With all the lovely weather we’ve had here in April, there has been a lot of outdoor time here at Chez Oakley and a lot of pottering in the garden. Mr O has given the shed a fresh coat of paint, I have been planting flowers and weeding and little Miss has helped me plant A LOT of seeds. We planted pumpkins, spinach, tomatoes, peppers and courgettes which will all go into the vegetable patch once it has been weeded and prepared. We also planted sunflower seeds which I’m planning to put at the back of the vegetable patch to cover an unsightly wall.
I’m so looking forward to seeing the flowers grow and fill out the hanging baskets and the geraniums and lavender open up in the flowerbeds. Hopefully in just a few weeks the garden should be transformed by colour!
Of course as well as all the gardening, there has been time for relaxing outside too
We’ve also had a couple of really lovely days out at a local park. The first time we went with my friend Lou and her boys. Little Miss and the boys were absolutely fascinated by the tadpoles and water snails and spent a good couple of hours pond dipping. We made sure that all creatures were put back in the water they were taken from. I got a chance to have a play with my camera and try out some different settings and am really pleased with the result.
My favourite photo from the day out though has to be this one of Little Miss taken by my talented friend Louise Mackenzie with her super duper lens!
I’m planning on having this one printed out onto canvas.
Last weekend, a week after visiting the park with Lou and her boys, Mr O and I took Little Miss back to see if the tadpoles had changed at all. There was very little change to see but once again she was fascinated and spent a long time ‘collecting’ water snails and trying to spot the biggest tadpole (again all creatures were returned to the water). At one point one of the bigger tadpoles come to the surface to eat some algae and we actually saw it open its mouth, which for a little tiny tadpole is not something you can visibly see very often. Again, I had a play with my camera, trying out some manual settings (until the battery died, which wasn’t very long into our trip unfortunately).
We didn’t stay for as long this time and there was no crocheting done as the weather wasn’t so good and it had started to rain. As the weather is supposed to be lovely this weekend, I have promised another visit to the park so we can continue to follow the tadpoles progress. We’ll hopefully cycle there, take a picnic and make a full day of it and of course I shall be taking my crochet with the aim of squeezing a couple of squares whilst little miss plays. Happy happy days!
Karen x