Soup (by sarah)

I've had a bit of a rough day with nappy leaks and kittens chucking up and a Jeany who is still not quiet eating right etc... so we decided to do an easy dinner and I was getting the tins of soup down from the cupboard when Mary ecstatically started asking for the soup and pointing - specifically the tomato soup.

She finished the first bowl and asked for more, then finished that - I took a vid of me giving her her third bowl! She had a fourth as well!

Shelters in the Woods (by sarah)

Last night we went to the woods and built shelters with the cubs for their last meeting of term, it was a huge success and everyone including Mary seemed to enjoy it.

I have also been finishing off some songs and putting them on Bandcamp. I am tending towards the arty side here as in one of them I wanted to sound like discordant fragments that stick in you mind and that sort of thing! Over the last few days I've uploaded four new songs.

Weaving the Clay (by sarah)

Wednesday saw mine and Alaric's 9th Wedding Anniversary, the theme is willow and pottery and though we haven't done anything with this theme yet we will. It's weird to think we have been married this long, been together for over a decade now and still we are just us.

We spent the evening at Cranham County Scout Head Quarters with lots of kids - no it wasn't a re-run of the wedding it was the Water and Fire BBQ and water fight for all three sections of the village scouts of which Alaric runs the cubs. We had a great time and the girls more so and though my nose got burnt and we had forgotten about our anniversary until Al's phone bleeped and told us, it was a good one 🙂

Here are the photos 🙂

The girls ready for a water fight and fun!

Jean had been soooo excited for days we went along early to help set up and her and Mary played Pooh Sticks until the other kids arrived.

Mary attempted to take part in the water fight and even managed to squirt some water though she didn't get the whole shooting other people thing!

Apart from the assault course over the stream there was a mudslide set up - Jean didn't quiet get the whole slide part of it at first 🙂

Eventually she got the idea 🙂

Mary loved exploring with little cried of 'water!'

I spent an age blowing bubbles for the kids to catch or shoot, Mary was the biggest fan of this activity though it was pretty popular all round 🙂

I cooked the veggi food (hence the burnt nose!) Mary sat on a bench quietly awaiting her dinner for ages!

She conned Daddy into feeding her 🙂

Jeany found cakes without colourings 🙂

It was a good day.

A Rose (by sarah)

Only one of the roses seems to have survived the move, it is one of the ones I was given as a present - I'm hoping to train it up a trellis at the entry to the garden at some point in the future but for now it lives in it's little pot.

The Successes and Disasters of the Garden! (by sarah)

There are loads of little apples on the apple tree! The potatoes are doing epically well, I have been living off of garden salad for weeks and we have for the first time ever... Chillies! I have never been able to keep the plants alive long enough to get anything off of them 🙂

However the slugs have pretty much eaten all of my squash plants 🙁 Which actually just as well as we still don't have an allotement and after pestering the council it looks like we still wont have one by the end of the year so I had nowhere to plant the braccias - I popped them in where the squashes had been this weekend. Also our neighbours have rearranged their garden resulting in them giving us a plastic chest seat thingy - the sort I have been saving up to buy! So I have finally managed to clear all the potting compost and spare pots and what not up 🙂

The 'grassy area' is basically were I am growing stuff for now until we get the allotement. Due to roof fixing there is a big bag of stuff to be burnt and planks of wood randomly scattered around the garden and I'm not sure when we will next have a weekend to sort that lot out! Once our budget has recovered from buying roof sealent stuff I think we are going to have to get decking paint as it is starting to break up in places. There is a bramble in Mary's bit of the garden which we need to sort! Jean's Pirate Cove is starting to look good and I think it is all generally moving forward!

My tomatos have fruit on them but just haven't looked healthy for weeks :/ Buns still hasn't gotten his bigger run though he's not in a small one as it is and continually gets to run round the entire garden!

Jean and her friends decimated my salad by making a salad for Alaric - just as well with the weather the way it is the radishes I hadn't already harvested began to 'run' and were getting a little woody so they picked all of those , and the chives and the lettuce - Mary just ate the salad from the pot!

Alaric enjoyed his salad 🙂