Ten random things

I've really been enjoying the random things posts I've been reading lately, Annie's and Gillian's for example, so I thought I'd stick in my two penneth worth.

1.  There's a dead bee in my kitchen.  It's one of many things found by small boys and identified immediately as treasure that must be kept.  Along with feathers, sticks, stones, shells and loads of sea glass.

2.  When we were cycling down through Spain on our way to Morocco we stopped at a nice campsite.  I don't speak much Spanish.  The desk person kept asking, "Naturiste?"  I kept saying "Si".  I eventually worked out what it meant during an awkward conversation with about a dozen naked older people who'd been playing boules but who came over to welcome the new arrivals.  In retrospect, I should have got there quicker.

3.  I bought a nice dress in a charity shop the other day.  Silk, size 10, pale duck egg blue and light grey, sleeveless.  It's to wear to a wedding next month.  Now all I need are shoes, a bag, something to wear round my shoulders and something to wear on my head.  Oh yes, and I'm not a size 10.

4.  I'm an eternal optimist.

5.  I love salty snacks.  Crisps, nuts, olives, bombay mix.  Yeah baby.

6.  I just ate a packet of spicy tomato flavour Wheat Crunchies.

7.  When I was barely eighteen I got a job in a city centre bar.  When I arrived they handed me an extremely scanty rubber dress and told me to put it on and start work.

8.  I've loved gardening and knitting and sewing and making things since I was little.  It's been wonderful and inspirational to find so many like-minded people in the blogosphere.  They are few and far between in real life I find.

9.  Not long after we bought our first (new-to-us) car, I took it to a car wash as it was filthy.  I drove in and waited for the wash.  The brushes started to roll, then suddenly they whomped down onto the top of the car with a huge bang.  I managed to get the window open and feel over the roof.  Yep, I'd left the aerial up.  The brushes were locked down over the car doors.  There was a huge queue behind me of people waiting to use the now jammed car wash.  A very kindly taxi driver behind me got the woman in charge.  Eventually they got the brushes up.  The aerial was all curly and twanged bouncily off of the brushes.  The car wash was no longer functional.  People were trying to back out of the garage into the main road (into Bath).  It looked a little chaotic.  The woman in charge asked me to go into the office.  I followed her, trying to imagine how much a new car washing machine would cost.  She apologised that I wouldn't be able to wash the car today, and gave me a token so that I could go back another time.  I didn't ever go back.

10. I think I need to go on a diet.  Not today though.  Today I am having more crisps.

Have a good weekend lovely people.  The weather here is set fair, so there will no doubt be lots of outsiding and shorts and maybe even ice cream.  Oh but life is good is it not?

The allotment - mid May

A quick visit to the allotment today to pick asparagus.  The asparagus bed needs weeding next time, but today was more of a day for picking and wandering around looking at what's happening.  

Here's another bit that desperately needs tackling - the rhubarb patch behind the shed.  The poor rhubarb doesn't stand a chance amongst the grass and weeds.  I think I'll have to dig it up and keep it in a pot for a bit while I sort out the mess.  But it's feeling like it might be a biggish job, so I'm thinking I'll have to put it off for a bit.

Round the front of the shed the artichokes are flourishing.  I even found a couple of buds to harvest.

I love the colours, and as luck would have it they perfectly match the asparagus.  This is a variety called Gros Vert de Laon that I grew from seed a couple of years ago.  Apparently it has the biggest heart of any artichoke.

The last of the apple blossom.

And a rather lonely plumlet.

This is on a tiny little tree that I planted last year after it had a very rough start in life due to small boys and footballs.  It had hardly any blossom this year, but it does have quite a lot of foliage.  So I think this year it's having a rest from trying to produce fruit and it's going to concentrate on getting bigger and stronger, which is fine with me.

In the handful of days since I last visited the potatoes have burst forth.  Quite amazing how fast they grow.  The planting looks quite close together and a little haphazard.  It was done by the little people and there was a slightly edgy competitive element going on at the time.  But I'm happy to have them helping, whatever the result.

The onions are also looking quite close together.  Hopefully they won't mind too much, it's not as though they have masses of foliage.

