Mary Mary, Quite contrary, how does your garden grow?.......

........With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.

OK so neither one of us is called Mary, we may perhaps be a little "contrary", the silver bells and cockle shells are really just plants (I've not a clue what they are called) and there are NO maids in or near our house (much to my dismay) but I have always liked that nursery rhyme and it felt appropriate for this post.

Having planted our pots a couple of weeks ago I have to say we are very proud of the outcome, we let nature create its own piece of art and she has done well, our pots are blooming beautifully!

Whilst on the subject of flowers I would like to mention POPPIES

I love Poppies! Red is one of my favourite colors, I love the contrast in colors between the red/black and green of the plant, I love their significance for Rememberance Day, and I think a little bit of me has always been mystified by the poppies that appeared in "The Wizard of Oz" with their magical powers.

I have never seen a poppy plant growing, and so was delighted when we moved to the beach house to find that poppies grow wild down here - along the sidewalk, on the banks of the sand dunes, by the side of the road  - this time of year there are beautiful, bright red poppies everywhere, (well everywhere except by our house).  Having looked at other peoples properties and seen poppies growing in their gardens, I decided I also wanted a piece of this "Poppy Action".

I was reliably informed (by my green fingered Mother) that you wait for the flowers to die and then harvest the pod that is left and plant it -  so for weeks last year I duly ran around collecting poppy pods, everytime I saw a flowerless poppy I enlisted Wolf into assisting me with harvesting of pods and transplanting them in our flowerpots.  This year I eagerly awaited the blooming poppies..........



................. nothing
..................still nothing
..................and a lot more of nothing! 

Not a single poppy appeared from the 50+ pods that we had planted!!

However in a rather "contrary" gesture from Mother Nature I have discovered we now have poppies growing around the outside of our property... along the wall, in the gravel on the path, and in my parking space.  I'll take it!  They may not be where I wanted them, but I am pleased to say I have poppies and I actually I kinda like the idea that they are there by nature and not by design.

Gardening

I'm not great at gardening, something that is a constant source of frustration for my green fingered Mother, sadly that skill did not pass down to me. Give me the most hardy of plants and I will somehow manage to kill it off with the very odd exception of an orchid .... I "rescued" it a few years ago from the "sale" shelves in Sainsburys and paid a whopping £1.20 but I nursed it back to health and have enjoyed bloom after bloom, it even survived the move down to the beach!

Anyway when I moved from California back to England, my Mother set me up with 4 planters all full of daffodils that I was assured with the right care would bloom year after year, and they have. After 5 years and one move to the beach, they have run their course and stopped blooming.  The trouble with always having adventures is that one rarely finds the time to do "grown up" things like housework or gardening, so our compromise this weekend was,... once we returned from our latest camping adventure, Wolf and I had to strap on our "adult" heads and do the gardening.

Pi......(short for Pisces)

Monkey mowed the lawn while Wolf and I pulled weeds and emptied the planters, then one trip to Homebase and a lot more money than we had intended on spending, we now have 4 planters all full of flowers and "Pi"..and addition to our menagerie of fake animals.

Its really quite satisfying to see our handy-work all finished, I always start with an idea of what I want the plants to look like, but unlike the computer programs I work with when designing, gardens will take on a life of their own, and I'm slowly learning that gardening is not about producing the perfect finished piece but about putting all the pieces together and allowing them to grow and develop into their own works of art.  

...and so the camping continues.

Never let it be said that we are fair weather campers. Friday night this week involved racing home loading up the car and getting to the campsite before the looming rain clouds deposited their load.

Needless to say we didn't make it and so with some trepidation as we had never pitched in the rain, we set the stopwatch (we like to time ourselves so we can improve on our pitching time) and set about pitching the tent - Mother Nature did of course wait for that exact moment to open up the heavens and deposit an ocean of water upon us - the ground sheet was like a swimming pool, before the tent was even out of its bag, and we were looking like a pair of drowned rats! Oh how we looked longingly at the motorhomes and camper vans with all their "park up and plug-in simplicity", how we wished we had upgraded, but the tent went up, the inside managed (although I'm not sure how) to stay dry and on the plus side we managed to shave 15 minutes off of our pitching time!

