Five on Friday

spot the tadpole

Joining in with Amy and Five on Friday.

1. The Easter hols are rolling to the end far too quickly, although sometimes just keeping up with the demands for food is quite overwhelming. There's a bit of a Rubik's cube mania here at the moment. Before that it was juggling. I made them all three little bean bags each, and I'd have taken a photo if I could find them but they seem to have mysteriously disappeared. We had a crafternoon yesterday and made some cards and things with stamps and copious quantities of ink. I like to give handmade cards, even if they are a bit rough and ready. 

2. The frogspawn in the garden is rapidly turning into tadpoles. They are mostly huddled together at the moment, but the braver ones are having little swims about. 

3. On a grander scale, I watched a programme about the gardens at Buckingham Palace the other day. They are absolutely phenomenal, organic of course, and teeming with wildlife. Apparently there are 85 different birds that visit and 10 times more fungi than in the surrounding parks. There are royal beehives there and wild areas and ducklings on the lake. I'd never seen it all before and I was absolutely blown away. I would like to be the Queen after all. Or even the Queen's gardener. 

4. I've been trying a little calligraphy in the evenings. It's something that doesn't come instantly, more of a long slow process. Late at night I write things out in a sort of unwinding way. I'm not really sure where to start, but starting somewhere has to be a good thing. I'm tired by then and I can't always be bothered to find a quote to copy so sometimes I just write lists of words.

5. Do you imagine it will be warming up any time soon? I'm hoping for some lovely picnic weather soon. I've just about adjusted to it not being winter any more and I'm bracing myself for all of the outdoor work to be done. But it seems unseasonally chilly. I nearly froze at the park on Wednesday. I'm feeling the need to wear a t-shirt and sit in the sun for a bit. The littlest boy is dallying with shorts already of course. Although today he wore the evacuee costume with sunglasses and an odd hat. Anything that will persuade him to change out of his pyjamas.

Wishing all a good weekend. CJ xx

Plot and garden

We spent a good day in the sun at the allotment last week. I got the middle boy to take his Trangia and he made us lunch of savoury rice and veggie sausages. The boys played in the trees and by the stream and made the food and ate and did things with sticks and knives and I managed to get loads done in the time we were there. 

Lots of weeding, with lots more still to do of course, and broad beans and radishes sown, Okay, that doesn't sound like much now I've written it down, but it did at the time. The littlest boy fell in the stream. Apparently the biggest boy waved his stick (wand) at him in grand Harry Potter fashion and shouted "Relashio" (they are all about the Harry Potter spells at the moment). The littlest boy said, "What does that do?", then fell forward onto his knees in the stream and backwards completely into the water. You could hear the others laughing from half a mile away. A bit later on the middle boy fell in the stream as well. Not to be outdone, you know. 

It was such a gorgeous day there were loads of other plotholders there. I'd forgotten what a good community spirit there is. Vandalism has started up again after a winter break unfortunately. Everyone is duly outraged. 

I spotted a couple of brimstone butterflies, the primrose yellow ones. Such a fantastic name. They hibernate as adults and start flying in April.

I tackled the garden today. Mulched the raised beds with compost and manure. Topped up some of the pots. Swept and tidied. Inside I planted  more seeds. Dark red lupins, white foxgloves, ammi, lime green nicotiana, cucumbers, squashes, courgettes and achocha. Spring is here.

Competitive den building

I took the little people down to the woods today. We went in disguise and didn't go alone, just in case. They had a fancy to build dens, and of course it had to be competitive. The littlest boy and I teamed up together. Our den had a nature table. You have to go some to beat a den with its own nature table. The middle boy lost his prized Swiss army knife, so we spent a nervy fifteen minutes hunting for that.  After a while I offered a £5 reward to motivate those who weren't really looking properly. In the end I was the one who found it although the littlest boy tried to claim it was him.

All in all it was a good afternoon. It's not always easy filling the holidays with fun, fun, fun although I don't think it does them any harm to be a bit bored from time to time. I have a few chores they can get stuck into tomorrow. Might even offer a small payment. (You know what I'm actually saying is that I'll have to bribe them right..?)

Blue skies and Easter bunnies

Wasn't Good Friday glorious? All that blue sky and sunshine. We headed for the coast but the traffic was hideous so we changed direction and ended up in Bath. There was a funfair in the park. People were whizzing round upside down and screaming.

We wandered up the hill to some of the higher crescents. Within a couple of hundred yards it went from busy and noisy to complete peace and quiet. If you don't mind the steep climb that's the place to live.

