It's a pig's life

Summer holidays are hard work. In the past week or so we've been to Cardiff to spend our Disney vouchers and see a real live Darlek at the Doctor Who Exhibition, we've hunted dinosaurs at the Tenby Dinosaur Park, we've crafted, we've played vets and poorly ponies, we've made a holiday jar in the style of Pipany, we've been out for a barbecue, in for lunch and dinner with friends, we've gardened, we've torn our hair out over slug, wind and rain damage, we've eaten courgettes (well, just the one), cabbages and cucumbers galore.

Sometimes the sun has shone and we have poured out of the house onto the new lawn to lie on the cool grass, gaze up at the fluffy white clouds in the blue sky, bask in the warmth and just be.

Even the guinea pigs can't stay awake under those circumstances.

All quiet on the home front.

It's a quiet day here today. Hedges have been trimmed, strimming has been, er..., strum, H7 is out Morris Dancing with her fellow Brownies (and I made her some brownies to take too, how witty.)

I have watered the garden and sighed over the garden (so many weeds!) and wondered where to put the bulls blood beetroot and the little gems that are desperate to get out into the big wide world. I have also been sighing over my woeful inability to germinate carrot seeds.

See there's only two! This is a bed which measures eight feet by four feet. I have now sown it twice and only these two have (so far) deigned to germinate. Four years ago this bed grew great fat carrots (a heritage variety I've forgotten the name of - Red Elephant or something like that). These are Nantes II and, frankly, I'm disgusted by their meagre efforts.

No such trouble with courgettes, though. These are my favourite variety, Genovese, a lovely pale green thin skinned courgette which I like to mix with a stripy Romanseque type. I've given up on the yellow ones as they always seem to be bitter.

The terrible twins. The one on the right is Lazarus who I wrote about in an earlier post. As you can see he has filled out a bit now. The other one is his big brother Bazarus. Both are getting a top up bottle of milk morning and evening. Their mum looks after them the rest of the time, but the poor love just couldn't get to grips with breast-feeding.

This is my new lawn and never before (in this household) has the mowing of a lawn been so eagerly anticipated. It's not quite long enough yet, but it's doing well. Last year (I'm embarrassed to say) Brian and the girls bought me a push along mower and a couple of boxes of lawn seed as a Mother's Day present (which I was very pleased about, I hasten to add. They bought me flowers and chocolates too.) It's taken a whole year to get to this stage and I can't wait to get my little mower out and persuade these new green shoots to tiller out and make a lovely thick lawn.

Now duty calls as I have promised R5 a session with my watercolour paints. Inspired by Mark on Views from the bike shed, we're going to have a go at painting 'what ice cream tastes like'.