The other day I learnt this lesson: when a child tells you “If I eat any more of this, I’m going to be sick” they aren't always being melodramatic.
Sadly, I also learnt that my daughter is a stickler for the rules. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to explain that her brother only threw up because I forced him to eat too many beans she just became more and more adamant that “You can’t go back to school for 48 hours after you’ve been sick.”
I could’ve risked it, but sadly Ava would embrace the role of Supergrass.
So I had my son at home “sick” for two days, except he had bundles of energy and required almost constant entertainment.
Bring on the Terrarium (less catchy that "Bring on the Wall", I’ll admit).
Yes, Oscar decided we should make a terrarium as he’d seen one in a book.
Thankfully these are relatively simple and a useful way to distract children for a good chunk of an afternoon.
First you need to find some kind of clear container. I have seen terrariums made using old plastic bottles, but quite frankly, if this thing was going to sit around the house, I was after something a little more pleasing on the eye. Thankfully I had a fishbowl shaped vase which I’d purchased from Wilkos for the princely sum of £5 which was perfect.
You then need to add some gravel to the base to act as a drainage area for excess water, followed by a layer of charcoal. This is important as it absorbs the smells which would otherwise arise from a slightly damp and festering environment. Sadly, it is also supposed to be "activated charcoal" (nope, I hadn't a clue either but apparently this is the stuff you use in aquarium filters and can be bought from a pet shop). However as ours has an opening rather than being a fully enclosed terrarium I'm hoping we can gloss over the fact I threw in some bits of charcoal from the barbeque.
Next you need to add compost. Usually the advice is a peat-based compost but I’m a tree-hugging peat-free kind of a girl, so this is all we had. Quite frankly, I doubt it will make much of a difference.
Finally, you get to add the plants. Given the moist environment, it is best to stick to ferns, mosses and lichens because flowers are apt to rot in this sort of atmosphere. That said, we were somewhat bereft of mini ferns so I let Oscar add a Viola and Hellebore which had self seeded in the garden. These will give the finished space a bit more interest and we can always swap them out in a few weeks.
The moss and lichen we found on broken twigs and in shady spots around the garden and on a wander down a local lane. It’s a useful way to get children to look more closely at these less glamorous plants and fungi as there are a huge variety of different ones when you investigate.
Planting is best done with a long-handled teaspoons followed by the artistic arrangement of your other finds. Oh, and dinosaurs always look good (as do plastic pigs and Hex Bugs according to Oscar).
We then just watered the whole thing very sparingly before placing it near the window, but not in direct sunlight.
There are loads of sites devoted to the world of terrariums, some of which are less frightening than others – have a look here and here.
On another, completely unrelated note, I received my most exciting parcel ever last week. It contained an advance copy of my book. I should probably be cool and blasé about such news but I'm really not, so can I just say YESSSSSSS! (I may also have punched the air just then - something I hope you can overlook).
Sadly, it won't be available until February 9th but until then I shall lovingly stroke the pages of this one copy (at least when no-one is looking).
It was my 20 year college reunion this month. This was a sobering occasion (only metaphorically of course - in reality it was anything but - as evidenced by the fact I had to be tethered to a chair at 2am with the words "it's for your own safety Dawn"). No the sobriety in question was a result of my realising I had the immense good fortune to study history at one of the world's leading universities and yet the week before my mind had mostly been exercised with the question of grass heads.
Yes, that's right, grass heads* Here I was surrounded by impressive people doing impressive things (indeed, I was tethered by an award-winning playwright - always nice to have something to share with the grandkids) - and yet my recent CV mostly revolves around talking vegetables and alternative uses for toilet roll inners.
You see I had been tasked with making a grass head that wasn't too "Christmassy" - which obviously ruled out my go-to elf (it is wrong that I have a 'go-to elf''? Actually, on second thoughts, don't answer that).
No, what I needed was alternative green-headed characters. In the end, as you will see, I settled on a clown and a punk, or as I may have mumbled to my fellow alumni - "a misunderstood comic character with a history stretching back to the fifth dynasty of Egypt and a representative of the 1970s musical subculture which embraced anti-Establishment ideologies."
