How to make a simple garden mobile

Today I have a guest post published over at Woodyatt Curtains, how to make a mobile for the garden.

This simple garden mobile is a great craft for kids, and will bring some cheerful colour to the garden. The mobile uses simple materials from around the house, and is very easy to make. You can let younger children choose their own design and help them to put it together, whereas older children will be able to string the pieces together themselves. It won’t last forever, but it should last for the summer, and you can always make another one next year!

For the rest of the article please visit How to Make a Garden Mobile

Our poor neglected vegetable patch

I spent the morning at work looking out of the window hoping that today we would have a dry afternoon. Luckily my wish was granted, and while Mia had an all too brief nap I was able to get out into the garden and see how my vegetable patch was getting on. It's tucked away behind the garage and so I can't see it from the house, and I haven't ventured out into the garden for quite a while. It's in a bit of a sorry state, this is what I found:

My poor neglected vegetable garden, full of weeds

This poor thing is the only remaining sunflower from the four which were lovingly nurtured from seed indoors.

These incredibly healthy sunflower specimens seeded themselves, there were loads of them but I weeded some of them out otherwise they would have filled the entire vegetable patch.

Super healthy sunflowers

Our carrots are doing remarkably well, and we also had our first (and probably only) courgette. We have so many carrots that I made a big batch of soup. (My soup recipe - put a can of chopped tomatoes into a saucepan, add a fair bit of water, a stock cube, a chopped onion, a handful of red lentils and whatever vegetables you have in the fridge. Simmer for about 25 minutes until the vegetables are soft then either blend or serve lumpy.)

We will be eating lots of carrots

We didn't know what this was until it started producing raspberries.

Raspberries in a pot

I've given the plot a good weeding, hopefully we will have a few days without rain now so that we can spend a bit more time out in the garden! Has your garden suffered with all this rain? Or are you too scared to go out and check?

PS - Don't forget my giveaway for some gorgeous crafty bits and pieces - click here for super easy entry!

Mess in the garden and making mud pies

Our sand and water activity table has been residing in its winter quarters (the dining room, filled with dried pasta and acting as a sort of buffet for Mia to snack at) for far too long. I've been waiting for the weather to get warm enough to set it in the garden, and the other day I decided that it's nearly July, and if I didn't get it out soon I never would. I cleaned it out, filled it with water, and provided a selection of bowls, cups, spoons and so on. It was the first time that I'd tried water play with Mia outside of the bath, and she was thrilled. She didn't mind that I'd used cold water, she couldn't wait to get stuck in.

Unfortunately Harry became frustrated when she wanted to play too and was interrupting his games, so I ended up with a separate bowl of water on the floor for her to play in. Then I felt that we were ready to move onto the next level of messy play, so I brought out some rice pudding flakes that I found when I was sorting out the cupboard. I think they were left over from when my Mum was desperately trying to make something that Harry would eat, and they were rather out of date. Porridge oats would have worked well too.

They both dived in, but Harry in particular was enjoying adding the flakes to the water and mixing them up, so I encouraged him to look around the garden for other things to add, like daisies (no shortage of those on our lawn!), small stones and soil.

I've been collecting ideas for garden activities for a little while now, and in particular this brilliant mud pie kitchen has caught my eye. We don't have the space (or inclination to devote that much of our garden to mud pie creation) for anything nearly as ambitious, but the next day I collected a few bits and pieces together and told Harry that the back, neglected corner of the garden was his new mud pie kitchen.

I used an overturned square planter for a work surface, and a couple of plastic food trays to collect ingredients from around the garden. We had a baby food bowl which had melted in the dishwasher, a sippy cup that was a bit too leaky and some disposable cutlery from the junk drawer. I put a big bowl of water down too, and Harry was busy for ages mixing up his concoctions. When he had finished I tipped away the rubbish, watered the vegetables with the spare water, and stored all the things neatly inside the planter ready for next time.

