Home grown roast dinner, Sam on guitar, and pet spiders!

Steve came home with a huge joint of beef a few days ago and so I thought I better cook a roast for my hungry family, who LOVE roasts. Two hours into cooking the meat I thought I'd have to pop to Tesco to buy some vegetables. Then I remembered the veggie garden in the back yard. (yeah, how could I forget, eh?) We had some potatoes left from our potato harvest, which I roasted.

I popped out into the garden to get some carrots and parsnips. I didn't really have any idea whether they were ready to dig up yet. I was under the impression that I would just pull the top of the parsnip and it would pop out of the ground. I also didn't know what size the parsnips would be, as they are hidden under ground. Well, you remember the story of the giant turnip that takes a whole village to pull? That was me. Dinner was cooking, and I was out heaving and pulling trying to get a parsnip or two out of the ground. The top came right off in my hand and so I had to dig around the parsnip. I dug, and I pulled, and I dug a bit more, and I wobbled the top of it. Sam thought it was hilarious and was taking photos of me from his bedroom window (they are not suitable for blog viewing I'm afraid). Eventually I got the first parsnip out and I was pretty pleased with the size and quality of it. The whole parsnip patch smelt divine. Sam dug out the second parsnip and both Sam and Luke dug out two varieties of carrots. One is a dwarf carrot, and the other isn't. We've got plenty more parsnips and carrots to keep us going.

Next year I'll definitely plant them again. It's amazing how they grow so big and strong from such a tiny seed. This whole gardening and eating our own produce really has made me appreciate the whole of God's creation so much more. It's truly awesome to see how God has provided all this fresh tasty food for us.

Here are some photos of our bounty...
A very stubborn parsnip that was quite happy to stay put. It's actually much bigger than it looks in the photo. Well, it was, before we eat it.








Sam with the parsnip that he dug out with ease, compared to mine.


















Luke pulled some dwarf carrots.
















My boys, looking like farmers, all proud with the treasure they had dug up.
















Parsnips, carrots and shallots, from the garden.












All washed and ready to cook.
Parsnips, carrots, courgette and red cabbage, all from our garden.




One completely home grown meal. OK, so we didn't grow the beef, but still, its pretty impressive, right?

Does anyone have any idea if the parsnip and carrot tops can be used for anything, other than compost? I think I remember reading that carrot greens can be used for juicing.

Onto other news then. Steve told me at dinner time that Sam's new guitar teacher came into his shop to speak with him about Sam's progress. We have always known that Sam is musical. He spends all day every day singing and dancing. But his guitar teacher is really impressed with the speed that he has learnt so far. He's been having lessons for about 4 weeks now and is putting chords together to make songs that he knows. He sits in his room every evening (I can hear him right now) playing away on the guitar that was his Grandads when he was a boy. Anyway, his teacher said that he has never before met anyone with such a musical talent! I'm not sure whether this is a huge compliment or whether the guy just doesn't meet many people, lol. He said that Sam has learnt in a few weeks what took him months to learn himself. So he is very impressed. And I felt so proud at dinner time when Steve told me this, and Sam was hiding his face with embarrassment. So, if Sam turns out to be the next Jimmie Hendrix just remember that you heard it here first, on his Mum's blog. That's my boy! His teacher must be pleased. He is still teaching him without accepting any payment. He says that he gets so much satisfaction from seeing someone learn, someone that wants to learn, and that is all the payment he needs. Plus, he is a friend of Steve's. I really must get him a gift or something to say thank you.

Lastly, before I go, I keep meaning to blog about Jude's pet spider. Aha. A pet spider. It lives at the top of the patio doors in our study room. Every morning Jude spends about half an hour finding a dead fly, which she throws into the spiders nest. Every morning she tells me about it, but I never gave it much thought. Then, a few mornings ago she asked me to come and help as the little dead fly would not stick in the web. I threw it up a few times and then tried to put the fly into the net with my hand. "Don't do that Mummy" Jude said, "the spider will run out and try to eat your finger". "Don't be daft" I said. So I popped my finger into the net, and like lightening this spider leapt out from it's hiding place and tried to eat my finger! Of course I leapt back, screaming like a lunatic. Jude thought it was hilarious. She has been studying the habits of this spider for weeks. The spider seems to know that she will feed it every morning and waits for the little flies which she brings!

