A Rather Large Gardening Update

At last, a blog post! Mostly I have been preoccupied (read, obsessive) with gardening matters. With the extension finished we can finally focus on getting the garden up to scratch and the nicer weather (especially in the evenings) means we've been spending lots of time outdoors doing just that. Even in not nice weather we've been out there; I would contend there is no nicer place to be in a rain shower than a greenhouse.

I've big plans to make the garden child-friendly so we can spend lots more time outside, including a sensory garden area on the decking, a mud kitchen for outdoor culinary creations (not that Little needs anymore encouragement to eat soil), turning the vegetable plot into raised beds so it can be more easily accessed by the littles, a wendyhouse (have to talk very nicely to Grandad), an alpine garden, a fruit patch, ooooh I get all carried away! I have been reading a lot of gardening blogs and websites for inspiration and bookmarking ideas.

So this is what we have managed to do so far. Our garden was quite a mess after the scaffolding etc... came down so it has taken a lot of work to get it looking tidy again. Behold, a lot of photos. I love gardening before and afters.

We chitted our potatoes (in bun tins) and planted them out in our lawn borders and one row at the bottom of the veg plot. I chose 'Accord', a variety known for its scab resistance as last year we had a bit of a problem with it so fingers crossed we get some lovely scab free potatoes!

Potatoes growing in the borders

I let Poppet choose what else to grow in her little garden this year and straightaway she replied "strawberries!".  So we planted 10 strawberry plants and already they are full of little green strawberries that Poppet is very excited to check up on. It's a first growing strawberries for us so hopefully it is fruitful!

Planting strawberries

Poppet's play garden is looking very productive, and this was taken a couple of weeks ago - the 4 cabbage plants are ginormous now. She also has purple-sprouting broccoli plants (we got an amazing amount of broccoli just from these 2 plants!), lavender, thyme, lupins, alpine strawberries and a willow tree. She loves having her own little bit of garden - she smells her thyme and lavender, gets rid of 'naughty' slugs or snails she spots because they 'eat my broccoli ', but any worms she finds get a very warm welcome as she picks them up and carries them around trying to find their 'mothers'. She likes worms because 'they help the plants to grow' so is always careful to place them back down near a plant. She also cautions any birds that happen to land in the garden "don't eat my strawberries!".

         

My dad gave me an early 30th birthday present of wood and stakes to make the much longed for raised beds for the vegetables! This is what the vegetable plot looked like before:

Happy Birthday to me

We did a lot of digging and weeding over a few evenings and then daddy put together the beds with some help from Poppet (with her pretend chainsaw). She loves to help her daddy,

Then a few more days spent weeding and digging and raking to get them ready for planting. Poppet really liked helping. Once Little went down for her afternoon nap, Poppet would fetch our wellies and suggest we go out to do some digging, and bring some "appletini" (which is her word for Ovaltine).
And here they are now!

Finished raised beds!

After filling the raised beds with our brussel sprouts, 1 courgette plant, radishes, carrots and swiss chard there was still loads of space so I bought lots of lovely baby veg plants from the local garden centre. So now we have calabrese, purple sprouting broccoli, romanesco, pak choi, peas, mangetout, beetroot, little gem lettuce, leeks and kale. Quite a few of these are firsts for me; already the pak choi has been a bit disappointing as the hot weather we have been having caused it to bolt. 

We have still to finish putting down weed-suppressing membrane in the pathways and then cover them with bark but it is already a vast improvement to what we had before! I love the little network of paths and the girls already seem to enjoy exploring them which was the plan with this layout. I wanted to make the veg garden a place they could play in, and I read that raised beds are much better for gardens with children because they are less likely to stand all over the plants.

                                                 

I didn't take a before picture of this area between the greenhouse and garden fence but it was basically big weeds and concrete slabs and glass. After clearing it all and digging it over we have reclaimed it as garden, with a little walkway created from old kerb stones. We planted a rhubarb plant that my dad gave us from his rhubarb so I'm hoping it takes and next year we can enjoy rhubarb from the garden, and the plan is to plant some raspberry bushes in the autumn too so it can be our little fruit corner.

                                                   

I caved and bought some new packets of seeds......it was just too hard to resist!   I love James Wong's seed collection and blog and would love his book Homegrown Revolution (hint hint J it's my birthday soon, this will be a good test to see if you read this!). It's all about growing interesting and unusual varieties of plants here in the UK. I've started off with Cucamelon which is described as a 'vigorous trailer or climber, which is relatively easy to grow. It produces an abundance of fruit resembling tiny watermelons, which taste a bit like cucumber but with a citrus tang.'  How could anyone not want to try this!!

