Garden love

"Oh rubbish Cumbrian weather - one sunny day in the garden, and all is forgiven."



I've fallen in love with this garden. The scale of it and the feel of it - is just so sweet - like something from a Shirley Hughes picture book.
I'm a wannabe gardener - I try, I'm learning - and I just love the whole process. But truth is, I don't have a clue what I'm doing - and I often forget to water things. Which makes it even more of a miracle round here when things actually grow. This year, though we started late (and luckily I have a green fingered friend who does know what he's doing to give me some hints) I'm just loving the process of tending our little space here and seeing things grow

view of the garden from the attic room window - I deliberately didn't show you the neighbours' sides - their gardens kind of rub in how messy ours is! and can you see the dodgy bird table ala Eddie's toolbox? - I blame not having the right tools rather than my shoddy workmanship for the fact it could fall down any second of course - but birds risk life and limb for sunflower seeds round here

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Introducing - project sandpit. Time in progress - 3 years. Finally completed - yesterday.



We've carted bags of sand through 3 house moves now and dug holes in three gardens too. Yesterday, finally, we filled one of them with sand. It felt victorious, symbollic and such a relief! Sun always makes me very productive in the garden, and armed with a children's shovel, some sawn wood and uncovered stone slabs, I finally finished the project that is older than Elena. Granted - it's totally unstable, there isn't enough sand for the impossibly big hole we dug, and the logs just lift in and out but -the looks on their faces when they could finally jump in and get sand between their toes told me they didn't care, at least not until the whole thing caves in on their sand castle village. But do you recognise the wood around the edge? From those friendly tree cutter men in our old village - a use for the wood at last!

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We're chick sitting. I love having chickens in the garden - and it seems I'm not alone

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Sophia spends a lot of time these days snapping away on her camera, and ordering people and animals into attractive photographic compositions - "Stand here please - say potatoes". Yesterday was no exception

And hoorah for the garden swing - even little chick approves

This garden had an old swing left in it when we moved in - the first time we've ever had one in our garden - and it makes a happy place to be on a sunny day

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Grey skies and rain today. We've already spent 2 hours making different sun pictures for summer solstice celebrations later - now if only we could get a glimpse of the real thing..... :)