It's Spring - let's go out

For me, a welcome sign of Spring's arrival is when I can say to my children 'let's go out' without any particular plan. This is what we did on Saturday afternoon - and we stayed out too; just in our neighbourhood, for over four hours. 

As we strolled towards our local green space we passed cherry-blossomed trees, saw new light-green growth on the shrubs in front gardens and listened to snatches of beautiful birdsong as chaffinches and blackbirds went about their nest-making business. It really felt like Spring had sprung.

Once we reached Butterfield Green we were rewarded with more blossom-branched trees, and with the stunning colours of crocuses and daffodils poking their cheery heads up above the grass.

I got to relax for over an hour in the warm sunshine, overhearing snippets of my children playing a brilliant let's pretend game involving exploration of strange lands and a wedding party. They checked in with me every now and again, bringing me a few more of the hundreds of funny, fuzzy, highly collectible catkins strewn all over the paths. I also received a few daisies along the way.

Later on we went to SWAPA - an adventure playground adjacent to the green. There they climbed up trees and ropes, swung on tyres, dug in the sand and rolled down ramps on unruly wheel-boards. We eventually made our way home when the sun was pale orange and low in the sky, my children wonderfully tired from all the exercise and fresh air, and brilliantly dirty with the stuff of nature and outside adventure.

Back at home I made them both a toy caterpillar each by securing pieces of cotton thread to the end of  two catkins. They trained their new pets and came up with The Captain Caterpillar Show which consisted of a mini-obstacle race on our dining table. A recorder fanfare hailed the beginning of each caterpillar's turn to complete the course - it was hilarious.

I look forward to our next impromptu outing. Where will we go? What will they come up with to amuse me? We shall see.

Camp-fire cooking

My children's school was closed today because of strike action and I had to go to work, so Daddy travelled home through the night from Edinburgh to London - that's nine hours. How he managed to look after Buddy and Daisy without a wink of sleep I'll never know, but clearly they had a great time. They were pleased to find the local adventure playground open and so they hung out there for ages; on the flying fox, the trolley ramp, the swing-tyres and other fantastic reclaimed-and-made play equipment.

There was a surprise in the middle of the playground too - a crackling, warming and gorgeous smelling camp-fire. Foil-wrapped, wood-fire baked potatoes were being handed out just as they arrived and later on - as you can see in the photo above - freshly toasted bread; how wonderful for them to experience cooking and eating outside. Daisy decided to add some strawberry jam to hers and ate it high up in the playground's tree house with a new friend - and that's pretty special too.

I am so proud of my family today; they definitely made lemonade out of lemons. And I'm proud of our community too - thank you SWAPA for keeping such a super resource open on strike day, and for giving my children the opportunity to experience the magic of camp-fire cooking.