I was cooking chicken curry in the slow cooker today which needs yoghurt to be really nice but I’d forgotten to buy any. So leaving my cup of tea to cool down while we nipped round the local shop we dashed round there picking dandelions and daisies as we went. No yoghurt in the shop round the corner so we voted on walking or driving to the next nearest shop – perhaps 7 or 8 minute walk at adult speed, making for a good 20-25 minute round trip when accompanied by the small people. Walking won the vote so we wandered along, chatting about all sorts of things as we went, noting the season change from spring to summer in various ways, me trying to name as many flowers as Scarlett asked me to pointing in people’s gardens and speculating on the next phase in the road resurfacing.
Now my friend Rachael (who’s son Elliot was born two months before Davies and we met at baby clinic when they were mere weeks old) and I have lost touch – one of those occassions where you miss a week seeing each other, then two, then a couple of months and suddenly it’s been nearly a year. We exchanged birthday cards and presents for Amber (her daughter) and Scarlett in November and December, we popped Christmas cards through each others doors and I’ve really been meaning to ring her for ages but just never got round to it. So last night I dreamed about her and our other friend we met at the same time – who moved to Norfolk last year. So it was with that odd feeling of ‘wow what a coincidence’ mixed with ‘ah yes I was expecting to see you really’ that she arrived at the shop doorway with Amber at the same time as Davies, Scarlett and I arrived there. Very quick catch up chat, exclamations at how much Amber has grown and checking how Elliot is doing at school (just coming up to the end of his second year now – is that Year One?) – he hates it and is up in the early hours of the morning every night on a school day – it settled during half term but is happening again this week. I imagine you can guess what I was inwardly screaming? 🙁 and promises to get together when we get back from camping. Amber got bought a packet of chewits, which D & S imediately wanted a pack of each, said our goodbyes and no bloody yoghurt there either! 🙄
Came home, seeing neighbours at the bus stop for a quick chat on the way, jumped in the car and whizzed into town to the small supermarket to get the youghurt and back home again within the hour of first setting off for the youghurt! Obviously I needed to make a fresh cup of tea. 🙄
So, curry on, video messages sent to and received from Ady, children played with the toy animals and dinosaurs and we had an early lunch before heading off to the local Pick Your Own farm to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie for our relocated Home Ed group for today.
Had a lovely couple of hours in the sunshine picking strawberries, rhubarb and some broad beans. I love fruit picking, I clearly remember picking strawberries with my Mum in the summer sun as a child of about Scarlett’s age – it’s just so summery 🙂 Children all got completely filthy covered in strawberry juice from ‘testing’ them, dirt from scrambling about and nettle stings round the ankles from the rhubarb field. 🙂 Left with a massive basket of strawberries for under a fiver which we will probably struggle to eat before we leave on Saturday, loads of rhubarb which I’ve blanched with some fresh ginger and frozen ready for crumble making and some broad beans which Ady loves and will have to deal with 😉
We popped into collect my Dad from his house and went up to B&Q to get a folding table for camping which Ady had spotted on special offer so that Dad could use his 10% off for over 60s on a Wednesday card – was reminded in full glorious technicolour of how much I used to hate over 60s day on a Wednesday for the entire 7 years I worked at B&Q. 😆 The store near Mum and Dad was the one I worked in from 16-21 and did a hell of a lot of growing up (including where I met Ady) but it bears little resemblance now to the place I considered a second home given how many hours I spent there. They didn’t have any of the tables left anyway but in tracking down someone who even knew what I was talking about (I’m sure I wasn’t that dim when I wore the pinny!) I went outside to the Garden Centre to find the only ex colleague left there, who cooed over the children and took us to a corner where a robin’s nest with a full quota of little chicks was nestled in the bedding plants. I remember there always being a blackbirds nest when I worked there every Spring, but this was lovely for the children to peek into and see the little babies. They both loved that. 🙂
We went back to Dad’s for a cup of tea and a chat before coming home for strawberries for tea for the children. Ady arrived not long after us and played with the children until bathtime to wash strawberry picking grime off them. Scarlett was so tired she actually did fall asleep in my arms tonight before I got her to bed. Davies played and fell asleep around 9pm. Tomorrow we have Ali and Freya coming over and I am planning much list making and pre-packing preparation including getting clothes clean ready and deciding what we can wear on Friday that we don’t need to bring for the week.
Oh I hate fruit picking. It takes forever, and after all that I never fancy any of the bloody fruit. Rhubarb’s ok, that’s quick, and I like slicing the leaves off with a big knife 🙂 And I like to eat it too! Must go and visit GG soon, get a rhubarb fix 😉 I have gooseberries in the freezer from last year which I love to eat, and they’re not too bad to pick either I suppose. But bloody strawberries drive me mental. And raspberries.
Oh I love it. I adore repetitive and mindless tasks 😉 Infact I was fantasising about getting the children good enough at fruit picking too so we could sell the house, buy a campervan and go travelling Europe picking fruit for a living.:lol:
Hannah likes doing it, but having spent all my summers from the age of 5 to 15 picking them for money, I could pass, quite frankly. You tied a metal pail round your waist with one of your dad’s old ties, filled it, and emptied it into a bigger pail, which when full you staggered with to the weighing lorry, and you were paid 1 old penny per 1pound of fruit picked. These were jam berries, if you were picking table berries you got a higher rate, so in theory you would be slower, as you had to be careful not to crush them. You had a tray of punnets slung round your neck like the ice cream lady at the cinema, and picked into the punnets. After you’d picked enough to fill a vast plastic tray, you again took them to be weighed.
we (well ok I) picked two massive punnets worth. When we got to the till and she rung the first one up as nearly a fiver I realised that I didn’t actually need ten quids worth of strawberries so left the second one with her, which will go to the farm shop to be sold instead – I should have got discount really 😆
although maybe I should have brought them all and made jam. With little tartan lids tied on with elastic bands and homemade labels. Ady really would think I’d been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by some odd martian idea of what a ‘real wife’ is like learnt from reading mid American Home School Mom blogs. 😆
See if you were really being frugal you’d be growing your own on an allotment or summat….
*runs and hides* I made rhubarb jam the other day!!!! Just call me prairie muffin!!!
We really want to do some strawberry picking this year, they’re not ready up here yet though I don’t think.
Nic, come and stay. We have a fruit farm 2 mins up the road 🙂
we havea fruit farm up the road, and a PYO strawberry [ready now] a little bit further!