Every week we read a chapter from 'Secrets of the Wood'. Both Sam and Jude love this book, and Sam wants to keep reading it even though he is no longer home schooling. Every chapter in it is about a different animal, from the woods. Last week we read about Meeko, the squirrel. The author talks about each animals as he sits and watches them for weeks at a time, in the forest. He gets to know all about the personalities of the various creatures. Meeko is a thief, a nest robber, and a fighter. The kids were mesmerised by the stories of his adventures. The first chapter, about the mouse, had them enthralled too. It occurred to me that Jude has treated this spider in the way which the author treated the woodland creatures. She has watched it, learnt about it, gained it's trust and developed the caring nurturing side to her nature. This evening she did the same thing with the pet gerbils. She sat and watched them, for such a long time. We had put a new box into their cage, just on old food box. She sat and watched them as they filled up their cheeks with bedding from their old, half eaten box, and transferred it all to their new box. She watched them make their new home all comfy and warm, and then came to tell me all about it in detail. Jude has such a gentle caring side to her. Sometimes I don't know what to do with her. During the summer, when Daddy killed a wasp, she lay in bed sobbing her little heart out for a full hour. I know that she is sensitive to other living things. She cares for every creature, even a tiny ant. It's strange really. As a younger child she did not care at all for nature. It was Sam that, at the age of 4, became so overwhelmed during a walk in the woods that he had to stop with me and say a prayer thanking God for his beautiful creation. Whilst Jude spent the whole time whinging "what are we walking for? Is there a park at the end?"

Gosh I have rambled on far longer than I intended. I have to check some essays that Steve wrote for his course now (snore). Tomorrow Jude and I are going to watch Romeo and Juliet at the cinema, for FREE, as part of the national schools film week. Woo hoo.

Our 10ft tall sunflowers

We just had to put a few photos of our 10ft tall sunflowers onto the blog. Steve took these pics today. This is the view of them from the road behind our house, not from inside our garden. Some of them aren't on view from the road, but these tall ones look fabulous! Luke planted these from little seeds way back in May. He is so pleased with how tall they have grown. It's been very educational for him.

A silly carrot, I mean nut, and ramblings...

Well, I'm feeling the need to blog, but I'm not sure what about yet, so I'll just see what ramblings come to me. I'm loading some digital photos onto the computer, so they will remind me of all that's been happening over the last few days. It's 8pm on Sunday evening, Luke is asleep, Sam is taking a shower ready for school in the morning, and Jude is getting ready for bed. Steve is tidying the garden or something, I'm not sure. He never sits down.

Tomorrow is the start of Sam's first proper week of school. Friday was more of an induction day, but this week he will really get to see what high school is all about. He didn't seem overly enthusiastic about the place when he came home on Friday. The most exciting thing that happened was that the till in the cafeteria wasn't working so they all got a free lunch! I'm remembering today what it was like in the days when both Sam and Jude went to school. That Sunday evening check list of 'are the uniforms clean and ironed?', 'is the homework all done?', 'are there forms to be filled in?', 'do the kids need a shower or bath?' Sunday evenings in the home educating family are usually pretty laid back. Tomorrow Jude starts some more formal work. I haven't asked her to do anything over the summer holidays. She hasn't even practiced the piano. She is starting on some new books this year, and continuing with some old ones too. The new books are Madam How and Lady Why, It couldn't just happen: fascinating facts about Gods world and Kon Tiki, Across the Pacific by Raft. I have no idea yet if these new books are any good, but we'll soon find out. They were, of course, recommended on the Ambleside Online Curriculum, so I didn't just pluck them out of thin air!

I've just loaded on the photos and they have jogged my memory a bit about our weekend.Today Steve and Luke dug up the first carrot from our veggie plot. They aren't really ready to be harvested yet, as they have a bit more growing to do. But once Steve discovered that there were actually carrots growing under those 3ft tall green grassy carrot tops, he could not resist to pick one. Then he insisted, like a child, to have his photo taken with it, for the blog, as if he was the one who actually planted it, watered it, fed it, weeded it and cared for it. So here is his special photo of our first carrot.

