just another morning here

On the gardening front, we sowed various seeds a couple of weeks ago – sweetcorn, runner beans, and peppers.

First two are doing well but no sign of the peppers yet.

Over the weekend, after watching the run on Sunday, we basically did not a lot at home. The girls did (yet another ) big room tidy. One day they will learn that if they pick things up every day then they won’t have to do mega-tidies at weekends. Then again I sometimes prefer the ‘do nothing for ages then give it a blast’ approach too, so I shouldn’t complain too much I suppose. Meanwhile Joe and Steve worked on this meccano type metal kit, which kept them occupied for a while.

Steve watched too much snooker, and has traumatised me by shaving off his beard yesterday. Changes like that shouldn’t be allowed. I started a new ac:ww town and moved my (almost completed catalogue) character over there so that took up far too much time over the weekend as well.

We did have a nice walk up on Haldon yesterday with various friends. Abbie and Josiah took bikes, while Anna decided not to take hers because she wanted to help look after baby Josh.

Today has been hard work, I really don’t like bank holidays, they lull you into a false sense of holiday and then you have to snap back into normal work mode, not only that but I always spend all week thinking it’s a day earlier than it is! Might not feel so bad if I hadn’t been kept up by a certain snooker match last night

We had Robyn this morning so got some stuff done first thing and then took her out to Crealy as it’s ten times easier than staying at home! Had to bribe Joe with a muffin to get him to help look after her in the play areas but then he did an admirable job.

Home for lunch, said goodbye to Robyn, now having a lull (I needed one) before the girls come home from school.

Apologies for the absolutely rubbish photos (must have had a setting wrong somewhere) but here’s Joe picking a squash from our garden to take into school for the Harvest Festival today, and Abbie reading a poem in the KS2 assembly this morning.

Note Abigail’s hanging-out t-shirt, everyone else looked so smart, but I don’t really care
I’m home in the break between the two assemblies, about to head back for the KS1 version … oh joy!

How do I know when a butternut squash is actually ripe? I have two that look pretty big and ripe but they’re not as orange in colour as the ones I have in my veg box, more yellow … should I leave them a bit longer?

Got up relatively early (for a Saturday ) and headed down to my extremely local garden centre marquee. Sainsbury’s have this tent up in part of the car park at the moment with garden centre basics, which is pretty cool imo, as it means I don’t have to trek any further. The children all wanted sunglasses (£2 each so not too bad, Anna inherited a nice pair which were found in a car!) and we needed bread and milk etc.

So anyway, bought a *huge* planter for the avocado tree which now seems tiny, but it should give it plenty of space to grow a bit more. The one that I saw at the Eden Project was taller than me, so I’m expecting it to grow just a little bit more, although granted my conservatory is a far cry from the Eden Project!! I am very proud of that avocado tree, or of having kept it alive for three years now, pretty good for someone with my track record with plants
Photos are from April 04, July 04, July 05, and the last two from today.

The children got inspired and started planting flower seeds in pots, I wasn’t really watching what they were doing so we’ll see what happens in those. I said I’d pay them to weed the driveway as well, but they got half way through then gave up!

It’s a beautiful morning and they played out for most of it, then came inside, at which point I insisted that they put their bikes back in the garage before coming in, and they’ve gone outside and started playing again! Plans for the rest of the day include lunch, baking, piano lessons, a friend coming round for tea, Dr Who, and I don’t know what else. I purposely haven’t looked at the state of their rooms, there’s always another day for tidying …