Piper and I went to our first Woodcraft Folk meeting on Monday evening.  Ayrton has been a member for over 2 years now, and has progressed from an Elfin to a Pioneer.  He has encouraged Piper to become a Woodchip, and for me to get involved too.  We are very glad we did.  We’ve already been invited to our first camp.

If you don’t know about the Woodcraft Folk, it is an alternative to Scouts and Guides, with less of a military and more of a "peace and kinship" vibe.  It in non-religious and not affiliated to any political party, but does play an active part in anti-war activism.  Being a sucker for beautiful words, the envoi (creed) moved me to tears (well, moist eyes) at my first meeting.  All the kids and grown-ups stand in a circle before leaving and say:

This shall be for a bond between us
That we are of one blood you and I
That we have cried peace to all and claimed kinship with every living thing.
That we hate war sloth and greed and love fellowship
And that we shall go singing to the fashioning of a new world.

It was a big moment when my two-and-three-quarter year old daugter, Piper, tripped happily into her first ballet class today with her friend, Imogen.  They thoroughly enjoyed it and filed out after her class with great big smiles on their faces.

I’m so proud of Piper’s independence and desire to dance.  Tomorrow we will be investing in a pair of ballet shoes and a leotard.

The back garden is water-logged following some heavy rains, so indoor play is the order of the day. 

 Piper’s your girl for peeling brussels sprouts.

We will be taking part in International Walk to School Month, and it will be a good habit to get into again, because it’s something that I let slip every so often.  Any excuse really, rain, tiredness, haven’t had a shower yet!  So more about that next week!

But while I’m on the subject of school, I found two great websites last night: Clean Slate sell organic and fairtrade school uniform, and Uniform2 is a free, online exchange where you can buy and sell used school uniform, books, sports equipment and musical instruments.

I sent an email to Ayrton’s school’s headteacher about Clean Slate and look forward to finding out what he thinks.

We were given a second-hand  playframe by a friend who no longer needed it.  It’s just Piper’s size and she is enjoying it immensely.  Once we’ve finished with it it will be passed on again to another little person, these things last for a lot longer than our little ones need them for and there must be hundreds of thousands of them out there.  It’s a wonder that new ones ever even need to be bought.

Last weekend we pitched a tent in the garden for Ayrton to spend his first unaccompanied night "in the wild".  He loved it, and both he and Piper are enjoying playing in it during the day, so we’ve decided to leave it up for a while.  It has also sparked an idea of planting a live willow rod dome for them this winter as a permanent hidy-hole feature in the garden.

Spending time in the tent with the children over the weekend gave me a completely new perspective on our garden,  and I enjoyed it so much  that I have taken breaks from hanging up washing in the past few days just to lie amongst the vegetation for a 10-minute rest while the weather is so hot. Here are some other good ideas that I found on the internet for staying cool during the hot weather.

I’ve also taken some photographs to show you what’s good to eat (and look at) in the garden at the moment.

You’ll see our pears are fattening up nicely.  As the tree is still small, I’ve reduced the number of little pears to just fifteen (we only had two last year) so that the fruit that we do get is of a bigger size.

The tumbling cherry tomatoes in pots on the (soon to be replaced with a lovely FSC hardwood deck) patio are starting to ripen.  I await the first taste with anticipation.  Apart from big beef tomatoes, cherry tomatoes are my most favourite tomatoes of all.

And speaking of beef tomatoes, it seems that last years harvest of zero beef tomatoes was no indication of my beef tomato growing skills.  The largest beef tomato plant is as tall as I am, and the tomatoes are fattening up at a most agreeable rate.   I’m already having visions of August evenings on the new deck eating the copious Greek salads that our gardening efforts will provide.

Our first grape vine looks set to have at least one bunch of grapes this year, hopefully the first of many, and we are so delighted with it that we are going to plant another vine on the trellis screen that Peter will be building into the deck.  I originally ordered a blackberry vine for the deck, but we will plant that elsewhere in the garden when it arrives.

We decided to go for dessert grapes to increase the edible fruit in the garden, and I wouldn’t have the patience for making wine when we have a great local winery in the area.

The herb spiral is looking more like what I intended since Peter helped me dig the giant lemon balm plant out of it and I transplanted it beneath the forsythia.  I’ve replaced it with some dill, and have added a Greek basil, curly parsley and sweet basil to the rosemary, flat-leaved parsley and tarragon already there.

We still haven’t seen a flower on our kiwi vine, and so continue to hope that next year will be the year for kiwi fruit, and I’m working on relieving our two apple trees of their aphid infestations.  So, with the good the bad, and lots of lessons to be learned as we go. 

Piper and I built this little beauty this morning.  Notice the large wind turbine and solar panels on the roof, you may be required to use your imagination.  It is also suitable for building in floodplain areas as it’s on stilts.  Architect Dad was suitably impressed.

Happy Summer Solstice to everyone!  We will be having a barbecue tonight, spending the evening outdoors and letting the children stay up late with the sun.

We want to make a sandpit for Piper, and even Ayrton to play in and have managed to find an old tractor tyre through Freecycle that we just need to go and collect from a smallholding about 15 minutes drive away.

We are going to sink the tyre slightly into the lawn in the back garden and then fill it with sand.

I found a couple of good links to ideas for sandpits:

Burke’s Backyard
New Zealand’s Ministry of Education

We are going down to the allotment almost every day now to sow, weed, put in plants raised in our cold frame at home, and water. Piper is always keen to go to the allotment, her favourite activities including picking daisies on the paths, watering herself and the plants, and digging, in the only empty bed we have left.

We now have some of our tomatoes in at the allotment, others still in the cold frame at home, and some already potted up (tumbling cherry tomatoes) to stand on our soon-to-be deck. We have some red pepper seedlings in at the allotment and some at home in pots, an experiment to find out where they will grow best, sugar snap peas in, more pea seeds sown (the last lot were nicked by birds), and more carrots and beetroot sown (we’ve not had a very good germination rate on these two veg).