SNAKE!!!!

A couple of weeks ago our neighbour spotted a snake in the field at the bottom of our garden, close to our fence.

When we moved to the country I didn't even consider things like snakes. Whilst we encourage wildlife in the garden, we have 2 small children and snakes are not exactly welcome. So when I lifted the lid of our metal burning bin and saw a small pale snake slither from the top, through the dried weeds and sticks and dissapear to the depths of the bin, I was a tad concerened!

I have had a look on Google images and satisfied myself that it was a smooth snake and not an adder which is what my neighbour believes she saw. Still, we have had the talk about not touching or poking a snake if we see one in the garden. This rather went out the window when we visited a family fun day where the children were encouraged to stroke a python.

 

4 New girls at our house!

Well would you believe it, we had a GIRL!!!! Chicken child had insisted all the way through my pregnancy that he was to have a sister, so I'm pleased he wasn't dissapointed!

Despite being a mummy who does not like to conform to the gender/colour stereotype our house has been filled with pink! I don't know quite how it happened but I can now easily run a pink-only wash. 

 And here she is, my beautiful smiley girl! 10 weeks old tomorrow and sporting a dribble bib made by mummy.

Our other new girls are our hens Mildred, Betty and Ethel they joined the flock on Friday and are settling in well. Mildred is an escape artist and has made frequent appearances around the garden. She is a brown leghorn and we were warned they are skittish, she constantly jumps out through the picket fence. I've fixed some chicken wire to the back, fingers crossed this has worked!

Eggs!

Yay! The new girls are laying! 

We're getting on average 3 eggs a day from the 6 hens, but some days there are 4. We can tell which are from the new hens as they are smaller. The suprise has been a frequent supply of double yolkers!

I have read that Blue Marans lay chocolate brown eggs, but as yet we haven't had any. I am once again excited by the hens and regularly go down to check for eggs and to talk to the girls (insert crazy-chicken-lady comment here).

Activities For a Rainy Day

We've been blessed with glorious sunshine the last 2 days, the kind of weather that makes me spring out of bed with a smile on my face. But this morning I awoke to the wind howling down the chimney and rain battering the window. I reached for my phone and checked the time, then lay in bed feeling my baby wriggling and kicking, willing myself to get up.

I trudged around feeling like a slug, this morning passed ever so slowly we did some painting  and made some playdough, which turned out remarkably well! I have used this recipe once before and failed miserably as I didn't have the strength or the patience to kepp stirring the thick gloop. It ended in a sticky mess which went in the bin.

Play Dough

250g (8 1/2 oz) plain flour

500 ml (17 fl oz) water

140g (5 oz) salt

1  tbsp cream of tartar

1 tbsp sunflower oil

food colouring

Weigh out the flour

Mix with water in a heavy based saucepan

It will look very runny and you won't believe that it will make a dough

Have patience!

This is when the hard work begins!

Once it's cooled, make a ball and squash it flat.

Add food colouring paste (we only had black in)

Knead until you have an even colour

The end result!

Chicken Child loves his new dough

New Girls

Sadly we suffered a fox attack the other week. I was woken by the cries of the girls and rushed out in time to save 3 of the 7 hens. We were most upset by the attack, but I do not blame the fox at all. It was doing what comes naturally. I do find it very upsetting that they kill so everything and then leave. at least if they took one and left the others they'd be getting a feed and not killing needlessly.

It was a good excuse to get the long-desired 'pretty chickens', so here they are! A Light Sussex, Blue Maran and a Black Star. 

Springing out of the box

Chicken Child is thrilled with the new additions and their arrival has re-kindled his love of chickens. Although he hasn't noticed the dwindling brown hen numbers.

Exploring the garden

They're 'point of lay' but we will need to wait some weeks before we get any eggs. The old girls had continued to lay in the week following the trauma and the following week after the new girls came, but have not layed for about 5 days now! I do hope they  all pick up and carry on as I used the last of the eggs for pancakes!

