Spent the morning, among other things, learning some new signs with the girls; cry, baby, naughty (can’t quite fathom the difference between naughty and more atm but i’m sure we will) cuddle, can, have. Maddy is stringing little sentences together, albeit it slowly: todays best was “mummy, can i have orange juice?” She was identifying the words she needed and asking for me to find them. Fran is enjoying accessing the book on its own level, she can read the words to work out the signs for herself, something that hadn’t occurred to me! On another level, its given Maddy and i an opportunity to talk about facial expression, something she struggles to decipher at times, which has to be a positive thing to come out of the exercise. I’d definitely recommend the book, for £8 its worth it – its called Let’s Sign: Early Years.
All of us have played on the Scalextric at various times, although Max has now hidden his classic cars and bought a couple of cheaper versions for the kids to race. We don’t appear to be able to beat Fran 😆 Then they moved on to board games and Mario Kart while i tried to tackle the rubbish pit which is the house. Not quite sure how well i succeeded really but most of the clothes (the ones not marooned at the beans House) are clean, dry and in some cases packed for our next holiday.
I’ve spent a bit of time watering the garden; you’ve probably spotted the photo stream but here are a few photos.
The wildflowers that have come up this year. Not bad really and hopefully next year will be really pretty.
The vegetables are doing pretty well; we’ve had loads of peas and quite a lot of strawberries.
It was quite good the other day to pick this little bowlful of produce in the morning and then go to the fields of strawberries at Hill Farm in the afternoon and get them collecting there. 2 sides of a coin, a lesson in reality, i dunno, real home ed i suppose. Lately i do feel we are living a parody of what i intended.
These are potatoes, lettuces, chives, shallots (i don’t do well with those, wonder what i am doing wrong) and peas. All looks quite prolific i think.
Tomatos; had to buy in seedlings after i killed mine, bit disappointing to have done that but these are catching up now.
Strawberries and Nasturtiums. Strawberries are putting out runners. Must find out what to do about those, will they over winter i wonder. Have failed to produce pretty nasturtiums for the second year, don’t think they like the soil. They are keeping hold of all the blackfly nicely though. We’ve even got a semi-tamed bit of bramble producing blackberries at the moment.
Oh, and for posterity, here is Maddy’s puppet, made all on her own. Amelie calls this character “Humpy Dumpy”
Sadly, although it sounds an okay day, its really been a narky, irritable, bitchy sort of one, which has been a bit miserable. Improved a bit with a few chapters of The BFG at the end – “piffling snozzcumbers”.