And here is a cute photo of one of our glorious sunflowers, in bloom.

Steve took this photo of Sam, Jude and Luke on Friday morning, before Sam left for school. Doesn't he look smart in his uniform? Luke was so excited about it. He asked me "can i go to school too?" I explained that he couldn't, so he asked "why? Are they shooting there?" What a strange question, I thought. Then I realised he must have been thinking about archery, where he can't go because they shoot arrows. Then he told me that they read lots of books at school. He must have decided that from the amount of reading both kids did as part of their home education, when they would tell Luke "shhh, I'm doing my school work".

Sam took it upon himself on Saturday morning to draw a picture of our house. I thought he looked so studious and artistic sitting in a chair on the lawn, with his paper, pens and an umbrella to shield his artwork from the drizzle, that I had to take a photo. It was a very good picture and if I find it I will scan it to put on the blog tomorrow.

Oh yes, last night we were invited to Mum's friends house for a lovely dinner of curry and rice. They are the family who own the dog Diamond, that we cared for. The food was lovely, and Mum cooked a scrumptious apple and blackberry crumble for pudding. Oh boy. The kids were well behaved, and even Luke managed to be good natured and charming until almost 10pm when he decided he needed to go to bed.

I found a blogring devoted to International Adoption, and read some blogs that really pulled on my heart strings. Oh I better not start blogging about that now or I'll be here all night.

Well, I'm off to bed myself now. It is 10.15 pm, despite me starting this blog at 8pm. Blogger wouldn't upload my photos and I got cheesed off and left it. Then I came upstairs to do some yoga (that's another story for another time) and got lured into the computer room (the way Steve does when he goes past a Chinese restaurant) and low and behold, blogger was working again. So here I am. And now I've gone.

Vegetable Garden Update

This evening we spent a little time in the garden, helping out the veggies where needed. Steve put up some trellis to protect the sunflowers from passing kids or hooligans. We measured the tallest one, and it was just under 9ft tall (275 cm, 108 inches) and now has a beautiful yellow flower. It will look lovely when all the flowers have developed fully.

All the fruits in the garden are doing well. Jude picked a bowl of strawberries, and Luke picked (and eat) a bowl of raspberries, which are his favourite.

The peas are growing really well and Jude harvested a bowl full of them to eat with dinner. We like them best raw, but even cooked they tasted so much better than frozen peas from the supermarket.

I have two types of pumpkin growing in the garden. One is butternut squash (they grow HUGE and spread right across the garden) and the other type turned out to be courgettes, despite saying they were small round purple pumpkins on the packet of seeds. But no, I'm pretty sure they are courgettes (zucchini). This is the best growing courgette from our 7 plants.

And here are a few baby ones which have just appeared (behind each flower you can see a little green baby courgette).

This week we used a few of our home grown onions in curries. I caught Luke heaving them out of the ground while I was gardening. He was so proud of himself and ran over with two muddy onions saying "Mummy, these ones are ready to eat". They aren't supposed to be harvested until Autumn but they are huge already and look just like proper onions to me.

Here is the veggie garden in all its glory. It changes so much from day to day. Unfortunately all our tomato plants caught something nasty. They all went black and died. About 20lbs of green tomatoes when black and mouldy. We harvested some green ones a few weeks back and have them ripening in a draw.

The garden is full of wild mushrooms at the moment, with all this wet weather. I'm trying to find out what sort of mushrooms they are, and whether they are edible or poisonous.

Uniforms and Caterpillars

Yesterday it stopped raining. Today it is pouring from the heaven's again. Steve was off work so I decided it would be a good day to go out and buy Sam's uniform - without having to take all 3 kids. So that's what we did. One blazer, 2 shirts, 1 tie, 1 pair of shorts, 1 sports top and 1 pair of hockey socks, came to £95. Plus one pair of shoes at £39. That's without the coat, trousers, 2 school bagslunchch bag, and all the art, english, maths and writing equipment that I have to purchase, as well the 'voluntary' school fees. My friend said it cost her almost £400 by the time she bought everything. Phew! He does look very smart in his new uniform, but Sam will be posting about that on his own blog, so I won't put the photo on here.