And if anyone has any other green-haired suggestions, do let me know (and, no, leprechauns are red-heads - I've already been caught out with that one...).
*For instructions, follow the general advice here, substituting grass seeds for the cress. Also, a word of advice: if you are tempted to cut up a Sylvanian Family picnic blanket to use as tartan trousers, remember children generally frown - a lot - at such blatant vandalism.
So it’s been quite a summer holidays (and I am using the term ‘summer’ very loosely). Firstly a week on the windswept Lincolnshire coast near Skegness (ah, the glamour never ends) where I proved that there is no karaoke audience that can’t be won over with Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West. And now we have just returned from a house swap holiday in Brittany which proved, just as effectively, that the appalling weather isn’t limited to the UK.
The holiday has also marked something of a milestone because I have, at long last, finished my book. It has been something of a labour of love, in that it has taken nine months, I felt overtired and emotional throughout and somewhere along the line I knew it would involve me holding my husband’s hands in a vice like grip whilst screaming “why did I do this?” and “it’s all your fault”.
Of course, there will still be a hiatus of six months before Garden Crafts for Children appears (it was supposed to be called Little Green Fingers but those pesky Americans only have plant-friendly thumbs) but at least I will no longer have to spend my evenings cutting out elf trousers, painting rabbits on plastic bottles or sowing microleaf farms in wineboxes.
I thought I would mark the moment by posting up a few shots of some of the projects (although, I would add that those in the book are actually taken by professional photographers so will look a bit less…. rubbish).
I have to admit something rather embarrassing. My youngest son isn't exactly a fan of gardening. It's not that he hates it, it's just that it plays a very poor second to Peppa Pig... and cars... and trampolining... and the playground... and, well, pretty much everything.
This is particularly tricky as I run the gardening club at his pre-school. This has, in general, been a great hit with the children and most will come and do some planting, sowing or harvesting.
And then there's Archie.
He wouldn't plant bulbs, or sow carrots, or plant nasturtiums, or show the remotest interest in anything - not only at pre-school but also in our own garden.
But he is nothing if not surprising because this week, after months of indifference, when I asked if he wanted to stay on and have his packed lunch at pre-school he said "No, I want to do gardening with Mummy".
"Really? Are you sure? Well that's... er... Did you actually say 'gardening'?" It's fair to say I was quite surprised.
But thankfully, I had a few bedding plants to hand, plus some new planters I had found. These were actually cutlery holders from Wilkinsons but in perfect child-friendly shades and at £2 a pop, pretty good value containers.
You need to line the sides, but this is easily done with sections of old compost bags, and the holes on the bottom are perfect for drainage. Then Archie simply added a few stones to the bottom to stop the holes clogging up, added compost, planted up and watered in (or more accurately, flooded).
When we'd finished, I was starting to feel quite excited by his new-found love of horticulture.
"So, shall we plant something else?"
At which point, he gave me a look that said "Nice try" and wandered in to watch Peppa Pig.
1. Cut back a couple of hundred perennials
2. Spread three cubic metres of compost
3. Hand weed 150 square metres of gravel path and driveway
This is my to do list for early March. It is also the least effective advert ever developed for gardening.
This is not good. I am trying to convince the kids that gardening is fun and that message is hardly brought home by a task list that could have been written by a sadistic prison officer.
Thankfully, horticultural propaganda is never far away. We have the cutting garden bearing fruit, the crocus rings flowering with fanatical zeal on the lawn, and now we have twigs.
So, OK, twigs might not sound fascinating, but in my best M&S voice, these aren’t just twigs, these are pussy willow twigs.
We cut them from the tree just over a week ago, placed them in a vase and plonked them on the kitchen table. Then we waited.
Well we didn’t just wait because twigs on their own can be a little dull so first we strung the branches with coloured plastic eggs (and I know it’s not Easter, but we’re the family who make mince pies in February – yes that’s right, we’re anarchists).