Chicken Child loves pancakes!

Snow!

Having spent the day in the garden, with glorious sunshine and no need for a coat, it's hard to believe that we had snow 2 weeks ago.

The den in the 'Secret Garden'

The chickens didn't fancy the snow much and I had to put their food and water in the house!

Here is Chicken Child's house in the snow

It was lovely, but I'm glad it's gone and Spring seems to be well on it's way.

Unexpected Day Off

We had a day off the other week. It was lovely! As a childminder I get to spend every day with my son, but to spend a day, just the two of us, is wonderful. They are few and far between and will become fewer once the new baby comes. 

We went to Sherborne as we do every week, for story time at the library. Afterwards we popped to the gorgeous haberdashery Butterfly Bright. Chicken Child enjoys browsing the fabric stores and looking at the buttons and ribbons, as do I! We chose a few fabrics to make some trousers from.

We strolled up to the walled gardens on Newland. It's a great spot, quiet and calm. We've had the odd spontaneous picnic there and we cannot walk past the gates without Chicken Child asking to go in.

Here he is running around the maze path.

 

 Sculptures in the gardens

 

Bricks

We've made some fantastic Duplo constructions lately. Here is Chicken Child's guitar.

And horse

 

Pizza Bites

Lots to wrte about! So I'll start at the beginning.

A few weeks ago we made pizza bites inspired by this recipe. 

We made them individually using a cupcake tin to cook them in, this helped as we had a few different fillings that one of the children would not eat.

 Here Chicken Child is attempting to pinch one before they were even cooked!

The finished article! Some leaked when they were cooked, but they tasted fantastic and we have made them a few times since.

The Garden

This is the garden from our bedroom window, when we bought the house the garden was just grass, a hardstanding, the path and three apple trees. The apple trees, along with the rest of the garden, were overgrown. We kneew we wanted a veg patch and I set to work digging beds. It's been a learning curve and the garden has evolved over the last year.

We needed an area that was safe for our son as well as for the children I look after and so we fenced the area you see with the cars and playhouse. The children love being in there with the playhouse, digging area, sand bucket, trampoline and swing. They also have their own strawberry patch that will fruit for the first time this year.

The veg beds are spread over the garden with the raspberries and two raised beds between the children's fence and path. There are 5 more below the children's garden  and the chickens are beyond that, at the bottom.

The greenhouse is to the left, next to the shed and beyond that you can see the top of the blue arbour (fondly known as the wine arbour). We recently fenced this area in and will be establishing it as a 'cottage garden'.

 I began chitting some potatoes a few weeks ago. These are 'Rudolph' and 'Cosmos', can you guess which are which? They're coming along well and I have now bought 'Maris Peer' and another sort whose name is not sprining to mind!!!
We will need alot of room for the potatoes this year, we have well over 100 seed potatoes!

These are my Sweet Peas just after 'pinching out' last Monday, they are already bushing out and have new shoots on the sides. I didn't do this last year and my plants were spindly and didn't flower very well. This year I will looking after my plants alot better and going for quality not quantity (with the exception of the potatoes which I will be hopefully be able to maintain quality as well as quantity) which leads me on to.... tomatoes!

These are my tomato seedlings. I have started a few early,and will start a couple more next month. Last year I sowed a whole packet of seeds and ended up with approx 100 seedlings! Completely pointless as many ended up failing due to lack of care and attention. I didn't have the space to pot them on soon enough and they did not have the nutrients they required.

 It feels as though Spring has Sprung in Somerset. The daffodils are starting to bloom and the grass has not stopped growing all 'Winter'. It has been so mild that our chickens have laid continuously throughout the short days.

I'm very excited for this year in the garden, I would love to be self sufficient in the fruit and veg garden. I think it may be possible...

Well it's been a while!