I spent the rest of the day out in the garden, while it was relatively dry. Steve mowed the lawns, whilst I annihilated the caterpillar community which had moved into the vegetable patch. Rather than use pesticides I hand picked all the tiny just hatched caterpillars, and all the unhatched eggs out from all the cabbage and broccoli plants. It took 2 hours. Fun fun fun. I planted out some more baby lettuces which we had grown from seed. Luke helped with that. He loves planting.

As usual blogger isn't letting me load on any photos so I'll have to put them on later.

Friday was spent at Jenny's house. Seven children and three adults made for a fun packed day. The kids were good enough in the end, after a short period of upsets. We all played karioke with them, and then the kids had a disco in the living room. Jenny's house is looking fabulous now that she's spent so much time and effort on doing it up. It's looking very homely indeed.

Attack of the killer wasps!

Phew! What a busy day! I'm just grabbing 5 minutes to write this, but really Steve thinks I'm getting Luke ready for bed. It's almost 9pm, which is late for his bed time, but he fell asleep on top of my bed today. I sent him to sit on my bed after having a tantrum (him, not me) and he fell asleep there. We've just finished a mammoth garden tidying session. I'm always amazed that people with kids have tidy gardens, as ours is always covered in toys, discarded clothes (even old nappies which Luke flings off as and when he feels like it!) It usually looks like a tip.

Today it was sunny. At last, no rain. But... WASPS. Millions of wasps. You couldn't walk through the garden without getting into their flight path. They were really busy eating all the bugs that were trying to hatch on an ivy plant (I think they were baby ladybugs, I hope not). I lifted the lid of the compost bin to throw a heap of stuff in, and hundreds of wasps emerged! It was horrible! I stood and watched (from a safe distance) and wasps were coming from all directions and flying into the compost bin. I looked up a bit of info on the net about it and got some advice. Either there is a nest in the compost, or there is too much green stuff in the compost. The advice was to wait till evening and then put a hose into the compost bin and fill it with water. It will either destroy the nest or make the compost too wet for them to enjoy. We did that (Steve did it, covered by a winter Eskimo type coat for sting protection!) The wasps were none to happy about it. After they had flown away we covered the compost with sawdust and left it, as instructed. Hopefully it will make some sort of difference tomorrow.

I spent the afternoon pulling up giant nasturtium plants that were taking over the onion patch. Me and Steve sat in the garden harvesting all the seeds and good leaves to dry out for herbs and capers. Then I dug up a heap of soil around the spuds, something which I should have done some time ago. One of our giant sunflowers fell over in the winds and died, which was sad. But the others are still going strong and one of them is well over 8ft tall now and developing a flower head. The tomatoes seems to have been hit by a virus or something. All the leaves are turning blue and dying, but the fruit is still there, all be it green.

All in all, a busy day in the garden. Now we are putting the kids to bed and watching a video together.

Oh by the way, I finally got a letter from my DRP today. I'm so relieved that he is ok.