But in a couple of days the twigs began their own decorating. First came the soft white buds, then these burst into sprightly catkins.
And pussy willow twigs (Saix caprea) aren’t the only bits of spring you can cajole into an early appearance. The stems of hazels, horse chestnuts, whitebeams and many other trees are also worth a go. What’s more, the kids can see them develop at close range and in the comfort and warmth of the house should the weather turn wintery.
Sadly, shifting compost is a lot less interior-friendly and I can report that hanging plastic Easter eggs from the wheelbarrow handles does very little to improve the task.
I'm a sucker for a charity shop. Seriously. It's like a genteel version of skip-diving with added feel good factor.
What's more, I have successfully passed on my passion to the kids. In fact it wasn't even a hard sell. Once they worked out that a pound of pocket money could purchase all sorts of bounty usually beyond their means, I had willing apprentices.
This half term, we have been indulging our charity shop fetish with a certain focus. Last year we planted a cutting garden and it's about to bear it's first fruit. As most of these will be midgets in the cut flower world - muscari, species tulips and miniature narcissi - I needed something to display them in which wouldn't completely swamp the blooms.
To be fair, we did scour five shops, but in the end our dedication was rewarded, eight receptacles (vases might be overstating it, especially as one is actually a teapot...) and most of them perfect for the smaller displays.
What's more, we didn't even wait for the cutting garden. Instead, we raided the grandparents' patch and came up with these floral creations - two are mine, two are Oscar's (I won't say which is which as I worry it may not reflect well on my skills). As well as being great for short stemmed flowers, the small bowls are perfect for floating flower heads (which, let's face it, are often the unplanned reasult of child-based flower cutting).
For those who care about such things the 'arrangements' (and yes, I use that term loosely) include aconites, rosemary, Ballota pseudodictamnus, snowdrops, Viburnum tinus, Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn', crocus and hellebores.
“I’ve got a baby giraffe!”
“My snow leopards are in danger!”
“The elephants are bored with their paddling pool!”
These are all phrases which have rung around our kitchen table over the last month. Don’t worry, I have not changed our strict pet policy (“one cat is enough, we will consider a guinea pig when you’re 10 and NOT before, and absolutely NO dogs), but our children have become somewhat enamoured with Roar – an interactive CBBC game where you set up and run a wildlife park.
It is of course terribly educational, breeds responsibility but really, my love of Roar is entirely related to its pre-school bribery potential, which works something like this…
“You can play on Roar but only after you have had breakfast, put on your uniform and brushed your teeth.” Or even “If you don’t stop squashing your brother’s head I will let your lions STARVE!”
Such is the attraction of this game that I’ve barely had to raise my voice before 8.30am for a number of weeks.
Sadly, two recent developments have left me needing another pre-school distraction. Firstly, Archie, who, at two and a half is becoming scarily obsessed with all things technical, managed to reset his sister’s wildlife park and wipe out the entire 25,000 points she had amassed (which, of course, she took incredibly well) and secondly the site has, for the last two days simply said “Oops! We're sorry but we're having a couple of technical problems with Roar at the moment. We're working really hard to get these fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime, please feel free to have a tantrum of such volume that the neighbours will call social services” (or something along those lines).
I am, of course, attempting to distract the children with matters horticultural. At the moment this involves a post breakfast ‘check on the bulbs’. Last year, even by my usual standards, I’ve been a little over the top with bulb purchases. However, this is now paying dividends. In the bleakest time of the year, there seem to be shoots everywhere.
We planted up about 40 containers of bulbs which sounds ridiculous although, in my defence, many of the pots are small. Pint-sized containers work particularly well with small, early bulbs such as muscari, crocus, species tulips and early dwarf narcissi. Partly this is to do with scale but also, from a practical standpoint small pots are more susceptible to drying out which can become a problem here from April onwards.
The other bonus with small pots is they can be brought in to stand on sunny windowsills and give the children something to check on daily. So far we have daffodil shoots bursting from three pots, crocus appearing on top of some wellies and a basketful of muscari nearing full bloom.