It took weeks to germinate and I almost gave up on it but I now have 3 tiny cucamelon seedlings in the greenhouse! It was a happy day when I finally spotted a little leaf curling to the surface. Can't wait to have some exciting new fruits/veg to introduce the girls to! If these work out I plan to try some more adventurous seeds next year. The other packet of seeds I bought was Atlantic Giant Pumpkin and we have ended up with one strong little plant, so we hope to have a mammoth pumpkin come October! 

So that was a little (big) update to get me back into the swing of blogging. I felt rather a lot of pressure for the first post in a while to be good, but figured I should just bite the bullet and write one so the next isn't too daunting! 

                                              

                                                  

                                               

Poppet: 3yrs

Little: 20 mos

P.S. Sorry the fonts in this post had a mind of their own.

Greenhouse Spring Clean

I actually really look forward to my annual greenhouse spring clean! As soon as the weather starts getting warmer my mind turns to gardening and what seeds we are going to sow this year. I love getting everything ready to start anew.

Little went down for her afternoon nap and Poppet got herself ready to help with the cleaning - complete with wellingtons, tutu, chalk make-up and a string of pearls.

The greenhouse was packed full so we started by emptying everything out, trying to remain calm despite the cobwebs and spiders! I felt itchy all day afterwards. We sorted out all the plant pots according to size, binned the broken ones, organised our tools and watering cans (there were two big ones and two little ones so they were assigned to the appropriate family members), washed Poppet's gardening gloves and decided to buy mama some new ones.

Then we brushed the whole place down; Poppet was very keen to help and made sure her own little bench was clean. I brought in a basin of hot soapy water and we wiped down all the benches

Little woke up and joined us so I gave the girls the task of washing old plant pots. It was raining by this point, and Poppet also naughtily decided to pour plant pots full of water over Little's head but luckily she had a good raincoat on. They had great fun 'washing' the pots, it was funny how much they loved playing in the rain. While they were busy I quickly washed all of the seed trays (with the outdoor tap which sprayed up everywhere so I also got very wet) and assembled everything back into the greenhouse ready to plant seeds the next day.

 

Then it was indoors to take off our wet clothes, have a bath to clean up (and kill off any spiders that I was paranoid had got under our clothes) and get into cosy clothes to finish off the afternoon watching Frozen.

Poppet: 3yrs 3mos

Little: 18mos

Love Lock

The whole notion of love locks was unknown to me until I saw the curious site of lots of padlocks attached to the railings of a bridge at Falls of Feugh near Banchory. Some googling later and I learnt that they are quite popular at various sites across Europe. A lovelock is a padlock inscribed with names or dates that sweethearts lock to a bridge or gate or something similar to symbolise their love. Straight away I had the romantic notion that we had to return to the bridge to attach our own love lock.  Of course my husband was also completely 100% behind this idea and couldn't wait to go.

                 

However on arrival and after closer inspection of the lovelocks, I was intimidated by the high standard of padlocks on display and suddenly feared my Poundland padlock and permanent marker may be some reflection of our perhaps poorer quality love so I chickened out. My husband did not find this infuriating in the slightest. So I now have plans to get a nicer padlock, get it engraved and make a return trip. In the meantime we enjoyed the visit to the bridge; apparently you can see salmon jumping at certain times of the year there but there were none when we visited. It was quite a scary bridge as it was so high up and the water thundered below so loudly and the bridge moved a little when people walked on it.

I liked reading all of the inscriptions. Some were very touching. It's obviously quite a new lovelock site so it will be interesting to see if it gets popular. 

We followed our lovelock trip with a walk at a nearby woodland; I use the term walk rather loosely here - it was a case of overly ambitious walking plans and not enough chocolate. Still, Little enjoyed the snooze.

                                                  

Poppet: 3 yrs 2mos

Little : 18mos

A Very Cold Trip to the Beach

Burntisland Beach

On a freezing cold Sunday morning we wrapped up warm (though not warm enough!) and walked to the beach near Nana and Grandad's house. 

The air was crisp and cold on our faces and Little was tired but would not sleep; Poppet was motivated by promises of a troll bridge to go under, seashells to collect, and hot chocolate for afterwards. We cannot enter into these agreements lightly but thankfully were able to deliver on all three counts on this occasion.

Poppet exploring the puddles

The tide was way out so we explored the wet sand, Poppet was mesmerised by the ripples in the sand and the little trickles of water that formed little streams snaking their way back to the sea.