Herb harvesting and lots of shopping

It's been a good day today. To start with, both Sam and Jude went to summer scheme, and Steve took Luke to 'work' in his shop for an hour this morning. With a complete hour to myself I managed to tidy almost the entire house. It's amazing what can be accomplished without children under foot. I felt so great for the time alone that I decided to go shopping with Luke when I picked him up. Strictly window shopping of course! But when I got to Matalan they had a 75% off sale!!! There were kids jumpers for £1 each so I got a few for Sam and a few for Luke. I bought Jude a beautiful dress (even though she doesn't need it) because it was just divine! And reduced! It's almost like a classy bridesmaids dress. We bought one for a friend who's having a birthday soon too. Then I got a few organic bowls reduced from £10 to £2.50 (can't resist a bargain). I also got Sam an England Football Team duvet set which was half price, andduvetvet set for Jude, which was white with a grey photo of a kitten on it. It's cute.
Then Luke and I went into Argos where we bought him a new car seat. His old one was getting too small for him, and he would always ask to sit on the chair instead. So I got him a booster seat which works from age 1 - 11. He felt so grown up in it when he found out that Sam and Jude could both sit in it too. I'd promised Luke we'd get lunch in a cafe so we stopped at Sainsburys cafe for a bight to eat. Luke had 1/10 of a pancake with jam on, and some coke. I had vegetable lasagne, which wasn't that nice.
Then we went into Bargain books and bought a few bargain books, and a tractor. Now, I'd promised Luke we'd find a toy shop and there wasn't one to be seen anywhere. But I found a TK Max with a good toy section in it so we browsed through that and I got Luke a little farm set - a farm house which opens out, two farmers, a tractor and trailer, various farm animals, all in a handy carry case! Yes, I know, I spoilt everyone. We even went in JJB Sports and replaced the football which Sam got for his birthday and Diamond the dog eat.
By this time I realised that we only had 30 minutes to get back to the summer scheme to pick the other two up, so we raced back into the car. Luke fell asleep on the way home, then slept in the car in the driveway for another 30 minutes. He woke up crying and I got into my bed with him, where he went back to sleep until 6pm. Needless to say, he is still full of beans now, at 9pm.
While he was asleep it stopped raining long enough for me to nip into the garden and harvest some of the herbs. I've been trying to get round to it for days. I'm not completely sure yet how to dry them and what to use them for, but I'm learning. In this photo you can see (in particularlar order) mint, lemon minMoroccancan mint, spearmint, basil, thyme, rosemarGreekeek oregano, nasturtium seeds, calendula flowers, marigold flowers, lavender, and chamomile flowers. I'm going to make tea with the chamomile, and I will use the calendula and marigold to make skin ointments. The other herbs I want to dry for culinary use. If anyone has any tips or advice be sure to let me know!

Rain rain go away...

It hasn't stopped raining for days. I really need to get out into the garden to plant out some more lettuces and harvest some of the herbs. Harvesting herbs should be done on a dry day, to help the drying out process. This morning I got out for 10 minutes before it started raining and took some photos. It's amazing how much every thing changes from one day to the next.

The chamomile in the herb garden has flowered and I need to pick the flowers as I want to use them to make tea etc.
The nasturtiums have all seeded and I want to collect them too. They can be used to make a caper, or planted out next year. Im not sure whether picking them encourages more flowering.


Tomatoes which are not genetically modified come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, unlike the ones you can buy in the supermarket.
Luke's sunflowers are now over 8 ft tall! Still no obvious signs of a flower yet although from what I can just about manage to see there is something forming at the top of the tallest ones. (click on the photo to see the larger image with more detail)

Red tomotoes. Yum yum.

The onions are growing huge.

Today I noticed that all the pumpkins plants have flowered with gorgeous huge yellow flowers. There are quite a lot of them so it look's like there will be a bumper supply of pumpkins if all grows well. Now its down to the bees and insects to pollinate them for me.


The peas seem to be growing well too in this wet weather.

Finished gravelling

Today I spent all day finishing with the vegetable garden. I had to weed the rest of the muddy areas, put down plastic, and then lug 25kg bags of gravel round to the back and spread it evenly. I'm shattered and hot and tired, but it looks lovely now. Here's the pic...

A completely home grown meal !

Well, after panicking about the potatoes I decided to dig a few up and see whether they were growing or failing. The ones we dug up were just fine. Luke was so excited to dig them. He remembers planting them back in April and has been desperate to see what was growing under the soil. You know, I reckon he could make quite a good little farmer. Here he is digging them up for me...

We were very proud of our crop of new potatoes. I'm pleased to find that there is something growing under the earth and it looks pretty healthy. Steve has bought me some potato feed as I think they may just be lacking in magnesium or something.

Well, Sam scrubbed them clean in some water and Mum and Hannah turned up. So we boiled up our fresh new potatoes and eat them with an almosty completely home grown salad! The lettuce, nasturtiums, rocket, and sprouts were all home grown. The potatoes were so delicious! I have never tasted anything like them before. Mum and Hannah both said the same thing, and Luke asked for second helpings - he never eats potato. I'm wondering how we will ever eat shop bought food again.

