Sunny weekend

Buying birthday presents for small children who have older siblings can be a bit of a challenge. When there's already a train set, a play kitchen with tea set and plenty of food, books and jigsaws galore, it's hard to know what to get. As a stop gap I bought a couple of H&M tshirts (organic cotton and not too expensive) and did a bit of embellishment. In theory it's a quick and fun way of making something hand made. In reality my usual lack of planning meant a bit of undoing and a quick addition to the original plan. My mushroom was done entirely freehand and ended up being way off to one side so it needed a bit of something else to balance it up - enter a little snail. With the rainbow I did do a quick chalk sketch so that I knew it was pretty much in the middle - lesson learnt. I quite like the snail though.

The plan over the winter was to sort the garden out a bit and to move the apple tree that was growing in a pot. Despite being bought specifically for the pot and being a good size in theory it wasn't doing all that well (not helped by small children) so it needs some more room to spread and hopefully will thrive in its new home - it will depend a bit on dog and children as to how well it will survive.

The dog has trampled over most of the flower bed. The fence on that side is just chicken wire so he can see cats through it and has to go and bark at them. When we did the fence on the other side we had an elderly neighbour who didn't like change and didn't want to fence off her garden so we didn't do that side. It would make a lot of sense to do it now but that means money and finding a fencer and until then we'll have to see what survives in the garden.

I did find a flowering hellebore today - it's been saved from doggie ravaging by my lack of gardening and so the sedum hasn't been cut back yet and has provided shelter for these delicate looking beauties.

On a hot and sunny afternoon the best place to be for a dog is on the bare earth of the garden he's destroyed...

The kids of course got their hands (and feet) into the soil and whilst Isabel was having some milk she was using her feet to explore the garden and passing bits of bark from toe to toe.

Not content with wet soil there was some tramping in the sand pit that has been wet all winter despite there being a lid in theory.

The great thing about stabilisers is that if you get the bike on something uneven you can free up the back wheel and then it's like having a stationary bike....