Dig Dig

Today Flat Mum Bree arrived just in time to do some gardening. I spent yesterday afternoon digging out the patch of lawn that the chickens had been pooping on all winter and we are using that to grow some onions and potatos. In another part of the garden we will grow tomatoes, sunflowers, carrots etc. Ive been waiting for Dan to dig and the weather to be nice for so long. So when it was sunny yesterday I just went out and started digging. Today we got the digging finished. We composted the ground with the compost we had made over the winter, and then the kids started planting. Jimmy planted onions and Annabelle planted nasturtians. Barney played with the worms and threw stones out of the mud for us. A little Robin was sitting nearby, stealing worms from the soil whenever he thought we werent looking. It was nice to get outdoors for a whiles - yesterday was the first sunny day of the year. Here are a few photos...

Annabelle planted some nastutiums and Jimmy planted some onions. We've got a lot more digging and planting to do yet though. The flat stanleys are helping in this photo.

This was us today out digging the new vegetable patch. Im not looking my best in it, I must admit, but Hey, I was gardening.

The weather here had been crazy. Spring is really late here this year. Its been just so odd. One minute its sunny – then next its pouring with rain. We have had so much rain that our garden is like a bog. And we’ve had hail stones a lot too. Today was the first nice day we have had this year. It was beautiful. The kids got their studies done by lunch time and we spent the rest of the day in the garden. Annabelle planted some pansies and violas in the flower bed that the ivy grow in. She also planted some sweet pea seeds and some nasturtium seeds to grow up the wall. Me and Jimmy spent a long time digging the new potato and onion patch. It seems we have pretty good soil in our garden as it was a field before our house was built (our old house garden was full of bits of the school that had been knocked down). So in the morning Jimmy is going to plant the onions and soon the potatoes will be ready to plant too. We made our own compost over the winter by recycling all our fruit and veg scraps. Its amazing stuff. There is steam coming out of it! And it smells like horse muck. Great for the veg though. It was so nice to spend some time out of doors. Barney sat next to us while we were digging collecting any worms that got turned up. He collected them all in a bowl but he put them back into the soil at the end. Then he gathered stones and washed them in my washing up bowl. Little boys are great fun in the garden! His favourite thing at the moment is to go outside on a wet day and splash in the puddles. A few days back I dressed him in his water proof clothes and put his welly boots on. It was pouring with rain but he been ill the week before and hadn’t been outside for ages. So me and Barney spent an hour outside in the street in the rain splashing in puddles! It was so much fun! I enjoyed myself as much as him. Jimmy and Annabelle were watching him through the window whilst they did their maths. Now any time it rains he wants to do it again. Jimmy put the hammock that I bought last summer back up in the garden. Then he brought down the duvet and pillows from his bed, and him and Annabelle sat all tucked up in the hammock reading books and tickling each other. By this time Barney wanted to pretend to drive our car so I had the front door open so that I could keep half an eye on Barney who was ‘driving’ in our driveway, and the back door was open for the other kids. I could hear Barney happily ‘brum brum’ing and Jimmy and Annabelle were giggling and laughing in the back garden. I sat in the hallway between the two just thinking ‘this is what life is all about’ – happy kids, laughing, carefree childhood days. Doesn’t the sun shine just make everything seem so much better?