To top if all off Sam and Jude went out to the garden and picked the strawberries, raspberries, black currants and blueberries that were ready, and eat some for desert.
Our dinner :) Check out my new food blog to see more.

Help! Bad Potatoes!

Went out this morning to check the crops and the potatoes are not looking well at all. I've looked through my books but can't work out what the problem is. Does anyone know anything about potato problems???

A bad day for Luke

Yesterday was not a good day, all in all. To start with the neighbours had decided to have a noisy outdoor drunken karioke party that lasted until 4am! I was so cross about it. Some people are just so selfish. Poor Steve is working every waking second at the moment on running this book fair, and his shop, and his mail order business. The sleep he gets is not very good at the moment, but it's made worse by inconsiderate people who think the whole world should come to a standstill just for them. Well as you can tell, I was not amused. The sound of 20 drunken lager louts screaming along to 'Let me entertain you' at 3 am does not put me in good form.

So I didn't get up until 11.30 which was a bad start to the day. Half the day was gone and I had so much to do. We've been out so much lately that the house needs some serious attention in the form of cleaning and tidying. But the garden needed even more attention so I went out to it. I got quite a bit done. I took apart the two tents that had been out all week. That was some fun - really it should have been attempted by two people, not one. But I got there in the end. Then Sam tidied up all the rubbish and toys that were scattered all over the grass. I watered some of the potted vegetables and the garden started to look less like a tip and more like a loved home. I managed to put together the two mini greenhouses which I picked up on freecycle. They were much easier to put together than I'd imagined, especially with Luke's help and assistance. So now our little seedlings have somewhere warm to grow.

But there was no food left in the fridge, so I decided to go to Tesco's for some shopping. I've never been there on a Sunday before as we are usually busy with the fellowship. Sam stayed at home. Luke was in great form and him and Jude were having a laugh all the way round the supermarket. He kept putting things in my trolley that I didn't want, and so I'd have to sneak them back onto the shelves when he wasn't looking.

Whilst loading all my shopping onto the checkout I sent Jude and Luke to sit in the cafe and wait for me. We always do that. Then I heard an almighty scream, from Luke, nothing like I'd ever heard from him before and I left my purse, bag and groceries at the check out and ran to the cafe. The screaming was so horrific that the manager and members of staff all came running too. Poor little Luke had found an injured wasp and tried to pick it up to show me. Of course it had stung him, on the end of his index finger. He was hysterical. Within minutes his finger had swollen to 3 times it original size and he had a red rash (looked like nettle stings - red rash with white raised spots) flaring all the way up his arm to his shoulder. The door man, who was apparently trained to deal with first aid, came to our assistance. They wouldn't let us leave in case he was taking an allergic reaction. He was so hot that they were concerned about him, but that was probably just because he was in such a stage, crying and screaming. One member of staff brought him a packet of Starburst sweets to try and calm him. He wouldn't even look at them (anyone who knows Luke knows what a sweet tooth he has - but he couldn't eat sweets for 3 hours!) They brought over some waspeze spray and sprayed his finger. All 5 of us were sitting on the floor in the middle of Tescos, between the checkouts and the cafe (me, Luke, Jude, the lady and the first aid man). So they took us into the kitchen area of the closed cafe. We washed Lukes hand under some cold water, then we put vinegar on it. He said he wanted a plaster and so the lady got him some. We were there for 40 minutes in which time he was crying uncontrollably the entire time.

Finally they let us leave but we had to sit in the car for a further 20 minutes as Luke was so upset that he wouldn't let me leave him in the back to drive the car. Finally he agreed that I could drive quickly home. At home I went upstairs and lay in my bed with Luke. Sam and Jude were so worried about him (especially Jude who was almost in tears at the supermarket). They both unloaded all my shopping for me. Sam made Luke a bottle of warm milk, and then he loaded my frozen (almost defrosted) foods into the freezer. I lay in the bed with him for an hour and stroked his head and told him stories about members of the family who had been stung, and explained to him what had happened. Eventually he would calm down if distracted by a story, but then the pain would be back and he'd cry again. He told me that he wanted to be a bird so that I could open the window and say "shoo-shoo" and he'd fly away up to the clouds. A fly buzzed past the bed and he was paralyzed with fear, in case it was another wasp or bee.

