Nursery mania

You see far more on a walk than in a car. My friend and I did a new walk on Wednesday. We didn't drive anywhere. We just rambled from our houses. We picked up lots of rubber bands as we always do; found another plant nursery ( I have come to a conclusion that nurseries must be like buses - you wait ages for a local family run nursery to come along and then two pop up within a week of each other); stumbled across (not literally) a lovely wolf/dog mural and seen our local environment from a totally new perspective.

Get out there and walk.

Cardboard village

You think it's a cliché but it's true: give a child a cardboard box and they are in heaven. Yesterday we bought a new lampshade which came in a very big box.

The children came home from school, saw the empty box, commandeered it, redesigned it and had a new little home from home within ten minutes. There is a stern and all-knowing message on the outside instructing me, 'Do not shift this box'.

I will obey for a day or two at least.

Forty gaping winks

Oh dear a terrible faux pas befell me last Friday. I took C and H to see 'The Lego Movie' and I fell asleep twice. Well I like to say I snoozed. I think I got away with it the first time but was told loudly to wake up the second time by C. I think the whole auditorium heard him. I don't think I snored nor snoozed with gaping mouth but who knows? Well actually my son knows and he claims I was doing both.

C and H loved the film but I was a little bored until the last 20 minutes when a clever conceit was revealed at which point I took an interest and refrained from indulging in forty winks.

Ah embarrassing parents. I am one yet again.

Brush, tap, brush, tap

Over the years quite a few programmes on Radio 4 have done 'sound sculptures' : showcasing sounds that mean certain things to certain people. Noises are like smells and can provoke memories and evoke moods.

Brush forward, tap, brush forward, tap, brush forward, tap.......

I realised while clearing some debris from the front of the house the other day that this is one of my 'sound sculptures'. Brush forward and a tap and then a repeat. I was sweeping with a hard bristled brush. My technique being to clear the debris into a pile and then tap the brush on the ground to release any dirt that has got caught up in the bristles and then brush another pile and tap.

It took me back to mucking out time on my parent's farm. After the cows had been milked, the yard where they had congregated, waiting to be led into the parlour, had to be cleaned of cow muck. An orange bristled brush came out and brush forward, tap, brush forward, tap would ensue.

A sound made up of thousands of hard bristles rushing against the concrete to reveal a glistening floor and then a full stop to finish the sweep. A rhythmic sentence which was repeated and repeated. Part of this appealing picture was the wooden handled brush with a head of thousands of bright orange tensile hairs. To a little girl I guess it was slightly odd to see such a vibrant colour in an otherwise boring dull place.

It was a job well done. I might add it was a job I never did nor wanted to do but found it sort of fascinating. You started with a dirty yard and finished with a pristine glistening place, ready for the next milking time.

Brush, tap, brush, tap, brush, tap..............

India

I am stripping my daughter's room of its old, manky wallpaper. I am doing it very slowly: a little bit each day. Goodness knows how the decorator stripped our sitting room in one day the other week. I would lose the will to live.

Anyway it's interesting but when you are stripping wallpaper it invariably comes off in long tapered wrips, leaving India behind it.

IT is a coming

We are not a particularly proficient IT household. Our children don't have any gadgets on which to play computer games. We have a laptop and the children play a few games on that. That's how it's developed. The children haven't asked for gadgets (I can't even name you any devices!!) and we haven't encouraged them. Thus far we have got away with it. We did think that last Christmas might be the one where we had to buy something computer -related but we still got away with lego and the like.

They play lots of make-believe, watch TV, play outside, indulge in family games and seem fine about it. It's not to say that if they got their own computer game thingamajigs that we wouldn't do all of the above too but it's saved on our pockets at least.

It's my little girl's 7th birthday soon and she would like a camera. My little boy will be 9 in June and he says he wants a camera too. I asked him if he really wanted a camera or was he just copying his sister.

" I have no technology!" he pleaded with face aghast. Perhaps the time is a-coming.

Plants or children?

Yesterday we visited a nursery. I told the children we were just popping to a new nursery down the road. They looked at me a bit funny but clearly thought they would indulge their old mum.

We arrived and they looked very puzzled. There were greenhouses, flowers, plants, compost but no little kiddiwinks. They are used to garden centres but not plant nurseries. Indeed we are so used to big garden centres selling plants plus gifts plus the kitchen sink and the ubiquitous café that plant nurseries where they grow their own from seed are quite rare. Just think a garden centre that just concentrates on plants and only plants.

Well I am happy to say we have one down the road from us now. The gardener at my mum's old people's home has just bought this nursery that although on my doorstep I knew nothing about. It must have been there quite some time for it sits on Nursery Road.

The gardens at my Mum's are absolutely stunning in the summer so I have high hopes for the nursery and that somehow if I visit it often enough our garden may take on the same hues as at the home.