Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

Saturday, 29 June 2019

New Pets

The girls have been wanting guinea pigs for a long time, imagine their surprise when their brother comes back from uni with 2 guinea pigs that needed a new home. Meet Rolo and Biscuit, who are enjoying lots of attention and settling in well. The rest of the month has been spent in the garden growing veg, repurposing old duvet cases and cooking lots.


L has started sewing and making a very neat job of it too.


So I have been busy repurposing some an old duvet cover, used the pattern section to make some new hankies and then the plain white part to make some produce bags.


Making homemade cordial and then using the left over orange and lemon peel to infuse some vinegar for cleaning with.


Ginger Cordial
200g root ginger, peeled and broken into large pieces
1 lemon grated rind and juice
600g caster sugar
1.5 litres of water
15g citric acid
Add all the ingredients to a pan, dissolve the sugar on a low heat for 3 to 4 minutes.
Then bring to the boil and simmer for 40 minutes.
Remove from the heat, when cool, strain through a cloth.
Bottle and store in the fridge, I have also frozen some too for later use.

Orange Cordial
3 oranges, juice and zest
500g sugar
600ml water
15 citric acid
Place water, sugar and orange peel in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
Remove from the heat and add the juice.
Leave to cool, strain and bottle, keep in the fridge.

This seems to be Max's favourite place to hang out and watch the world go by, he rarely leaves the garden, sometimes he sits on the fence but most of the time he likes to watch the world go by. safely from his own garden.



Sorting out left over fabric I made one of L's dolls a dress, I will put it by for her birthday next month.


A good friend of mine came back from holiday with some lovely fabric as a gift for me, made L's favourite dress, the geranium by Made by Rae, must admit it was one of my favourites too.



First harvest from our garden veg patch, hopefully lots more to come throughout the summer.


L and I went on a bug hunts and found not only ladybirds, but ladybirds in the pupae and larvae stage too. 





Tuesday, 5 June 2018

Wisley


We finely made to Wisley, we had a lovely time, that lovely I want to go again. M had my camera and she had a lovely time taking photos, I was on crutches, easiest way for me to manage hip pain and walk, so M became our photographer for the day. I do love coming home and loading up the photos she has taken, as you really get to see what she likes. 







The fruit gardens are amazing, I do love a walkway with the fruit trees, trained over it in an arch, I dream of having a garden big enough to do something similar in, a girls got to have her dreams.




The girls loved the herb gardens, so many different varieties to look at and smell, that moment where you realise you never knew there were so many different varieties of mint and sage!



The glasses houses had an amazing array of cacti.









The stunning bird of paradise in flower.



Finished L's top, she is really pleased with it, the cotton yarn was so lovely to knit with, hoping it washes and wears well, as I've not used this brand of yarn before.



We have read the first part of Sassafras Zoology and have spent time reading and learning about lions and as our Atlas of Animal Adventures had a lovely two page spread on the wildebeest, in Kenya, we added them into our animal studies.  We've watched a variety of you tube videos on the wildebeest migration, lions and cheetahs and some lovely videos of the Oloip Maasi dancers, I've put all the links at the bottom of this post as there are a rather a lot! Art we've had the chalk pastels out to draw some lions, while listening to Putumayo Kids African Playground



We had looked at the beaded necklaces of the Pokot people and used paper plates to sort of recreate them.


Savanna sunset, using chalk pastels and then created the animals using stencils and black paint.


Max's new hobby is watching the washing machine, he sits there with his head going round and round as the machine spins, I am amazed he doesn't seem to get dizzy! When he's not watching the washing machine, he has discovered a lovely place in the sun to curl up in.


You have got to just love the kitten ability to just fall asleep where ever you are, even in mid play!


You Tube Links
 Wildebeest migration

Books Used
Destination Detectives Kenya a lovely book covering some of the places in Kenya, lots of photos
A Kite's Flight a kite's journey over Africa seeing some of the different landmarks
A World Full of Animal Stories used the story from Kenya

Wednesday, 9 May 2018

Introducing Max

There might not be any more human babies here at the moment but we have new fur baby called Max (named by L). At the moment he is at the lets pounce on everything stage, especially toes, so the girls have taken to wearing socks. He isn't causing any damage when pouncing on their toes but it is a bit unnerving so can see why they prefer to wear socks. So knitting is done while Max sleeps or upstairs as the movement of the knitting needle is causing too much interesting for a such a little kitten. He is too little to manage the stairs yet, though he is trying but hindered by no carpet just varnished wood, so a bit slippery and no fabric to get a hold of.