Typically we camp with an electric hookup but this time we opted for more "rural" camping in a big meadow - only being round the corner from the house we realised that we would have to inflate the air mattress at home and put it in the car "pre inflated", but aside from the air pump, we had no real need for electricity.... My only regret this entire weekend is that I didn't get a picture of what happened next.....  After popping home and inflating the matress, we realised that whilst it was a good plan in theory, the execution of said plan was to prove a little more challenging.... simply put, the mattress did not fit in the car!  So in between rain showers we could be found driving down the road at about 1mph with an inflated air mattress on the roof, the sun roof open and my hand holding on to the mattress for dear life, whilst periodically saying, slow down its falling off, or speed up its raining and our bed is getting wet!!!!!!  Even the simplest of tasks turns in to some kind of adventure in our world!

For all the trials and tribulations of pitching in the rain, not having an electric hook up and the adventures of the travelling air mattress, we were huddled round the gas heater eating our chips and curry (yes we cheated and got take out) thankful for our experiences. There is something quite humbling, sitting in a tent while the storm wreaks havoc outside, there is something very comforting about falling asleep to the sound of the rain falling on a tent, and there is definitely something very satisfying (and quite frankly reassuring) about waking up and finding that the tent is still standing and we survived the storm!

The rest of our weekend was great, Monkey arrived Saturday, and once again we had a weekend packed with fun memories.  The simplicity of camping is something that I thought a pre-teen boy would hate, no TV, no XBox etc. but he doesn't, he "gets it" and is as hooked on camping as we are now!

Camping adventures....

We discovered camping last year - we had some time booked off of work and had no real plans other than to just be off of work and relax.  One lazy Sunday afternoon whilst at our beach, sitting in our little pop up beach tent, the idea struck..... lets go camping!  Great idea, we went to great lengths to find the perfect campsite, in the perfect location.... two days before our departure Wolf posed the question... do we have all we need for camping?  With a sudden panic I realised "no.... no we don't..... no pots and pans, no cooker, no blow up mattress, no sleeping bag, but worst of all no tent!  So we shopped..... and hence camping was discovered.

We are now on tent number 2 - a positive palatial mansion of a tent complete with awning otherwise known as the "west wing" in which we set up our kitchen (seen to the right of the tent in this picture)  

We have embraced camping with a passion, gone are the days of 5 star hotels, comfy beds and meals served on request, We welcome the opportunity to sleep outdoors in gale force winds and torrential rain with merely a thin piece of nylon to protect us from the wrath of mother nature, and then once we have made it through the night follows the decision on what new and inventive meal we can make for breakfast in one pan on one hob, whilst periodically alternating the pan  a kettle to make that long awaited cup of tea.

Honestly I'm sure for a number of people this sounds like hell, but for us, its where we wind down, relax and recharge.  We have gone from the fair weather camping novices of last year to camping whatever the weather, whenever and where ever we can.

Which leads us to the last three weeks... and our latest campsite discovery.  Recently "Monkey" (Wolf's Son) decided he wanted to try camping, so rather than go 2 hours away where if he hated it we were stuck with a whiney child in a tent for the weekend, we decided to go to a local campsite - when I say local, what I actually mean is if we come out of our house, turn right and walk to the end of the road we would be there in about 3 minutes.... but once the aforementioned tent is pitched in the middle of a field somewhere, it really doesn't matter where you are.  Camping by the way was a roaring success with Monkey, he loved it.  And the best part is that the campsite we found was great, so much so that we haven't been home for the last three weekends!  Friday night comes around we race home from work load up the truck or the car depending on who gets home first and then we make the arduous 1 minute drive round the corner and pitch up - its our escape to a little corner of the world that is just for us, Its not everyone's idea of a holiday home, but for us its perfect!