A walk and a bit of right Royal history

The children are back at school so Jo and I are back to our weekly jaunts. For starters we headed back to our trusty old favourite, the 6.5 mile path around Llysyfran dam.

I have lost count of how many times we've done this walk now but I never tire of looking at the view. Today the weather was a little moody. Clouds billowed into pillars and towers but early heavy rain had headed off grumpily in the direction of England leaving behind sunny spells and a quite furious wind that luckily we were mostly sheltered from.

The bluebells are divine and the hawthorn is Persil white.

Now for our Royal historical connection. This stone is a memorial to William Penfro Rowlands, composer of the hymn tune Blaenwern which, with Charles Wesley's words 'Love divine all loves excelling', was sung at Prince William and Kate Middleton's recent wedding.

Mr Rowlands, a teacher, was born at Llysyfran in 1860 and died in Swansea in 1937. He wrote Blaenwern in 1905 and it was also sung at Prince Charles' wedding to the Duchess of Cornwall in 2005.

The stone - a piece of polished slate - is sited near the dam by the ruins of Rowlands' cottage. I wonder how many tourists have ambled past it recently not knowing the Royal connection.

The Gallery: Chilled out

This is my idea of chilled out (which is the theme for this week's the Gallery) coffee and magazine in the sunshine next to a pot of soothing lavender and with mum's cat, Calico, for company. Sitting quietly here, chilling, after I had taken this photograph, I watched a little leaf cutter bee busily snip a circle out of a strawberry leaf, roll it up into a tube, tuck it under its legs and fly away.

I promised you pictures of donkeys...

...so here they are.

We love going to the Donkey Sanctuary at Sidmouth in Devon so when, over breakfast at our friends' house during the Easter holidays, the debate turned to where we wanted to go for the day, H voted strongly for the donkeys.

So a visit to our friends with long ears was decided upon, including lunch in the restaurant where they do humongous sandwiches.

This is Rosie with Rosie.

Another of the yard donkeys.

Noah, one of the Poitou donkeys, greets his fans.

Chocolate is my favourite colour.

Nelly and Sovereign Rose find a sheltered spot to bask in the sun.

We decided that this group would like to come and live on a 22-acre smallholding in the Preseli Hills.

Especially this one. (This is one of Nicola's pictures.)

New rules

May has brought us down to earth with a bump with the end (finally) of the rather self-indulgent Easter holidays and a visit to the dentist.

All was fine tooth-wise, apart from slight wonkyness in the junior teeth which may or may not need fixing at a future date - but we were warned about very early signs of decay.

Now we've been down that road before as parents and don't plan to travel it again. On (very long) journey home from Devon on Monday, mindful of just how self-indulgent we'd been and the fact that my jeans were tighter than they had been at the start of the holidays I had formulated new rules.

Back at home I consulted websites (Aquafresh, Change4Life, something mad and hippy which I ignored...) for advice and came up with the following which I have written down and everyone knows they must follow:

1. Sugary food and acidic, sugary or fizzy drinks at mealtimes only. Drinks must have a straw (this helps stop children washing drinks around their teeth). Chocolate and sweets are lovely treats and nice to end meals with.
2. In between meals we can have fruit, vegetables, cheese, savoury biscuits, rice cakes and crackers, breadsticks and oatcakes, bread or toast with butter. Drinks can be milk or water.

So that's only two simple rules, which we have followed since Monday. Surprisingly there has been little resistance - even from H's friend who is also used to our habit of having 'Friday treats' and didn't bat an eyelid when we didn't go to the shop to buy sweets nor when she asked for lemonade and got milk instead. (I figured she would have had lots of Easter chocolate too).

My observations so far? The main one is that all of us are less inclined to snack between meals just for the sake of it and only if really hungry. It seems we're more than capable of finding a little corner for chocolate and sweets at any time. We don't necessarily want it after meals either so consumption has been drastically reduced.

The second is that they now eat the food I put on the table at mealtimes because they are hungry and haven't filled up on rubbish in between meals. Much, much better from a parental point of view.