I began this blog last year with every intention of writing regularly, but frankly I was baffled by 'Blogger' and got put off by loosing my blog and struggling to find it! But new year, new start!

Many things have changed since last year, for one the garden;

The Children's area is looking great, the beans grew well and created a great hiding den for the boy. He now has a play house with it's own picket fence! Here it is before we painted the outside

It is now blue (I will add a pic asap!). Here is the inside;

I painted it white with one chalkboard panel for Chicken Child to get creative!

We did quite well in the veg garden this year producing enough to keep us going through the summer and autumn.  We still have leeks on the patch, onions and garlic in storage and a few butternut squash too!

This year I hope we will be able to store potatoes, squash etc.

I set up my business Cotton Kisses making clothing and accessories for children and their mummies. Pop over to my fb page and take a look!

So this year, between my beautiful boy, the veg garden, the chickens and Cotton Kisses  things are going to be pretty busy....oh yeah, and did I mention? We will have a new addition to the family in June! Mama is pregnant!

2012 is set to be an exciting year! x

The Beach

We took a trip to the beach yesterday, it was a lovely day. We had a picnic on the beach, the Chicken Child discovered a fondness for chili olives and also found he was able to eat black olives with stones in! He carefully chews the olive and spits out the stone, I feel VERY proud!

Enjoying a banana muffin

Mama and Chicken Child

This week the hens have been laying some fantastically odd eggs. On the left is one of our usual eggs, so large they do not fit into 'jumbo' egg boxes! Second from right is a near perfect sphere. We don't know who is laying them, but they're keeping us amused. Chicken Child laughs when he sees them and so we regularly look at the 'funny little eggs'.

New addition to The Children's Garden

We had a lovely day in the sun, this fantastic weather has made us want to be outside all the time! Today we were busy making a growing area. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do and after some dithering we settled on an area towards the bottom. 

Children love dens and a space to call their own, so a 'room' was required.

This is the Children's Garden, on the right is the swing and at the far end you can see the jumping mound.

 Here is The Chicken Child washing his car. He takes great pride in a clean car and spends alot of time making sure it's 'just so'!

We began by setting out bamboo canes to create a frame for our runner beans and nasturtiums to grow up. We then wove string between the poles to make zig-zags and spiderwebs.

Here CC brings a tray of pots to add to his new growing area.

We gathered small pots, a large pot of compost, CC's miniture gardening tools and part of a mini poly-tunnel to create a 'greenhouse' within the growing area. 
I dug a bed for the runner beans and nasturtiums at the base of the canes. We will sow these in pots on Wednesday when our friends come to play and plant them out once they've had a head start on the slugs!

Sowing seeds in the new growing area

The Children's Garden

Being a mother and childminder I need to keep an area of the garden just for play! Dadar and I created a safe area within our large garden by fencing it of from the veg patch, greenhouse, chickens etc. We erected a swing (which was being thrown out by my Mum's neighbour!) but that was it for a while.

The Chicken Child has lots of outside toys including a fantastic tipi (a Christmas present from Grandma) and a Little Tykes car (a Birthday present from Grandpa).

The children's garden was alright, safe, but a bit boring. I bought a large, shallow trug and filled that with sand. Next I created a digging area by removing some turf, this was instant success with CC and all his friends love to dig and get messy when they come over. It's now baked solid thanks to all this hot weather we've been having so tomorrow I will have to address this! I Found this great example of a digging/growing area and will be taking some ideas from there.

I created a jumping mound, this was also instantly loved. The children use it exactly as I thought they would, with imagination! One moment they're climbing and jumping, the next they are sliding. Sometimes it's a horse others it's a castle, an 8yr old I care for saw it and decided it was a trench! He's been studying the World Wars and is a tad obsessed at the moment.

I would like to make the area more interesting and so over the next week I will be;

• exploring different ways of breaking up the space
• creating shelters, dens and hiding places
• developing a growing area and other points of interest.

Pictures to follow!