Flowers in the garden

The garden is looking really lovely at the moment. As well as our vegetable patch, which is currently providing us with a bowl of strawberries every day as well as some first carrots, we've also got a mass of flowers growing. We don't have many flowerbeds, so I can concentrate my efforts over a small area. Earlier in the year I sent Harry out sowing flower seeds, and they've filled up the flowerbed beautifully, along with some sweet peas from my Mum and some daisy things that were already there (I'm not a gardener, I don't know what they are called!). We also put them in all the spare pots that I could find, some of them suffered while we were away on holiday during that heatwave, but the ones in the larger pots have recovered.

Flowers in the back corner

There are so many I've even picked some to bring inside the house. We have some pinks by the back door, I only know that because my Mum taught Harry that's what they are. Now he goes around the garden calling all the red flowers 'reds', the purple flowers 'purple' and so on.

The ones in a pot that survived

These are the seeds that we bought from the garden centre, I've no idea which seeds have produced which flowers but they seem to have done a good job and so I need to remember to buy the same ones next year!

The PinAddicts Pinterest Challenge - Water play

This month, the fantastic PinAddicts Pinterest Challenge is being hosted by simplyoutnumbered.

I spotted an idea for a garden water play structure on Pinterest fairly recently, and it stood out immediately because Harry has a fascination with water and pipes at the moment and it looked like a really fun activity that he would enjoy. The one that I have pinned is from Taming the Goblin and is based on an idea from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots. Both are far, far more sophisticated than mine!


Garden water play structure

Luckily our recycle bin was full, so I was able to collect together some plastic bottles and pots. We have a trellis wall leading into our vegetable patch which was a perfect spot to use. I attached the bottles to the trellis using string and coated wire. I began with a simple top to bottom structure as it can be easily changed, and also it was more difficult than I had expected! The water had a habit of splattering off in unexpected directions. I think that perhaps I placed my bottles too far apart.

This was really fun, and I'm looking forward to expanding and improving it over the summer! Make sure to pop by and visit the others that are taking part in the challenge this month.

First barbecue of the summer!

After the beautiful weather earlier in the year, we decided that with a new house, this was the year that we would purchase a decent barbecue. Of course as soon as the box was delivered the weather turned, and it's been so miserable that it hasn't been until today that we were able to put it to use!

Very proud with a shiny new barbecue!

The sandpit is recovering nicely having received a bit of a battering in the wet weather. I seem to have been running out every day to bail the water off the cover and try to stop it flooding. Hopefully the sun will dry out the sand a bit. Mia was very interested in the sand, stuffing handfuls into her mouth, which doesn't bode well for our beach holiday in a few weeks!

Sandpit drying out nicely

Mia loves crawing about the garden, snacking on compost.

The hat didn't stay on for long

I bought some easy to grow wildflower seeds for Harry to plant and we sprinkled them everywhere. These are his own little pots which are growing nicely.

Seeds growing in little pots

In the vegetable patch the strawberries are flowering and the other vegetables seem to have survived the deluge. Below is the entrance to our vegetable garden behind the garage, guarded by Beowulf. I found him in the garden of our previous house, hidden and forgotten about in the shrubs at the back, and we moved him with us. I maintain that he watches over the garden and makes sure that everything grows well. It certainly worked in the old house, where the garden had a tendency to go wild very quickly. Harry is inspecting the potatoes, and Mia is never far behind.

Our vegetable garden

I hope that everyone else is enjoying such beautiful weather this weekend!

Our vegetable garden

My Mum has been visiting for a few days, and as it has finally stopped raining, today she sorted out our vegetable garden for us! I've mentioned that we are lucky enough to have bought a house with a ready made vegetable garden at the bottom, complete with a huge raised bed and plenty of space for pots around the edge. I've also probably mentioned that we're not the most competent of gardeners and our track record when it comes to vegetables (well, all plants for that matter really) isn't the best. We've planted a few seeds into the bed but they aren't doing anything very impressive so far.

