A Weekend of Epic (by sarah)

This bank holiday has been amazing. Below is a picture of our haul and that is not all of it!

For me it kind of began on Friday with a trip to UWE to see a friends talk on memristors (resistors with memory!) and then staying on for her leaving bash at a beer and cider festival - I had a Toffee Apple cider followed by a meal in a chinese place. Then we got up early Saturday and prepared stuff to go to the allotment but first there was Free Comic Book Day at Proud Lion in Cheltenham.

We arrived about 15 minutes before the shop opened which turned out to be a good thing as people were beginning to queue! We were ninth into the shop though and Jean knew instantly what she wanted - I was startled to see her pick up a hello kitty comic until she announced, 'it's not for me! It's for Mary.' She didn't take one of everything like she did last year which was interesting, she also got a hobbit poster and I got an XMEN badge.

I also got two pints and me and Al got a selection of comics like 2000 AD. I got to say hi to the people who are running the comic book convention I am launching the first Punk comic next year and I also bought Death by Neil Gaiman.

The girls couldn't wait to start reading and Jeany was moaning that I was taking too long in the shop! Mary I don't think gets the story form of comics - she just spent the whole time excitedly announcing there were lots of Hello Kitty's 🙂

We then nipped to the allotment and did two hours of weeding - discovering that the bit of the plot that we had planted the runner beans on was again cursed and they were all gone. We have decided that it is obviously a cursed bit of land and we will be putting a bench there in future. We also found that the stuff the farmer had sprayed for us to try and get the dandilions under control had killed the grass but not the dandilions!

I deflowered all the dandilions in our plot and then dug up a small bin bag full of plants, roots and all. The flowers I have dried and the plants the rabbit and chickens have been working their way through.

We popped home to drop off allotment stuff and pick up my new camera (as seen in the first photo), this has been an amazing discovery and I am not yet sure how I am going to share it with you! It is a 3D camera and reduced to less than my standard camera was. I decided to invest in it as they were over £400 to begin with. I think there may have to be an exhibition or something maybe with my friend who showed me her one in the first place.

Then it was off to Bristol to catch the food fair/festival 🙂 We came away with waxed cheese and chocolate coated coffee beans. Queuing for food was a bit of a nightmare though!

Mary decided she was Hermione out of Harry Potter and found herself a stick which she waved shouting the levitation spell - it seems to have worked!

Then we nipped to Costco and picked up some cling film and bits that we like to get in bulk and headed home to have a TV dinner of Lord of the Rings 🙂

On Sunday we got up and packed a cooler box, a wicker basket and the pic nic ruck sack and headed back out the door to the allotment. Where we spent all day from just after ten! The guy who likes to go there in the morning and the evening was well impressed 🙂 Of course I got sunburnt though Al and the kids didn't.

We both had to have lots of breaks and Jean and Mary helped a bit.

Jean beheaded all the newly flowering dandilions and cut a bag of lemon balm for me - along with pretending to eat the spring onions and actually trying to eat the asparagus! She also watered everything.

I dug out and chopped down weeds - I filled four large buckets of the things - this is the bucket that carries all our wellys and smaller tools! I also cut a bag full of lemon balm down and produced a good but not full bag of dandelions for the the rabbit et al. Alaric spent his time digging over a new bit of ground then hoeing it and then raking it. Between me, Al and Jeany we then planted carrots and parsnips in one half of the newly prepared section.

The hoe is called Katy and she is dutch 😉

We had an epic picnic and also went over to Primrose Vale for an ice cream and coffee whilst the girls played on the toys - I'm a cheap skate so I had a flask of decaf coffee. I also had a herbal tea made from lemon balm with me that I sat on the tyre at the end of the allotment and drank whilst reading my book, waiting for my pelvis to be ok again to do more stuff.

Jean spent a huge chunk of her time reading two books and Mary made a den in the hedge row 🙂 Al used up his phone battery in his breaks - the pacing worked well and we got a load of stuff done!

I also found some epic shrooms to photo (bigger versions will be appearing on Orange Monster and Photo Salaric).

Monday was our day off, so I processed some photos and planted out most of my tomotoe pants in pots in the garden. Al fixed the door in the girls room and Mary's little chair and did computer stuff. The girls played in the garden and board games, Jeany played Stratego with Al and then they watched films whilst I napped (me and Al were pretty achy!).