Little radishes, one of my favourite things to grow early in the season.  And probably the first thing I ever grew as a child.  The boys have planted some as well, they're quite satisfying for little people to grow - nice and fast and easy.

The gooseberries are scaring me a little.  Two vast bushes, already covered with decent sized berries.  I haven't finished up last year's lot yet, there are still some in the freezer.  Anyone got any good gooseberry recipes?  I have one for fool, but I'm wondering if I could make Eton mess with gooseberries cooked with elderflower.  It might be quite delicious.

A final look down the plot as I headed for home.  Don't worry, I did remember to shut the shed door.  There's been another spate of shed break-ins lately, as well as some vandalism.  The brown shed to the right of mine in the picture has been broken into repeatedly.  And the shed behind where I'm stood taking the photo as well.  And the one just out of shot over to the left.  I think I'm spared because I don't have a window or a conventional shed padlock.  My corrugated shed has an ordinary door handle and is quite a tough structure.  Although I shouldn't speak too soon.

The edges are a bit of a shocker aren't they.  I'll add it to my to-do list.

On my way back across the site I passed so many amazing plots.  I really must go back with my camera and take some pictures of them, they deserve to be seen!  There have certainly been some serious hours put in to get them in such beautiful shape.

If you're a gardener, how are things growing for you right now?  What have you dared to plant out so far?  Wishing you some good gardening weather, CJ xx

Stick a fork in me

I'm done.  The biggest boys had scout/cub camp this weekend, from Friday evening, so the littlest boy had two whole parents to himself for an entire day.  We asked him what he wanted to do, and he said "Go on holiday".  So after lunch we headed to the seaside.  We did mention that the weather wasn't brilliant, and perhaps we should do something else, but his heart was set on sand.

Well, sand there was, and plenty of it.  Much of it was blowing horizontally at about sixty miles an hour.  We marched gamely to the beach and trotted briskly along it.  Even the donkeys had their eyes squeezed shut and their ears flapped back flat.  It was like a scene from Lawrence of Arabia.  The littlest boy seemed completely oblivious to any discomfort and fairly thrilled to be king for a day.  (Yes, he is dressed as Superman again, the cape's under his jumper, Superman wears it like that sometimes when it's a bit chilly.  It doesn't diminish his superpowers you understand.)

There's not much colour in the photos because the wind had sucked all of the colour of the landscape.  I had sunglasses on because I've got contact lenses, and contact lenses and sand are not a good mix.  And I also had my eyes squeezed almost shut.  The sunglasses had a film of sea spray and sand on them so I couldn't really see much at all.  And I couldn't hold the camera steady either.  Mostly I was just concentrating on standing up.

We looked at the pier, but you have to pay to go on these days, so we just looked from the end.

We bought the littlest boy an ice-cream and wandered into the town for a bit out of the wind.  He was happy to find a fantastic Lego-filled shop with glass cases full of minifigures to press his nose against.

Some of them are astonishingly expensive.  I treated him to a couple of second-hand ones for 99p each, which he loved.

We bought some chips and ate them on a bench near the sea.  We fed the pigeons and seagulls and a tiny little sparrow.  When we asked the littlest boy what he wanted to do for the last hour he chose to go back to the beach.  The wind was stronger than ever, so we had fun leaning back in it.  In fact despite of everything we did have a huge amount of fun.  We even saw a shark, the dorsal fin was bobbing about in the waves.  The littlest boy was utterly thrilled.  At certain times it had a slight look of a traffic cone to it, but of course we know without a doubt that it was a shark.  And the best bit was that we could tell the big boys when they came home that we'd seen a shark and they would of course be amazed and breathtaken.

On the way back to the car we had to walk into the wind.  The littlest boy battled bravely along, but I felt sorry for him down at sandstorm level so I ended up giving him a piggy back.  We'd parked an astonishingly long way away, and it honestly felt like the Marathon des Sables staggering back.  I can't tell you what utter bliss it was to get into the car and shut the door.  We were covered in salt and sand, and I had red stinging cheeks, gritty eyes and dreadlocks.  The littlest boy was happy as a clam.  I do love holidays, especially the memorable ones.