He cried almost constantly for 3 1/2 hours. All my plans for the housework were out of the window. Sam and Jude made him cards and gave him sweets to cheer him up but he had no appetite to eat them. We all watched the 'Little Shop Of Horrors' DVD, which he is addicted to at the moment. He watches it 2 or 3 times day sometimes, and knows every word to all the songs.

At 7pm I ran him a bath and he actually wanted to get into it. As soon as his hand went into the warm water he began to feel better. After 20 minutes in the bath he said the pain had gone and he perked up to his normal happy self. When Steve and Hannah got home from the fair at 7.30 his finger looked just like normal and he was laughing and showing off, as usual. You wouldn't have known there was anything wrong with him. He did cry a bit this morning when he felt it was sore again. So it wasn't until 7.30 that I started cooking the dinner. At 8.40 I was just starting on cleaning the kitchen up, putting washing on, watering more vegetables, etc. Hannah offered to babysit so that me and Steve could go out but I was too shattered so I suggested that they go and see something in the cinema. They went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. At 11pm I still wasn't done. Luke was in bed but Sam and Jude were still awake. Sam, such a sweetheart, decided to tidy the living room for me, so that I could relax and go to bed. I was really touched that he did it with no asking from me.

So that was yesterday. Hopefully today will be better. I'm working a 14 hour day at the book fair tomorrow so that Steve can relax for a while (relax with 3 kids. Is that possible?)


The veggie garden looks a lot better now that we have finished it off with some gravel and edging.

Mammoth Tomato Plants

I'm just taking a break from the gardening, having a nice cup of tea and a caramel slice. I've decided we really should have moved to the country side! When we were moving house almost 2 years ago we stayed in the town centre for two reasons. 1 - we wanted to be within walking distance of the kids school. 2 - we wanted to be within walking distance of Steves shop. But after moving we took the kids out of school and started educating them at home, and Steve only has 1 year left on his shop lease anyway. But its almost impossible to buy houses in the country now, unless you are very rich. It would be lovely for the kids to grow up in the wild! To be able to grow more veggies and keep some animals. I do miss my hens. I wonder how they are?

So I've spent all day so far in the garden, apart from a 1 hours tidy and hoover this morning. Luke was up at 6.30 after his early night so we were all up bright and early. I've weeded most of the bits around the veggie beds so that I can put the gravel down, but I need to go back to B&Q tomorrow and buy another 10 bags of gravel. I'm currently in the middle of tieing back all our tomato plants, which have grown absolutely mammoth! I broke a long branch containing loads of mini tomatoes. I was annoyed with myself after taking so long to grow them. These things happen.

At 5.30 a lady that I 'met' on the freecycle website is coming round to pick up some chairs that we have in the garage. She is swapping them for 2 mini green houses. How cool is that? Its great to find a website like that.

Well thats enough of a rest I think. Back to it with the gardening. I really must do some ironing as none of us have anything left to wear. It seems immoral to be ironing when the weather is so nice though.

Vegetable Garden Photos

Sam and Jude have gone to work in Newcastle with Daddy today. So me and Luke have spent the day in the garden, mostly weeding, and planting some new lettuces. We took some photos to update how the veggie garden is growing...


This is Luke less than 5 minutes after I got him dressed. Why do I bother to get him dressed at all?



Lukes sunflowers, which are now almost 6 foot tall, with no sign of any flowers yet.


This is the side garden.



I love this corner. The sunflowers are at the back, beans growing up the poles, pumpkins beneath the sunflowers, and nasturtiums, onions, lettuces, broccoli and rocket salad.



Tomatoes. There is only one tomoto so far, and lots of flowers. The plant on the left has seen better days.


Green lettuce and broccoli at the back.


These are the onions, growing in amoungst some nasturtiums.



This first bed is the herb garden.



Ice berg lettuces and calendula flowers.



Courgettes, cauliflowers and nasturitums.


Red cabbages at the front, and peas at the back, with raspberry plants behind that.



French beans.



Nasturtiums.



Potatoes.


The latge green leafy plants behind the broccoli and lettuce are pumpkins / squashes.