Another beautiful spring morning with the sun shining :).
We met Lucy and The Rs at Highdown Gardens at 11ish and had a brief wander round a small part of it before stopping for lunch. One of my favourite little sub-gardens is the Millennium garden there which has a sundial. I love sundials, they are something I would love to have one of or make and as the sun was shining we able to very accurately tell the time as 20 past 11 as the shadow was one third of the way between the 11 and the 12
We’d been there with Julie and co only last week so I was quite happy not to walk round again and instead to install ourselves on the benches while the children played. So Lucy and I had a lovely two hours sitting first on the bench and then on the grass while the children played. I barely saw Davies and Scarlett aside from occassional wanderings over to gather more food or drink. It was really nice 🙂
she likes butter!
I like to keep my hands busy ;).
Just before 2pm the foursome of children started to not play quite so well together and we sensed it was coming to an end. In celebration of the lovely weather, the fact it was Thursday and we don’t have any ‘after school’ activities on a Thursday and the happy fact that our diary is full for the next 2 weeks plus after which it is school holidays I put to Davies and Scarlett the option of another half an hour or so at Highdown or leaving then and there to go to Coombes Farm for the lambing. There was no contest and so we headed off leaving Lucy and The Rs there.
We’ve done Coombes the last 2 years (2008 flickr and blogpost, 2007 flickr and blogpost) – in 2007 we saw loads being born, in 2008 we saw a couple and had a tractor ride but were with the Beavers. Today we didn’t see any being born although there were a couple which were barely hours old. We arrived just as the tractor was about to leave though so for £2 each we decided to live dangerously and paid and jumped on :).
It was cold and windy on top of the downs but very beautiful with a 360 degree panoramic view of the downs and the sea which was really quite breathtaking and had the 3 of us all cooing over what a lovely place we live in.Scarlett said ‘I always knew the world was beautiful but not this beautiful!’ 🙂
We drove around a load of cows and their very new calves and saw rabbits and some birds of prey (which I failed to identify, I’m rubbish at birds) swooping and diving about.
Back at the farm we had the barns to ourselves really as there was just a handful of mothers and pre-schoolers there. Scarlett and Davies befriended the two girls manning the sheep barns and got to cuddle and stoke some very new lambs. They were bottle feeding some of them for various reasons (ewe had had 3 lambs and was struggling to produce enough milk, a sickly looking lamb that couldn’t stand up and so couldn’t reach it’s mother to feed) so Scarlett was asking loads of questions about that.
They also proved they are their fathers children with a spot of cow whispering 😉
and finally a spot of forbidden haybale leaping 😉
I finally dragged them away for a quick peek at the church which has some amazing murals, some of which are nearly 1000 years old!
Coombes is only a 10 minutes journey from home but every time we go there I am tempted to go camping there as it’s such a lovely setting. We went past Lancing College and I promised I’d take D and S there to see the chapel soon, possibly combined with a late season visit to the lambing if we are free before it ends as they usually have some pet lambs that you can get in the pen and cuddle properly.
We popped to Tesco for a few bits for dinner and as we left and they were running ahead to the car in the sunshine I was all overwhelmed with how fab our lives are and how much I adore them. I often seem to be telling them when they have made me cross so when I caught up with them and we were in the car I made a point of telling them that and we all agreed how lovely it is both to say and have such nice things said to you :).
Home for tea and while I got theirs in the oven and hung some washing out and checked the chickens Davies did some junk modelling with some of the various cast aside stuff he stores in his bedroom while Tarly was doing something experimental with lip gloss on her hand ;). They had tea, followed by chocolate eclairs for pudding (see I told you I was feeling all at one with the world and joyous ;)) and then a bath to wash off farm grime. Ady arrived home and we got stuck into the first 5 chapters of the last Mr Gum book – Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear
Ady and I watched the first episode in a re-run of The Big Digbecause we’re all about the allotments at the moment here. I’ve spent some time tonight marking things in my diary including booking spaces for Open Farm Sunday at two local-ish farms that we went to last year and really enjoyed and finding out dates for the South of England Show and Brighton Kite Festival which are all things we have done before and enjoyed.
Tomorrow I’m on a first aid course over in Bognor library and am planning to see if I can track down an old friend during my lunch break who worked in a shop in Bognor the last time I saw her. My Mum is having Davies and Scarlett all day and we’re dropping them off at her house for a change of scenery for them all.
She may like butter, but I think those are lesser celandine.
Comment by Jan — 20 March 2009 @ 7:43 pm