In the centre of Bath there are a few allotment sites on what must incredibly valuable land. I'm always so happy to see them. Look at this one (in the last couple of photos). Out the back of a lovely Georgian terrace, at the edge of Bath Park. They're right next to a pub as well. The plotholders must count their lucky stars.

Back on the home front Easter is being hotly anticipated. I've done the Easter treasure hunt that I always do. It might keep them occupied for an hour if I'm lucky. There are little chocolate bunnies to be eaten at the end. I shall no doubt bake something yummy for tea.

I'm wishing you all a lovely day and a good bank holiday Monday. CJ xx

The Colour Collaborative: March: Egg

I'm rather in love with birds' eggs. That gorgeous smooth roundness and the subtleties of colour and pattern. Each egg perfectly suited to its environment both in shading and shape.

The extent of our egg collection can pretty much be seen above. We have a few more fragments, but these are our best two bits. I love the little mark on the blue egg where the chick had a go at getting out before he actually managed it.

Museums tend to have vast collections shut away in drawers, but now most of our information comes from pictures. The biggest boy has a copy of the Observer's Book of Birds' Eggs which is a favourite of mine. I never get tired of flicking through and admiring the eggs. Little speckles of grey on a
chiffchaff egg or brown watercolour stains on a willow warbler egg. All nicely done according to where the nest will be.

The shape matters as well.

Long pointy eggs don't roll as easily and fit alongside each other better. But look at the little owl's egg, almost perfectly round.

I've recently been looking at the makers of replica eggs and realising what an art it is. Each bird's egg is different, so two eggs from the same species could look quite distinct from each other. A good egg painter will capture the essence of the egg and in many cases they look indistinguishable from the real thing.

I shall be on the lookout for empty pieces of shell this year and seeing if I can identify them. The humblest or smallest birds can have the most beautiful egg colouring and patterning.

And at the grander end of the scale there is the magnificent golden eagle egg. A creamy buff background touched with dark gold and brown splotches, perfect camouflage for an untidy nest of sticks and heather.

Then there's the cuckoo's egg. It has a range of colour and marking and sometimes nicely matches the eggs of the birds in whose nest the egg is laid. The chick pushes out any other eggs or chicks to ensure it has the parents all to itself. I'm not sure I approve.

The egg I shall be looking for and hoping to find this year (only after it's hatched of course) is that of the song thrush.

To quote the Observer's book, "The ground colour is a beautifully clear pale greenish-blue - almost turquoise - and the markings consist of specks, spots and blotches of a very deep olive-green, black or reddish-brown."  That pale greenish-blue is one of my very favourite colours, cool, calm and serene.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

            Annie at Annie Cholewa                 Gillian at Tales from a Happy House 

           Jennifer at Thistlebear                   Sarah at Mitenska                              

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.

Monochrome

Amazing rocks at Kilve on the North Somerset coast. It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest and really astonishing. The photos really don't do it justice. There were all sorts of layers and so many different types of rock all in one place. I know absolutely nothing about geology, but I imagine it's even more fascinating if you know exactly what you're looking at. We found fossils galore.

It used to be a smuggling port, with barrels of spirit brought in under cover of darkness and carried away on hardy little smugglers' ponies. The story goes that when the revenue men came a-calling the barrels were set on fire. 

There was the usual selection of plastic on the beach. Leanne, I picked up this plastic ring for you to make up for the ball. (Leanne lives in Cornwall and has been out picking up some of the stuff that rolls in with every tide.) It's a big bad problem out there in the world's oceans. No doubt you've seen the photos of it all clumping together in ghastly plastic islands and of birds making their nests from it so that their chicks start their lives all tangled in it. I loathe plastic with a vengeance.

We got a bit competitive in our fossil hunting. We didn't move any of them, just looked. We left the beach as we found it, no stones removed, nothing left behind. It really was a remarkable place. Wordsworth used to come here apparently. Bit different from the daffodils.

Thank you for all of your suggestions as to what my mystery flower might be. Amanda identified it for me, it was a pink sanguisorba. I'm adding it to my list of things to look out for. It's a very long list... There's a great post about some of the best plants for pollinators on Countryside Tales if you're wondering what's good to plant for different insects.

I hope you all have a lovely Sunday. I actually have a football-free morning so I shall hove myself into the kitchen and bake something for those who have not given up sugar and pudding for Lent. (That's everyone apart from me). Lent has flown by and the jeans aren't much looser. I think I may be eating too much cheese to compensate. I actually dreamt about Stilton last night. I think's its a sign.