Carrots and Kids

{Re-connecting My Children With Nature}

One of the areas of our life that I've let slide recently is connecting the (younger) children with nature. I'm not sure why it's happened. Maybe it's because it's winter or maybe, as is the case in families, other things have grabbed my attention and I've taken my eye off one of the many balls I'm juggling, just for a while.

I'm not sure if it comes across in the blog but I'm not a huge fan of some children's gardening activities. I mean, I love gardening with children and I try to think of plants they would like to grow but, really, the growing-flowers-in-wellies kind of activities leave me cold.

Sometimes that kind of gardening feels a bit contrived and patronising. It's a bit like cooking with children - making endless fairy cakes gets boring; I like to get mine cooking a range of things that are tasty, not aimed specifically at them.

Having said that, I need them to be outside for an hour a day and during the recent half-term this involved endless trips to the park.

But I want to reconnect them with nature a bit closer to home too. Going to the park is not always possible (or sometimes I just can't bear it) so with the promise of spring I'm turning my thoughts to the outdoors.

Here's my list of Things To Do To Get Back To Nature:

• Get the children planting the usual child-friendly veggies and flowers at home and at the allotment (but especially at home)
• Make a Nest Building Buffet for the birds (I have no idea what this is really called but involves putting out suitable material for our feathered parents and will have to be done SOON)
• Find space in the back garden for a digging pit. Mud pies and worm hospitals here we come
• Incorporate more sensory plants for the children to pick (like Lamb's Ears)
• Finding a patch or very large pot at home for them to grow herbs perhaps for the bath or maybe salad leaves in - either way I'd like them to grow something really useful for the family.

This isn't a comprehensive list and nor is it my definitive one. It's just one to kick-start a more outdoorsy time. If you have any good ideas, I'd love to hear them.

{Stuff}

Here's a list of things I have been doing or thinking. Sometimes only a list will do.

• Sowing sweet peas: we did some gardening at school which involved making our own pots out of paper (by wrapping newspaper round jam jars) and planting two seeds per pot. Some were straight out of the packet and others had been soaking in water as an "experiment" to see if pre-soaking makes any difference. I think not

• Wholefood eating: I have just started a three-month online course with Heather about wholefood eating. I am so excited. I did her 30-day vegan one in the summer and LOVED it

• Writing my new blog: I feel very excited about this too (although quite vulnerable about showing it. I mean, a blog about that). There are only three posts so far but many more to come. I had a stressful great time designing it and making it look how I wanted (with thanks to Liz who gave me a code for padding, whatever that is, and suggested a few tweaks). Oh and if you fancy a peek it's here

• Looking forward to half-term: yay! Although a week early this year, we are so ready for it. The little children are tired and I am a bit weary of making sad five and seven-year-olds go to school when they just want to stay home and play. There will be lots of Lego, parks and cake in our week and no homework

• Reading: I go through phases although always try and read one fiction book a month, even if it is for book group. Currently reading On The Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Oh and HUGE congrats to Dawn who's just had her first book published about gardening with children. 

So, as winter trundles on and the snow falls (well, it is here), what are you up to?

:: I'm not sure if the link to my blog is working. I suspect not. This is Typepad's fault and not a cynical ploy by me to get you very curious about the new blog. I'm hiting publish anyway just to confirm my suspicions. Actually, maybe this is a sign...

:: Edited - the link now works! It was me *blush*. My new blog is called birdoosh.

{eggs}

We used to have back garden hens. They were enormous fun, until a fox made off with the lot of them. A friend had loaned us a broody chicken which we named Gladys and gave us some fertile eggs and away we went, having fun and enjoying the resulting eggs for years.

Would I have chickens again? Yes, if I had the space. Oh, I know you can house them in an Eglu thing but it doesn't seem overly spacious to me. And right now we need the space for things like football.

Plus, if you let them roam, and why wouldn't you, they tend to wreck your lawn. And we had a rat in the garden. I know not everyone does but we did. Although they tend not to need much by way of encouragement to visit us. Bird food? Rats. Chickens? Rats.

So I make do with buying my eggs, which we seem to get through at a rate of knots. They are perfect though, versatile and coming complete with their own packaging which can be recycled in so many ways.

I try to keep the empty shells in a container or bag next to the Aga. When I have lots, I pop them into the bottom oven for a while.

Then I either crush them to add as a layer to pots of tomato seedlings when I'm potting on or as a slug deterrent around the base of seedlings.