I am very proud of my courgettes though. I have four plants which have been lovingly nurtured from seed indoors, and today they have been moved outside. I am quite attached to them, so I hope that they don't die, they have been doing so well so far. I put a couple of bean plants out last week and they were eaten by slugs, so we've put lots of slug pellets in the pots.

Strawberries on the left, beans in the middle and courgettes on the right

We've also inherited lots of strawberry plants which my Mum has weeded for us, it would be lovely to have our own home grown strawberries!

Strawberry plants. I hope these grow!

I've got three sunflower plants still indoors on the windowsill. They should probably go outside too, but I'm keeping them inside for now, I don't want to kill them.

Also in the vegetable garden are some potatoes. I tried to grow potatoes last year, and despite some impressive leaves on the surface, underneath the actual potatoes were very disappointing, I think that the largest one measured about 2cm across. Let's see if we can produce better this year!

So all we have to do now is remember to water everything!

Plant something and nurture it

A few years ago, I read an article on the BBC News website. Titled Path to true happiness 'revealed', it summarised the results of an experiment carried out to try and improve happiness levels. You can read all about it and see the 10 steps to happiness in the link above. I was so taken with the list that I printed it out and placed a copy on my desk at work and another at home.

Top of the list is "Plant something and nurture it". I must admit that although I'm very good at planting things I'm not so good at the nurturing side. I have a tendency to lose interest once something has sprouted, especially if it needs constant repotting. However I do get an enormous feeling of satisfaction from seeing a little row of pots all full of seedings.

I find it amazing to think that one day you can take a tiny brown seed which has been kept in an old tin in the garage for a couple of years, put it in a pot with some soil and water, and a week or so later you have a bright green seedling, stretching up towards the sun.

My biggest problem is that I tend to go a bit mad, for example by planting about twenty tomato seeds. I can't bear to throw out the weaker seedlings, so I continue to grow all of them, meaning that I'm constantly running about repotting into larger pots, filling windowsills with huge planters, and struggling to keep up with removing the side shoots. Then we go away for the weekend, they don't get watered for a few days, my poor spindly plants all die, and it's a relief to chuck them all in the bin and promise to try harder the next year.  

Now that I've got a Harry to help me out, let's see how I get on this year!

A day in the garden

The weather over the last few days has been wonderful. It has been as warm as a day in the middle of summer. Ram wasn't at work today, so we were able to spend a family day outdoors. First we turned our attention to the vegetable patch. We were lucky enough to move into a house with a ready made vegetable garden at the back of the garage, complete with a large raised bed and some good soil ready for planting.

That's me at the bottom!

We gave it a good dig over and then we planted a few things - carrots, spinach and spring onions for now. I've got a few other things started inside in the propagator. Maybe this will be the year that we finally manage some proper vegetable gardening! We had our lunch outside. Mia has been a bit under the weather lately, so hopefully some fresh air will have done her good.

Mia can't yet be trusted not to crawl about and upset all the bowls

After lunch I helped Harry to make a fairy garden in a large plant pot saucer. We used a smaller one to make a little pond and then decorated it with small stones, plants and flowers. We've been having a few sleep related issues lately (by lately I mean for the last three years or so...) so we have promised him that if he is good at night tonight then the sleep fairy will bring him a present. The fairies in the garden are some stickers that I already had stuck onto cocktail sticks. He was really interested in this activity, he loved hunting around the garden for different things to use to decorate it.


A fairy garden - will the promise of a visit from the sleep fairy lead to a
good night's sleep?!

It has been such a lovely day that we have spent almost the whole day outside. Harry has been running around with his lawnmower, playing in his sandpit, washing his toys, playing football and riding on his scooter to the park. It's amazing the difference that some good weather makes to the things that you can do!