The I went off to take part in a lovely improv workshop run by Joy-Amy - you could tell I was involved as there were Romans, babs and bird eating spiders, there were also deranged hair dressers and moons being caught!

We finished the weekend off with a pear cider and some minecraft 🙂

Domestic Sunday (by sarah)

When we are not away doing events, we are trying to have a whole day focused just on domestic stuff. In reality I am often slopping off to catch up on work I can't do with small people around me but I still aim to spend at least the morning on domestic stuff with my family.

So today we did some house tidying that needed doing, sorted the chickens and rabbit out, fixed some door handles and I got stuff ready for the allotment. In the end when we saw how time was going it was decide that Alaric would not take the seedlings I've been growing or the fizzy drinks bottles to turn into mini green houses, as I needed to get some work done. So he just dug the plot and planted the marigold seeds in the tyre with the girls (I say just but that is huge work). And tomorrow after school I shall go down there with Jean and my dad and plant things.

Alaric took eggs to his aunt and attempted to sort her printer out and the girls came back with play dough and a pick nick hamper, which they love!

I mean while sat and drew pencil sketches with construction lines - female manga heads and worked on my comic book. The comic book and my last assignment for college mean I need to remember how to draw and illustrate. So I am steadily working my way through my how to draw books. I think there is a marked improvement from the line drawings I did earlier in the week.

People interested in the design and/or creative process, I am using the Complete Book of Drawing Manga at the moment but have a stack of other drawing books and more in depth updates will be happening on Purple Monster.

In the evening Alaric cooked a wonderful stir fry - though sadly we couldn't use the funky sauce he had bought as Jean noticed the ingredients included the chillies that kill me and fish sauce, meaning it wasn't veggi for Al 🙁

On the other hand, him and Jeany made cinnamon swirls which we ate warm and drizzled 😀

Spring Fever (by sarah)

The rabbit has... erm... spring fever or twitterpation or what ever, he is now official an all grown up and not the little baby bunny abandoned on a snowy morning in a cardboard box. The only issue is that unlike Blacky who got a crush on me and did dances around my slippers - Fluffy Obsidian has his eye on the chickens and is attempting to be a little more physical.

So I have separated him and he is being booked in for the snip which probably should have happened a while ago. I was kind of interesting to see the normally passive chickens just frustrating him by ambling away but not the one in the nest box laying - oh no she was defending the nest and he got a deserved peck - I was attempting to oust him at this point.

Normally they all get on fine and I find rabbit asleep in with the chickens and chickens laying in the hutch and so on but I'm worried he will cause them a mischief or they him as they have beaks and claws.

He is now bouncing around the garden whilst they are shut in the run - seems the wrong way round somehow!

He is punching the air like a female hare - something Blacky never did. But then Blacky used to turn cart wheels and this one doesn't. Helium went out earlier and came back in quite rapidly so I think he may have a thing for pusskins too.

Jean and Cats and Books (by sarah)

Jean has finally reached an age where the cats not only don't run away from her, or only guard her/nuzzle her when she is half asleep, but actually seek her out. This includes Helium who has been skittish ever since we moved and tends not to even go on mine or Al's laps!

She keeps being 'held prisoner' by them, ie they sit on her and she finds them so cute that she will give herself cramp trying not to disturb them!

She also loves reading and believes that the cats are reading with her - they always stick their faces in the pages! The worst for this is the kitten who wont let her read!

I think everyone is happy with this arrangement!

Busy in the Garden dispite/inspite, becuase of the Weather (by sarah)

This weekend we have put more bark chippings down in the chicken run as it had again become water logged, there has just been so much rain! Then we set about emptying the compost bin to take to the allotment - or rather I did whilst Alaric cut stakes for the pitch markers, out of scrap wood. I filled up both our wormeries and had a good chunk left over, which had to go into our green bin (we are not currently putting the green bin out though and are using it as an extra composter.

However this was all I managed for the whole 2 days of the weekend. I was so tired from being ill 🙁 Al had to go to the allotment with just Jeany. He said it was even more flooded so he put the compost bin in place - weighted down and marked the boundary and that was it!

Also part of me wondered if it was really worth the work as the compost bin had cost me £20 (it was on sale) but I only want wormeries in the garden as the compost bins simply take too long for the rate of chicken bedding production!

On the plus side, the chickens are producing epic numbers of eggs and we now have two regulars, which we are selling eggs to, each week.