violet thistles and indigo berry-eating bird poo

See I can do educatin’ too!

Seems to be a child in my bed most morning when I wake at the moment. I’m sure they have some sort of ‘says she misses us when she’s not with us ehh?’ type conspiracy going on to try and break me from extremes of ‘don’t ever leave Mummy for a whole week ever again’ hysteria and ‘For crying out loud can I just have five minutes to myself!’ to a middle ground of normalness. They shall not win though. Tomorrow I’m going to teach them about possessive parentalness. (you may wish to read Joyce’s blog first for a while, she’s tending to beat me to it daily and I’m struggling not to reference her!)

So this morning it was Tarly anyway.

I had a bizarre dream which I can’t quite recapture now but was very vivid at the time, came downstairs, sorted breakfast for Davies as Tarly had already eaten, sorted out the chickens (3 eggs today, woohoo!) and packed a picnic.

We were meeting Mel, Liam and Lily at Pulborough Brooks before they go back to school at the end of next week. For once we were on time and arrived at the same time as they did. We parked and were greeted by the volunteers and workers there who all but know Davies and Scarlett by name excitedly telling them about the new rainbow spotter sheets they have. They had 12 colours (rainbow plus black,white, silver, brown and pink) with spaces to write what you had found ‘in nature’ for each colour. And new pens!

It was an interesting start to the walk as we gathered around the pond and Davies and Scarlett were spotting various things like newts and watersnails. Liam, particularly is very competitive and always has to spot the biggest one or tell a story about how he once had an experience with something better. Davies and Scarlett always impress me with their tolerance for this. Davies and Scarlett managed to find stuff for every colour of the rainbow anyway, including elderberries, clover, thistles, feathers. lilypads and more.

Not very far round it suddenly started to rain very heavily for about 10 minutes. Mel, who is far more organised than I am whipped out raincoats for her and her two, I stood ineffectually under a tree and Davies and Scarlett took the opportunity to run around laughing madly and getting soaked. This was much to the bemusement of Liam and Lily and delight of a youngish couple also sheltering under the not very sheltery tree who commended my kids on being ‘proper kids’ 😆 Liam asked me what they were doing and looked at me like I was mad when I said ‘making the best of whats come along and enjoying it’ but it did strike me that both kids have definitely got Ady and my optimistic streak. Coupled of course with a bit of a lunatic streak 😉

The rain stopped and we continued along the trail spotting various things as we went. At one point M,L and L went into one of the hides. Scarlett was on the rowdy side today so I discouraged them from going in as she just annoys people doing proper birdwatching (and rightly so, so I keep her a proper distance away from hides and shush her when she’s in that frame of mind) and while we waited D and S looked for four leaf clovers in a clover patch along the way. When M, L & L came back out they joined in so for about 10 minutes all four children were down on their knees methodically seaching for four leaf clover. No one found one.

We finished the trail, handed in the sheets, Davies and Scarlett each spent a couple of their own pounds in the shop and then we headed to the playarea for a picnic. I guess we got there for 1ish and were still there at 4! We had a really nice time with the four children mostly playing together. They started off creating a Total Wipeout circuit with the play stuff and did that for ages, then they found a ‘secret den’ in the undergrowth and played in that for ages. Mel and I had a really nice long chat and it was all very sunny and lovely.

We chatted a bit about Home Ed as Mel had seen the new and papers of the bubble event. She’d clearly researched it all a bit to find out what we were protesting about and was all indignant and supportive on our behalf 🙂 My spirits are always lifted when a ‘civilian’ is on our side ;).

Finally, after Scarlett went over to see what a cluster of RSPB volunteers were all gathered looking at and came back to ask for the camera to take some photos of the lizard and her babies we were all ready to go and we parted and headed for home. Really nice to see them :).

Once home I did the kids’ tea, made some cookies for afterwards and then Ady arrived home. I read a pile of books (all now ready to go back to work tomorrow) to them and they went off to bed. I cooked dinner (toad in the hole) and having drunk far too much wine and peaked too early I’m off to bed now too.