love femininity.  The conversation went something like this.  (Names have been changed to protect the innocent).

Middle boy:  "Do you know, Jack in my class thinks that twins can read each other's minds and that they are always thinking exactly the same thing."

Biggest boy:  "Well they can't."

Middle boy: "I know."

Biggest boy:  "I bet Lily and Jess [twins] in Year R aren't thinking the same thing as each other right now.  I bet one of them is thinking about girl stuff and the other one is thinking about shoes."

Me: "Girls don't all think about shoes all the time you know."

Biggest boy:  "You do."

Me (outraged): "I do nothing of the sort!  I'll have you know I've got hardly any shoes for a girl."

Biggest boy:  "You've got TWO pairs!"

Oh dear.  He is in for such a rude awakening when he gets out into the real world and discovers girls that won't build flat packs and that own twenty pairs of shoes.  I'm wondering if I should try and be a bit more vacuous.

The Colour Collaborative: February - Storm

A post for The Colour Collaborative.  

Ten years ago, I used to work in an office in the city centre.  And I used to loathe winter.  Every year when the summer faded a little gloom would come over me as I faced a long season of cold commutes and windy wet lunch breaks.  In the summer I was happy as a clam, sailing down the big hill on my bicycle every morning and finding one of my favourite outside spaces to sit at lunchtime.  But when the temperatures dropped and the days darkened I would complain.

But then I was lucky enough to be able to stop working when the children were born, and to move out of the city, and to my surprise I fell in love with winter.  It’s completely and utterly different to live with it, instead of against it.  If you don’t have to commute on a bicycle and the only real daylight you see isn’t just a brief foray into the elements in thin unsuitable office clothes during the middle of the day, everything is different.

I started noticing the striking patterns of leafless trees against the sky, the birds playing in the wild winter winds, the cleansing feel of bare fields and the beautiful grey-brown cocoa colour of the countryside.  Winter became a chance to rest a little from the relentless outdoor time of other seasons.  Time to be cosy inside without feeling any lazy guilt.  Time to enjoy the wind howling round the porch like it does when it comes from the north, and to marvel at the force of the rain and ice hurled against the windows.  It came to be that there was nothing finer than a raging storm, even on a day when I had to go out.  I would bundle up the children, put on boots and a thick coat, and just enjoy the feeling of being alive in such wild and windy weather.  The fun of racing through driving rain clutching a small damp hand as the gales threatened to knock us over and the pleasure of reaching a destination and bursting through the door, breathless and pink-cheeked was wonderful.

I had more time to be creative too, and I started knitting and making quilts and creating scrapbooks.  And as I did so I discovered something else - the beautiful world of colour.  In an office of lawyers, black dominates.  At the AGM there were over 300 people wearing black, with a little charcoal and navy, and just a smattering of colour, but only amongst the non-lawyers.  As a celebration of having left a job I loathed, I started wearing every colour I could lay my hands on.  I wore blue and green and purple and pink.  Pink!  It was wonderful.  Before, whenever I shopped, I bought the black one.  If they didn’t have it in black, I didn’t bother.  Now, a huge world had opened up.

After a while my colour mania calmed down, and I noticed a trend in my choice of colours for the things I was making - I would usually choose the stormy colours of winter.

The wonderful thick heavy greys that complimented pretty much everything.  Subtle shades of blue and muted purples.  That duck egg colour that appears over the horizon as the storm passes, with lavender grey streaks of cloud and a hint of silver.

I know myself better now; these are my colours.  Whenever I’m undecided in making a colour choice I just look to the winter sky and choose the colours of the storm.

If you'd like to see posts from the other colour collaborators, you can click on the links below:

          Annie at Knitsofacto                                            Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

         

          Sandra at Cherry Heart                                        Jennifer at Thistlebear

A blue sky day

The sky looked like this all day today...

so the middle boy got his birthday treat of a trip to Cotswold Wildlife Park.  It's somewhere we've been before, and the boys really enjoy it.  A mix of animals, play areas and lots of space for running around.

First stop, penguins.

This one didn't have a head.

Those of a nervous disposition when it comes to snakes should look away now.  This black mamba came right up to the glass and followed the littlest boy around.

I was transfixed by it.  It's extremely venomous, killing a human in a matter of hours, and in some cases under an hour.  Unless there's treatment with anti-venom a bite from a black mamba is fatal.  100% of the time.  It's aggression is unpredictable and it's the fastest moving snake in the world.  It's been referred to as death incarnate.  Altogether terrifying.  But fascinating as well, especially to small boys.  Let's go outside for some air.

One of the loveliest creatures there - the wolf.  I'm not that keen on seeing big animals in captivity, but to see them at close quarters was such a privilege.  

More snowdrops, this time fancier frilly ones.  In fact there were a few different varieties dotted about.

Before we left there was just time to shin up a tree.  If you look closely you can see the biggest and the littlest, who is very intrepid and not at all bothered by being twenty-five feet off the ground.  How happy it made them all to find the perfect tree for climbing.

On the way to and from the park we passed a bit of flooding.  This was near the River Thames at Lechlade.  It gave me pause for thought.

Hoping you are all safe and warm and dry, wherever you are.

And thanks for identifying that plant for me.  It sounds as though it will be perfect for the front garden.  Apologies for not replying to any questions in the comments at the moment, for some reason I can't.  No idea why.  I'm hoping that one day it magically resolves itself.  In fact this is very much my approach to life.  Working so far.