They're also drinking more milk which pleases me - all that lovely bone and tooth-building calcium - and I have a real hatred of squash (except the blackcurrant kind in a bottle an hour into a long run).

I'm not sure how we slipped into such bad habits (H didn't have any sweets or chocolate at all until she was about two years old) but it's easy to do especially when they see other children seemingly having sweets every day and ask, ask and ASK for some too. It's too easy to give in to such demands and too tiring to constantly say no, no and NO BECAUSE I SAID SO!

From now on there is no longer the 'oh, go on then' (sigh) just for an easy life, because it isn't necessarily an easy life when such actions have consequences (at regular mealtimes and beyond).

Se we now have new house rules* (to add to the existing which are don't jump on the furniture, draw on the walls, call each other names or hit each other) and they apply to everyone, big, small, visitor or resident.

*DISCLAIMER: Rules can be bent on holidays, birthdays and special occasions.

The Gallery: April

This week's theme on The Gallery is April - a month that meant so many things this year: A long school holiday augmented by two double bank holidays and two 'snow' days; lambing; That Wedding; chocolate and Easter egg hunts and Devon with fabulous friends, good food and lovely donkeys.

I can only choose one photograph and this one perfectly illustrates the abiding memory of this April with its seemingly endless sunny days. The garden and the fields are parched and there's been a fresh wind mostly keeping the temperature down but we had one day which was still and a real scorcher.

That day was still enough for me to lie on the floor and photograph the tulips and it was too hot. Fabulous.

Man 1, Rodent 0

The rodent that has been terrorising my polytunnel is no more. His list of crimes included eating all of my F1 cucumber seeds, a tray of pale courgette seeds, melon seeds (twice), sunflower seeds (twice), sweetcorn seeds (an entire packet), Big Max pumpkin seeds (entire packet), butternut squash (five seeds out of six) and Turk's Turban squash (also five seeds out of six).

Evidence.

He also had a jiffle about with his paws in a tray of Cosmos seeds and had a look at some Verbascum seedlings.

By way of defence we suspended the seed trays on a plank from ropes in the middle of the polytunnel. So the mouse climbed the polytunnel poles and shimmied down the ropes to get to the (second batch) of seeds.

There is one word for that rodent, bastard talented .

The bill for his crimes is massive. He has set my gardening year back by at least four weeks, probably more. At least it wasn't too late to buy new seeds and replant but not if the rodent existed to eat them all over again...

He was, officially, Enemy Number One. I issued orders that he must be apprehended.

The Commander in Chief set five traps, four of the 'snap your little rodent neck' sort and one humane (preferred) live trap. I tip-toed around the polytunnel trying not to turn into one of those cartoon Tom and Jerry mouse-trap on fingers, toes and nose scenarios.

Last night the rodent selected the live trap as his punishment of choice and sat in it fatly and glossily waiting for the Commander in Chief.

What happened next is hazy but the C in C claims that the terrorist rodent put up some 'resistance' during which the rodent 'ran down the curtain and joined the choir invisible'. It was then buried, not at sea, but somewhere known only to the C in C (I suspect he might have given it to one of the cats to demonstrate the dereliction of its duties) and we will not be releasing pictures of the corpse.

The C in C then had to face his kangaroo court martial at 6am at which he was found guilty of major disobedience for damaging the criminal and his punishment is to dig enough well-rotted manure to mulch the entire garden and build the new polytunnel.

Today (sigh) for the third time I will be planting courgettes, melons, sunflowers, pumpkins and butternut squash. I'm bringing the seed trays into the comfort and safety of the house in case of revenge attacks by the rodent's relatives or friends.

It can't be May - it's still the Easter holidays!

I can't believe it is still the Easter holidays! This has been a marathon. We watched The Wedding on Friday and then went off to Devon to stay with truly lovely friends who let us eat all their food and drink all their wine.

We patted donkeys, trimmed a hedge, shopped and barbecued. More later (with pictures) once the school holidays are over (which I'm promised is Wednesday. Apparently we have a brief respite and then it's Whitsun...)

In the meantime I leave you with one of the images from our break (just in case anybody is wondering what I would like for my birthday this year):