Sunny Days

What a difference the sun makes! This week we have had the hottest day of the year so far at 28 degrees.  We've been up to so much now that the weather has opened up so many activities to us. I've had a list in my head of the things I want to do in the summer so at the first hint of a warm week I put my plans into action. Who knows how long it will last so I am going to do as much as I can in as little time as possible to make the most of it.

I started by mowing the lawn, which I have not done since I was a child! I used to cut the grass in my parent's back garden during secondary school. The grass in my garden was almost up to my knees. I had a gardener, but he hasn't been turning up and I have lost his number so I thought why wait for him when I can do this myself! So I had to go through a lot of junk in my shed to find the lawnmower right at the back in the remotest, hardest to reach corner. Off I went about mowing and found myself really enjoying it! I have lost the skill of mowing in straight lines as I seemed to be manoeuvering it like a vacuum cleaner and ended up with a patch in the middle of the garden looking much like a crop triangle! I had stop in the middle of mowing to give K his lunch as he had just woken from his nap and then rush off to school to pick up R and rush her and her 2 friends to their swimming lesson. Rush over, I completed my mowing and felt quite satisfied at making my gardener redundant.

A lot of garden toys and games were next to come out of the shed after a winter hibernation.
Next, I looked for all my gardening tools. Shovels, spades, fork, gloves, plants pots and watering cans.
I have always wanted to grow my own vegetables and this is the time to do it. I went to buy compost and some seeds to plant. R's choice was beans and sunflowers. So we started with these and planted them first. We also have some window pots growing parsley and cress. The next thing to do is set up a raised bed and plant some root veg and herbs. I couldn't go to the Chelsea Flower show this year, and I would have really loved to go as the weather is perfect for it, so I will have to wait till next year.
At least I can admire my own garden....here it is




Another thing I love doing which really makes me sound like a 50's housewife is hang the washing to dry outside. I love drying the laundry outside, and when I don't have laundry to wash, I will go and find something to wash! As it happens, I do have a lot of washing at the moment, including bedsheets and linen so I ended up hanging so much washing out that by the time I had finished putting them on, some were already dry, that's how warn it is! I also swept the driveway as it was looking very untidy.

R and K decided to play camping in a sleeping bag. The pair of them wanted to be zipped up into a thick, heavily insulated and hooded sleeping bag in the middle of the garden! Then they wanted to bring pillows and blankets too in the middle of the afternoon sun and they looked like they were supposed to be in Iceland. After this game, they played a teddy bear picnic game which is one of their favourite games...using a sledge! I gave the children their dinner outside as well. They played with their ride on toys, the slide, trampoline and bubble blowing. They watered the plants and dug pebbles up with their spades.

I got the fan out as well and then decided to move my dining table around to make it easier to come in and out from the house to the garden.
The next job was to clean the barbeque so we can use it again. Found the charcoal and tongs. Now I need food to grill so a trip to the butcher is required.




Finally, I found a very old plant pot which looked very ugly. I decided to transform it by painting it and voila, it looks amazing now. I want to do more of this!