Sometimes I also use them to grow seeds in, gently breaking them when it's time to transfer to the ground. Occasionally they go in the compost bin but they never seem to break down well plus, when they have so many other uses it seems a bit of a missed opportunity.

Now I also have a new use - I'm going to whiz them up in my food processor and add them to home-made bird food. I read this weekend (and can't remember where) that commercial bird food doesn't contain any calcium, essential for the baby birds. It's always nice to make your own fat balls so this is no extra work.

What do you use your egg shells for?

{Beauty in My Kitchen}

One thing you won't glean just from reading this blog is how very clumsy I am. Personally, I don't think I'm any clumsier than the next person but Hubby tells me differently, raising his eyes as I stumble, fall, trip, drop, burn and cut my way around the kitchen.

And as he's known me for 26 years I guess I'll have to take his word for it.

So it's no surprise to learn that I broke one of my favourite mugs. Blast! I was really disappointed. It was a pretty one which was annoying as it's never the children's Top Gear/High School Musical ugly mugs that cop it. Actually, I don't use them much so that's probably why...

After gluing it back together I decided to plant a hyacinth bulb in it. Well, what else can you do? It now sits on my kitchen windowsill, not quite ready to flower but nearly.

There are others in flower. I know some people are a bit sniffy about hyacinths but I'm so out of the loop I don't really know what's fashionable in the real world let alone the gardening one.

And so as to ensure that I don't end up drinking from a motely collection of horrid mugs (yes, I am that fussy) I treated myself to a replacement, a £5 Cath Kidston one. I figured it would look lovely this time next year with some paper white growing out of it...

 

{So What If It's Cold}

Following on from my last post, it is, naturally, now winter proper. I am sat here with a very cold nose, wearing four layers and contemplating a fifth.

Of course, it is not really the weather for blogging either. Really, I should be ironing....

And when I used to run a gardening club I decreed it wasn't the weather for gardening. Oh, I know there are things to do but it was always nice to have a break.

Now I am a helper whose main responsibility is to just turn up, we are ploughing on. This week we replenished a dead hedge. It's quite cool, but something you'd need a lot of space for I reckon. Perfect for a school though.

I am keen to do some gardening with, at least, my children. I'm resigned to it being largely indoors. Possibilities include creating a terrarium, planting winter peas, sowing broad beans in modules and onions too.

Or how about starting a nature or gardening journal? And let's not forget about feeding the birds...

Crikey, I've inspired myself! That's got to be another good thing about blogging.

:: The photo was taken with iPhone. You can see the older, darker parts of the hedge ::

 

{Feels Like Spring}

I admit I have been enjoying this weather. Out and about the other day, it really felt like spring. And I know, I do, that isn't good.

No doubt we will have some bad weather, I keep seeing snow shovels and sledges for sale everywhere. That in itself is unusual, I'm sure I never used to.

I read about someone hearing a blackbird singing the other morning. And how it might turn out to be a challenging gardening year because there has been no cold snap to kill off pests.

Although I haven't missed the snow this year, I have missed the crunchy, frosty mornings. But despite all of that, all the misgivings about the mild weather, I did gasp with delight at the allotment when I saw my calendulas still blooming.

Admittedly, I was less enamoured to see lots of nasturtium seedlings sprouting. Thinking of sowing a few at your allotment? I wouldn't, not unless you know it'll be a hard winter to kill them off.

{gardening with glue}

The weather has been grim. I'm pretty sure it's been horrid throughout the whole of the UK. And strange. After the hardest rain I've seen in a long time there was blue sky.

But I'm not complaining. After all I wasn't out in it. But I am hoping this is not a sign of things to come, weather-wise, in 2012. Please.

Still, it did mean that I could get on with doing a rather favourite form of gardening. That of gardening with glue. While I like reading gardening books, it's pictures that help form my ideas and get me inspired.

So in lieu of seed catalogues which are winging their way to me, I cut up some old magazines which was a form of decluttering and Fantasy Gardening.

I'm not setting myself up for a fall, I'm fully aware that I have neither the skill or the money to transform my garden but I do need to do something with both the front and back and this scrapbook will help.

{gardening goals}

 

I'm not normally a fan of the new year but after the December I've had I am greeting 2012 like an old friend, and smothering it in kisses.

And because this blog shouldn't be a depository for all my moaning I won't go on about the car that cost £1,700 to fix, the boiler that broke down or a lurgy picked up at school that saw all seven of us ill with three on antibiotics.

All in the two weeks before Christmas.