All wrapped up but with incorrect footwear

We filled up a bag with only the very best seashells we could find - daddy was the best sea shell spotter. Poppet didn't like picking the shells up from the wet sand, but she did like spotting them. We found cockles, mussels, razors and some of those curly type shells (also a seagull skull but decided not to take that home). Most of the shells still had their hinges so Poppet liked playing with them and when we got home Dandad showed her how they moved in the sea.

Poppet and Mama writing names in the sand

 Unfortunately Poppet's shoe got stuck in the sand so she got a wet foot and bum and that called time on our shell collecting.  Just before we left we wrote Poppet's name in the sand. We were very cold so ended the walk with a visit to our favourite cafe for a well-deserved cooked breakfast (and hot chocolate!).  

                                                               

GRAB THIS BADGE IF YOUR POST HAS BEEN FEA

The Goukstane, Bennachie

On Saturday we went for a family walk at Bennachie, a range of hills nearby to us. It is ranked the no. 1 activity to do in Aberdeen and is right on our doorstop - we are very lucky to have such an amazing landscape and lovely walks so accessible to us.  We have barely scratched the surface of them - there is a whole network of paths to explore and so far we have only tried a couple.

We started off doing the easiest walk which is the Discovery Trail aimed at children and wheelchair users; it has lovely little rubbing posts along the way for children to make rubbings but I had forgotten our paper and crayons which was a bit annoying.

Strong-willed and fearless, Little refused to go into the pushchair we had brought along for her, and walked for ages, completely surprising us! She is a really fast little walker and very determined. She doesn't want us to hold her hand and won't stop still for a photo for us. She looks so precarious walking; her little feet turn in and she looks like she might stumble any moment but she doesn't.

She walked even longer than Poppet managed to! Poppet flaked first, requesting to go into the pushchair. 

Poppet admitting defeat

Along the way I searched for nearby geocaches using the app on my phone. We hadn't been geocaching yet this year but are really looking forward to finding lots more in 2014. It is really great for extending a walk, making you spend more time enjoying the outdoors together as a family, and making it a little bit exciting (I am always so excited when we eventually find the geocache and open it!). We chose one near to us (there were loads!), and followed the compass, taking us off the Discovery trail.

I had brought along a little picnic for a mid-morning snack so we stopped at a bit where there were lots of tree stumps from tree felling and found a nice big one. Poppet insisted on having a 'chair and a table' on her stump. We had Babybels, bananas, a chocolate santa and some unidentified chocolates along with some juice.

Our picnic

My sister is a teacher and as such receives lots of gifts at the end of the term from grateful pupils; a lot of these gifts are wine and chocolates neither of which she is that keen on so she passes them on to me. The unidentified chocolates were one of these gifts. Poppet seemed really keen on them. She called them 'snowballs' and was very reluctant to share, swap or relinquish hold of the bag. Even for the chocolate santa. It was only later when we tried one that we realised that they were 'boozy' chocolates. Oooops.

Enjoying our picnic

After the picnic Poppet had some energy and went back to walking. I was in charge of the compass and we went the wrong way. A few times. We nearly gave up but eventually Dada and Poppet went off-road on their own to find the Goukstane while I pushed Little in the buggy on the main path to get her to sleep. And success! The teamwork of father and daughter found it and called us over.

Goukstane is Scots for 'Cuckoo stone' and it's a large boulder which according to legend is visited by the first cuckoo to return to Bennachie after spending the winter in Africa (this info was all available on my Geocaching App., so that's another big advantage of geocaching, you learn about your local area too!). Our geocache was hidden near it, cleverly tucked away in the roots of a tree under some large pieces of bark. Poppet had the honour of retrieving it. Little was on her way to the land of nod after all of her walking!

We filled in our name and the date in the log book and Poppet chose a treasure. I tried to influence her to choose a lovely looking realistic plastic caterpillar but she would have none of it and went with a little pink pen with some sparkle. She loves it.

Near the Goukstane there was a wall with words carved into the stones and one stone made to look like an egg with a crack through it. Poppet spotted it straight away -'an egg!', but it wasn't until I read the description of the cache again on my phone that I realised she was right.

'

The wall reads 'The Calling of the Gouk Is the Other Side of Spring

Poppet spotted an 'A' in one of the stones - "Look it's my A!" which made her very pleased.

Poppet's A

We finished off the Discovery Trail with Poppet on Dada's shoulders and Little fast asleep in the buggy.


Poppet: 3yrs
Little: 16 mos