Trying to garden with a baby

The weather has been beautiful, and we have a lovely new garden which needs some attention. Harry has a sandpit to play in, his own gardening tools to help out, and he is quite content to play in the garden while I get on with a bit of weeding and tidying. He is fascinated by a new bird feeder that I've hung up, and we're looking forward to shortly planting some seeds.

But at the moment, all our garden activity has to take place while Mia is sleeping. She does still have two longish naps during the day, so that gives us a bit of time, but as soon as she wakes up I have to come into the house because I just don't know what to do with her in the garden. She's not walking, and it's too wet and muddy for her to crawl about on the grass. She wouldn't sit still if I set her up on a blanket, and I wouldn't get away with strapping her into a pushchair or putting her in a playpen. When I put her in the summerhouse with some toys she screams and tries to crawl out, which means she'll end up headfirst down the steps. She's not tall enough or stable enough yet to stand up against the sides of the sandpit or our water table.

It's really frustrating, because I'd love for us all to be out in the fresh air enjoying the sunshine together but I just can't think of a good way to occupy a baby outside unless it's going for a walk with the pushchair. Perhaps it will be easier in the summer when the grass is dry enough for her to crawl on, or perhaps she will be walking by then anyway and then I'll feel happier letting her wander about. Does anyone have any ideas for involving a baby in garden activities?

On gardening

I am not a gardener. I would like to be, but I find it enough to keep up with what is inside the house, let alone what is outside. Luckily I have parents who are keen gardeners, and are very good about helping us out (I suspect that they can't sit still in our house knowing that the garden is in such a state). Since we moved we have a garden which is thankfully very low maintenance, but we have also moved to an area where people are very proud of their front gardens and so we need to be careful not to let the side down.

The weather is starting to get a little warmer, and as I knew that we would be inside for most of the day, this morning I got Harry out to help me in the front garden while Mia had her morning nap. There are a lot of dead leaves on the grass, and my gardener (Dad) has told me that they need to be cleared, so I got us a carrier bag each and set us to raking and collecting up the leaves. I also tidied up some of the rubbish that had got caught under the hedge, including bits of balloon from Harry's birthday (a month ago...whoops).


I can't remember if he picked up three or four leaves before he
got bored

Harry lost interest in the task at hand fairly quickly, but he did tolerate staying out there with me playing which was nice, as last year I wouldn't have managed anything. Even if all he did do was use his trucks to rearrange the gravel all over the front path, at least he got some fresh air.

Our previous garden was very overgrown, and gardening there seemed to consist of hacking things back before the house was engulfed by the over enthusiastic bushes and plants. We have a bit more of a blank slate now, so perhaps this is my opportunity to actually do some gardening for the enjoyment of it. I even have a (currently rather sparse) board on Pinterest for it!

Our new summerhouse

Along with our new house, I was very excited to inherit a summerhouse in the garden. Our seller also (with our permission!) left behind some old toys – play food, a tea set, toy saucepans and utensils. She had a daughter, and there was a huge selection of Polly Pocket dolls, clothes and accessories. There are even a couple of small pieces of furniture in there.

Our new summerhouse!

I have big plans for this summerhouse. My Dad has already kindly fixed the roof, but otherwise it seems in good condition - it is even carpeted. It is a good size and has a little porch at the front. I need to give it a good clean inside and out, evict the spiders and clean the furniture. Then I might paint it, and I want to make some little curtains and put some pictures up on the walls. On the porch I want to put out some pots with flowers in, perhaps ones that Harry has helped me to plant.

An activity to be encouraged

It’s a job to wait until the warmer weather really (or at least until we’ve got the main house sorted out!) but we did make a start today. I brought in all the old toys and sorted through them, and then Harry helped me to give them all a good wash. I mended a broken drawer, so now we have plenty of storage space. All Harry’s garden toys can live out there too, and his sandpit toys before we put out his sandpit. I think it will be a lovely place for him to play in.