But no, I'm not dwelling on that or the utter exhaustion that has shrouded these holidays. To say I am looking forward to a bit of peace tomorrow is probably understating it somewhat.

I'm also looking forward to getting a few things achieved this year. I know resolutions are sticks we use to beat ourselves over the head, but it's hard to resist filling the blank pages of a new year with hopes and dreams.

But I'm calling mine goals. I figure they sound more achievable that way and less angst-making if they fail to leave the pages of my notebook.

In fact, there are so many things I want to get a handle on this year I am, yet again, feeling paralysed by feelings of overwhelm.

So I've made extensive lists, including a section entitled Gardening Goals. These are, in no particular order:

• Visit the allotment every week. Prioritise it
• Order three David Austin roses (I have until March to get the bare rooted ones in) to grow through the picket fence
• Paint the picket fence before the roses grow
• Organise and paint the potting shed - I feel this will feature in a few posts
• Plan and plant the Lotion and Potion patch
• Turn the unused bit of front garden into a cutting garden
• Transform the side bit of the house into a shady-loving plant haven
• Buy and fit a wooden gate so the above haven is a private one
• Get back to enjoying gardening.

The last one is probably the most important one. Thanks to the internet I do feel pangs of gardening inadequacy but I need to ignore what everyone else is doing. Really.

Have you any gardening goals?

{The Ultimate Thrifty Tip}

I'll be honest, I don't really do thrifty or frugal. It's not that I couldn't do with a few pointers in that department. I'm the first to admit that cutting back is not an area of expertise. But I won't let that stop me from offering you the ultimate thrifty tip!

At this stage you're probably looking a bit puzzled and wondering what on earth I think I'm doing. What, me?

Obviously we could all do with some help in cutting back. I have been doing this in lots of ways, from not buying new books to eschewing the tumble dryer.

But the best way to help our finances - the ultimate thrifty tip which will save money - is extremely simple, very effective and really hard. It's avoid shops. And not just shops - adverts and catalogues and online stores too.

Obviously it's impossible at this time of year. But it is precisely while hitting the High Street that I realised this. Perusing the shelves of John Lewis, walking past the window of White Stuff, touching the scarves in Accessorize all gave me a really bad case of the wanties.

Currently on my list? A rather lovely leather chair, coffee makers (yes, plural), boots, dresses, skirts, bags, a Kitchen Aid (yes, I know I said I would never buy one but have you seen the colours?), kitchen chairs, a new camera....I could go on. Do I need any of this? Ab.So.Lute.Ly Not.

So that's my big tip - stay away from shops. From adverts. From people telling you about their latest purchases. From those lovely catalogues (Lakeland, I'm looking at you).

I would probably also add "stay away from blogs" too. Because whether they are thrifty and frugal or even about something else entirely, I still get stricken by this awful malaise. Seriously, I don't need to see what lovely things others have bought. Nor do I need to be seeing ads (which encourage people to spend money) on blogs that are apparently trying to help people save money.

I'm putting myself on a Consumer Diet. And like all good diets, it will start tomorrow, or after Christmas. Yes, definitely after the festivities. January 1st is a good day to start a diet I hear.

{Cosy}

I have literally blown the cobwebs off my laptop and dusted it down to get on with writing a blog post. I realise that what I have been up to is of very little consequence but here's the thing - I have missed the creativity afforded to me by this space.

Life has been trundling on in its usual fashion with a lot of Christmas shopping (all done, even the online food order - phew), plus trips to the doctors for one of the younger members of the Carrots house, a fair bit of worry, inset days and the strike and, well, life has been full.

Full and productive which is always good, leaving no room really for blogging or Twitter. But I have felt something has been amiss. And that was the lack of writing, being creative. Because while bread making is satisfying it is, for me at the moment making my basic white, not really creative.

I guess that's a lie because I have been slightly creative making some Christmas presents. I haven't yet got into the groove of making lots. I need to start in the summer for that.

But these four presents are small enough to cost pennies and to be quick enough to make, even for me. I admire those that go the whole Handmade Holiday route but really, I can't see my teens being totally overjoyed at any homemade offering from me.

So Christmas shopping it has been. It wasn't too bad as it entailed a (very) rare day with Hubby on our own, copious cups of coffee, lunch out and the satisfaction that it is All Done.

That just leaves the wrapping which I hope to crack on with tomorrow and Friday. Proper decorating will start later in the month but I have put up this rather lovely cardboard star which is lit from inside and brightens up these gloomy days. December is shaping up well for some cosy, Christmas fun. Can't wait.