On the way home we collected the biggest boy from camp as he had a football tournament today.  There was only really time for showers and baths and bed, and breakfast, before we were off out again.  More wind.  A smattering of rain.  Football.  Defeat and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.  High drama and smoky bacon flavour crisps.  A ten minute lunch at home for me, and then back out into the wind to do a stint cooking on the barbecue at the football tournament (it was our local town's tournament, just down the road from us).  Burgers flipped with a casual expertise that belied the fact that I've never barbecued anything before.  I didn't burn any or drop any or set fire to myself in the wind, so pretty much a triumph really.  And finally home.  The middle boy was back shortly afterwards with bags of things covered in mud, which made a lovely change from the sand.  Apparently he had been underwater.  In all of his clothes.

The biggest boy has a trophy so he's happy.  The middle boy is too exhausted to be happy, but no doubt after he's had some sleep he'll be feeling it.  And the littlest boy channels happy all the live long day, especially so when he is in possession of two new (to him) Lego minifigures.  Oh life is good, it really is.

Forty pence

We had a fantastic long weekend, with three lovely afternoons out, some beautiful weather and a general happy feeling.  Oh yes, and other than food and petrol it we only spent 40p.  I love that these little boys are happy to do things that don't cost too much.  What's that saying about the best things in life?

On Saturday they wanted to go to a local park that has a skate park there, as well as trees for climbing and the usual play equipment.

We stayed there in the sun for three hours, playing, reading, watching cricket.  I pottered around taking photos of boys and flowers.

Hawthorn blossom is some of my favourite.  Such perfectly round buds, and close up the petals are like crumpled silk.

On Sunday morning I took the boys to the allotment and planted sweetcorn.  After lunch we went and jumped around on the beach.  They never get tired of sticks and stones and scrambling over rocks.

I always pause when I pass this wonderful fig tree that's out of the back of the cafe above, on the way to the bookshop.  It was pruned back hard last year, but it's still growing well with lots of little figlets on it.  I wanted to visit back in the autumn at fig time, but I missed the moment.  I don't know whether the figs were any good, whether they were collected and eaten.  Maybe I'll find out this year.  Although it's in the cafe garden I don't think it's accessible from there, but it does overhang the lane.  If I was there at fig time one might fall into my hand as I passed, you never know, stranger things have happened.

I gave the biggest boy 20p to look through the telescope at some birds at the water's edge.  They turned out to be gulls, but he was quick to assure me that they were the most unusual of this country's regular gulls, just in case I thought it was a waste of 20p.  And I gave them 20p for the toilets.  And that was the extent of our expenditure over the three days, except for food and petrol, which I know is of course a huge chunk of money, but nonetheless, it's easy to find that somehow a whole load more has been extracted.

On Monday we went for the walk that I already posted about.  It was only about two and a half miles, but we took about two hours over it.  There was plenty of climbing and constructing and general boy stuff.

You may have noticed that the littlest boy wore the same clothes for all three days.  After the first two days I made it clear that they were to go in the laundry basket.  He seemed to agree, maybe in retrospect a little too readily.  The next morning they were nowhere to be found.  And before I knew it, there he was again, wearing the same slightly grubby football kit.  Once his clothes are on, it's much too tricky to make him take them off again and change.  Pick your battles, you know.  I mentioned that I hadn't been able to find them in the laundry basket because he'd squirrelled them away somewhere.  He said that yes he had, he'd put them under his pillow.  In retrospect, a little too readily.  The next day when he was safely at school (in his uniform) I went to the laundry basket.  Nothing.  Under the pillow.  Nothing.  I finally found them stuffed into a desk drawer.  Is it me or is it slightly disturbing that he can deflect the questioning quite so deftly and convincingly?  At five.  I'm not thinking about the future.  At all.

England in May

Walking in the spring warmth of a balmy bank holiday Monday.  Cow parsley, baby geese, roses and lilac.  Tyre swings and tree climbing.  Big houses and little houses.  Sitting on logs, watching the world go by.  Does it get any better than this?