Maybe not the best photo but just loved the way he crashed out, absolutely exhausted after he spent an afternoon playing with visiting friends.


Now those that know L well, will know spending time with her is always fun, she has a great imagination and says what she feels. Today she finished her maths and announced "I've finished my sums Mum and marked them all so you don't have too." I managed a thank you, while trying not to giggle, now working out how to reply to that! Yes she does have a 98% accuracy rate but marking your own work...... A friend did point out that you have to just love her confidence in her own ability :) This followed on from a conversation at the weekend, well it was more of statement form L, having just tidied and cleaned the breakfast bar, L came in cheering and said "Yay that means we are doing science experiments." Honestly I do tidy and clean my breakfast bar daily not just when I am doing science experiments on it. But it does say a lot for L's interests, books, nature and science experiments. So not wanting to disappoint her, I found  out some iron filings, a piece of cardboard and different shaped magnets. Sprinkled the iron filings on the cardboard and used the magnets to draw pictures, I also got her to hold the different types of magnets we had under the cardboard to see the changing in patterns, we used a horseshoe, ring and block magnet.

We've also had more fun exploring motion, ramp building and seeing how far the car went, the speed it went etc depending on how steep the ramp was.



Ok the other part of this experiment was seeing whether you could get the car past the kitten or not!


Still using the same balloon from lasts weeks experiment, I got M and L to build a lego vehicle that could be powered by a balloon. At this stage Max had worn himself out chasing cars and was fast asleep, thankfully as pretty sure kittens and balloons are not a good mix!



Balloon is beginning to loose its elasticity but we still managed to create a hoover craft, using a CD, the push down top of a water bottle and a balloon. Using a glue gun to glue the bottle top to the CD, then carefully stretching the balloon over it, if you get it right, you can blow the balloon up, push the stopper closed, set it down and then open it up and watch it hoover across the table.


 Making the most of the sunshine, finally got up the allotment and we planted out onions and lots of carrot seeds, Admired the apple blossom


 and blueberry flowers.


The redcurrants have lots of fruit on them, so hoping for a good crop this year.


L busy planting out.


We then got very sidetracked as we discovered two slow worms, they were both out on the grass path for ages but was so busy watching them, I didn't think about taking a photo, you can just spot this ones head poking out. We then uncovered another patch and discovered an ants nest, they had made a loads of tunnels just under the matting, so you could see them really clearly, along with their eggs and larva, so L and I spent time watching the ants collect up their young and move them to safer home.


 Finished making another very pink baby cardi this wool has a sparkle running through it, not that I could get the camera to pick it up but have a happy friend so that is what matters.


 Now this little cardi sirdar 1816 is a real favourite of mine, there's very little sewing up as you knit the fronts and backs all in one and the join the sleeves in, so only need to sew the under arm and sleeve seam. The only downside is the amount of stitches needed to cast on to start with.


On a health front, I an an optician appointments the other Friday, they were a bit concerned and referred me to the hospital to have a thorough check out of the back of the eye, they use drops to do this, eye is fine and a huge sigh of relief from me. Fast forward a few hours later, I started to feel very itchy,flushed skin and hives, so took some antihistamines but they didn't seem to stop it. So called out of hours and as I am chatting to them started to feel breathless and voice was starting to become croaky, so they phoned an ambulance which was with me within minutes. Spent several hours in A&E and discovered the major problem with having an allergy to steroids and the treatment of allergic reactions, steroids are normally used, plus the fact I have several medicines I react to so they don't like to give you anything, just in case, which is good in one way but not when you are feeling very nauseous at this stage. Spent the next few days feeling a little bit emotional but will say M was amazing as she was with me at this stage, even though she said later she was really shocked how swollen my neck was, she kept her head, got the kitten out the way and watched out for the ambulance, let the crew in and got her Dad.