And to set it all off, I have even strung up some homemade bunting*.
OK, so I’ll admit it probably isn’t in the same ballpark as getting a new baby panda but, for now, it will have to do.
*I shall not be putting this lot in the washing machine. Never let it be said I don’t learn from my mistakes.
It’s been quite a week.
Not so much in terms of “oh, the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been, the champagne I’ve quaffed” but more a case of “oh the child-based effluent I’ve cleaned up, the nights I’ve worked, the sleep I haven’t had”.
Yes, we have been hit by ‘tummy bugs’ – which is a deceptively cuddly term for something that involves quite so much vomit. Still, it’ll teach me not to get so excited about having time to work now Archie is at pre-school. It might also teach me not to arrange client presentations without first factoring in ‘potential child illnesses and sleep deprivation’.
Consequently I have been very neglectful of my blog reading and writing and have barely tweeted because it proved tricky to document my growing insanity in 140 characters or less.
Somehow I did manage to do a little gardening – micro gardening even. My eldest son was stuck at home for two days and boredom reached such intense levels that even What’s New Scooby Doo? wasn’t enough to distract. And when zombie gladiators, Mystery Machines and meddling kids aren’t working their magic, it’s time to roll out the seeds.
This isn’t complex gardening but I’ve been meaning to experiment with microleaves for some time – well pretty much since I read Mark Diacono’s post on the subject back in March.
For anyone not au fait with the term, microleaves are just closely sown crops whose leaves are harvested at seedling stage. The flavours are intense, they can be harvested with a small pair of craft scissors and you need only a sunny windowsill.
Oscar helped me set up our Micro Farm –which involved some old margarine tubs with holes pocked in the bottom, gravel at the base and seed compost to finish. We then sowed two lines of ‘crops’ in each container.
We had a mixture of herbs and vegetables – basically, anything I found in the seed drawers, which included:
Radishes
Sorrel
Green purslane
Beetroot
Spinach
Purple broccoli
But you could also try basil, coriander, dill, fennel to name but a few.
At this time of year, germination will be slower as days are so much shorter and light levels are reduced, but you should still be able to start cropping in a couple of weeks – and even less time for fast growers like the radishes (I am also giving mine an extra boost by putting them in a heated propagator but only because I’m using some as part of a book-based project next week).
It’s a chance for children to try a range of different flavours without the need to wait months. They can snip a few leaves at a time to add to meals, salads or just put in sandwiches.
Plus, by the time these have grown, my children might even be able to keep food down. Which would make a pleasant change.
Yesterday I killed two birds with one stone. Not literally. That would have been a tad cruel. Plus my aim's never been very good. No, I actually did another dry run for Gardeners' World Live whilst at the same time making a Fathers' Day gift with the children.
Behold - the herbal tea pot!
You see, my husband is very much in touch with his feminine side. Not only does this manifest itself in a certain penchant for musical theatre, but he also has a love of herbal tea. To be honest, I don't get this. Not the Judy Garland bit so much as the non-builders cuppa. But then again, I would choose instant coffee over that fresh ground nonsense any day of the week, so what do I know?
It also gave me an inspired idea for father's day and so the kids and I planted up a selection of mints - including chocolate, apple and black peppermint, in a small strawberry pot. I have even added the chamomile seedlings to the top (yes, I know the mint will soon overrun this, but it should be OK for a few weeks.)
As before, we added the drilled pipe to the centre to help with irrigation, but this time I remembered to spray the cap black so it's a little less obvious.
For an added 'cute but illegible' factor, the children have even written the varieties of mint next to it on the pot so they can go and select the correct leaves based on his manly choice of brew that day.
Oh, and it has managed to assuage my guilt slightly at the thought of deserting him for the weekend with three kids to take camping while I swan around the NEC. I mean, he might have taken on the burden of childcare but at least he can have a lovely cup of peppermint tea while he wanders around the campsite humming Guys and Dolls.
