Down to earth

Buddy and Daisy's school celebrated Harvest Festival yesterday; we sent in tins and packets of food for the The Salvation Army to distribute to the elderly, homeless and those in need in our local area. I couldn't attend the assembly myself but apparently Buddy's class sang a harvest song:

Push the trolley with the basket

Down between the rows of shelves.

See the tins and jars and packets

This is how we serve ourselves.

Not quite Keats then.

I asked whether the song went on explain the source of the tins and packets but he said he didn't think there were any other words. While I'm sure it must have gone on to cover the growing and harvesting of crops it got me thinking about how children living in an urban environment are often far removed from that aspect of Autumn. So in an attempt to get Buddy and Daisy thinking, I dug out these photos taken just over a month ago when they helped 'bring in the harvest' from my aunt's huge and bountiful allotment.

We discovered giant runner beans hiding in the beanstalks.

We searched the soft soil to reveal treasure of the potato kind.

And after picking sunshine yellow courgettes and crimson red tomatoes, we pulled onions out of the earth by their straggly stalks (as the top picture shows). These were tumbled into a bowl destined for the kitchen where all the vegetables were transformed into a rather delicious vegetable soup.

Tomorrow, I will try sharing Keats' poem To Autumn with Buddy and Daisy. After all, it is the quintessential description of those halcyon days of a rural harvest. You never know, it might even remind them of some other verses to that school song.

From John Keats' To Autumn:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Happy endings

I'd like to tie up a couple of odds and ends from previous posts, if I may.

About a month ago, you may recall my dilemma regarding how to find a home for the hundred or so fruit and vegetable seedlings pictured below.

(see Box of Delights and Horticultural Adventure April 2010).

This story has a very happy ending. Just at the right moment, a brand new raised flowerbed was constructed at my children's school. My offer to fill it with all these vulnerable and homeless seedlings was accepted and their junior gardening club members did the rest. There is a now weekly rota whereby each class take it in turns to tend the vegetable patch.

As you can see in the photographs, the plants have settled in well and are thriving and flourishing in their new home. It's wonderful to see their progress every time I drop the children at nursery and school.

Another unfinished story from a few months ago centred around my 5 year old; he was having a bit of a sad time during his school playtimes. Eventually, we managed to get to the bottom of the problem whilst making our lovely WALL-E figure out of a tissue box as pictured below (see Where's WALL-E March 2010 ). Things have improved a bit since then.

But the story continues because WALL-E remains such a firm favourite with both my children. Fans of the film will be pleased to hear that at long last we've made EVE. This was possible because we finally finished the shower-wash container long since earmarked for her. She was incredibly simple to make, and due to her previous life, smells freshly fragrant too. And so WALL-E and EVE are together at last, living Le vie en rose*

I do love a happy ending.

*from the soundtrack of the Disney/Pixar film WALL-E.

Haircut 100

This has been a week of haircuts. On Tuesday I took Buddy and Daisy to the hairdresser. It was only their second time and as such was still quite a novelty.

Daisy sat demurely throughout her 10 minute trim, loving every second.

But Buddy's hair took nearly an hour. First came the painful 'brushing-out' ceremony. He looks cheery in this photograph but actually his eyes were watering for most of it.

And then came the inevitable cutting of his curls; I could barely watch. I had to keep telling myself they'll grow back, they'll grow back. I love those little corkscrews.

Back at home Daisy found a book about someone who, like Buddy has untamed and tangled tresses. Sarah Dyer's The Girl with the Bird's-Nest Hair is a delightfully eccentric tale of Hollie whose hair becomes so wild and unkempt that a selection of birds set up home in it.

A cautionary story indeed. Thank goodness we didn't see any birds emerging from Buddy's hair as it was combed and cut. But as Daisy so wisely put it, 'I think we went to the hairdresser just in time, mummy.'

On Monday I gave the ivy in our garden a trim, and there was plenty of wildlife living in there. We witnessed many an indignant-looking creepy crawly suddenly exposed, rather unceremoniously evicted from its leafy home. It was a great opportunity to examine close up the spiders and ladybirds of our garden. And by the time we managed to clear up the cuttings most of them had scuttled or flown away to branches new.

Maybe it's because I've got haircuts on my mind, but I now think the little box trees in our front garden could do with a trim. Don't you think they're looking a bit out of shape with all their new growth? I certainly know two little gardeners/hairdressers who'd love to give it a go.

Box of delights

It was with such excitement that we opened this box today. Daisy, just awake from her nap, was especially keen to investigate its mysterious content. First, a lot of straw, but then such treasure was to be found; from lettuce, chard and spinach, to strawberries, courgettes and tomatoes. Not the fruits or vegetables ready to eat, but the baby plants ready to plant and grow. Gulp.

Now, I had been expecting this box of delights (it was a lovely present from my sister from Rocket Gardens) but what I wasn't prepared for was the sheer quantity of plants it contained; we are simply not equipped for its bounty. We managed to coax each little light-deprived plant from its covering and, still on their base of cardboard and straw, we watered them well. This turned out to be enough gardening for my two today and their attention drifted away from the blinking and stretching baby greens to the huge box in which they had arrived.

While I pondered the problem of how to accommodate an allotment's worth of plants in our tiny garden, Buddy and Daisy had a fine old time playing with the now empty box. They played hide-and-seek, brilliantly faking-up the mystery of where the other was hiding - oh, they're in the box, are they? Again? Then they used the box as Buddy's work, Daisy's house, their wedding venue and a car. Eventually a take-it-in-turns-to-jump-out-of-the-box game evolved (which needed a bit of mummy-refereeing to ensure fairness). This game made them laugh so much Daisy got the hiccups.

To extend this activity, I taught them the Jack-in-the-box rhyme:

One person curls up small in the box...

Jack-in-the-box

Still as can be

Lift up the lid

What do you see?

It's a .... Jack-in-the-box!

Jack pops out of the box, arms waving saying 'Boo!'

Then other things hid in the box; a car-in-the box, a piggy-in-the-box, a kitten-in-the-box to name but few. We practised the sound and action of the thing-in-the-box before each turn. Great fun.

And while all that was going on, I think I worked out what to do with the plants. There's a brand new raised flowerbed, currently plant-free, in a very sunny patch of Buddy and Daisy's school playground. Our newly acquired plants would thrive there. And Buddy and Daisy would still get to see them grow. I'll investigate further tomorrow.

Now that's thinking outside the box.