A Few Ramblings…
Forty-six year old Christian happily negotiating the world with a wife and three daughters
First planting!
It’s been a while since I added an update on how things are progressing with our vegetable plot. In truth it’s been somewhat slow progress with digging achieved on a few evenings so far.
Today, we were finally able to make some more headway and actually planted our first new plant in the border – a gooseberry bush!
Slow progress on the vegetable plot with the new gooseberry bush in the corner
The gooseberry bush
In addition, we unearthed our old rhubarb which has survived the infestation of grass apparently unscathed.
There is still much more clearance to be done, but it’s nice to see things are slowly progressing.
Lambing Day at Berkshire College of Agriculture – 2nd April 2011
We spent a great day up at the Berkshire College of Agriculture for part of their annual Lambing Weekend.
Despite the fact that the day officially started at 10am and our arrival was approximately 10.03am, we found ourselves already in the fifth row of cars for this popular day out. It seemed that many others had taken the opportunity of the dry and clement weather conditions to view all that BCA had to offer.
Our tour began with looking at some of the smaller animals in the Animal Unit. The girls enjoyed stroking various hamsters, guinea-pigs and mice before moving on to viewing some of the College’s larger animals including goats, pigs and sheep.
Newborn ducklings
Before long, the lure of the tractor-ride couldn’t be ignored any longer and we duly climbed aboard the wooden benches in the trailer with a dozen or so others for the 15 minute ride around some of the fields in the Estate.
All aboard the trailer!
Holly, Rebekah and our tractor
After the tractor-ride the girls decided to visit the trampolines and we spent some time there before moving on to the back lawn where the Main Ring was located.
By now, stomachs were beginning to rumble and I hastened back to the car to retrieve both our picnic rug and some food while the girls played on the bouncy-castle. We enjoyed a picnic lunch with the accompaniment of sheep-dogs rounding up various geese. Holly joined in with the final exercise, along with many other children, and Sarah found herself trapped in the ring with her, after the gate was closed.
Holly and Sarah
After lunch we looked around the various charity stalls set up on the lawn and eventually found our way over to the lambing tent. In here were various newborn lambs with their mothers. All seemed to be a few days old and we didn’t get to witness any arriving into the world.
Newborn lamb
Crowds on the back lawn at Hall Place
Finally, it was time for the inevitable ice-creams, millionaire shortbreads and cups of tea over in refreshment area.
Before we left we looked in on the various horses in their stables before heading back through the numerous daffodils to find our car.
A host of golden daffodils
Emily enjoying her day
Overall it was an enjoyable day over in Burchetts Green at what has become something of a permanent ‘fixture’ in our annual calendar and I imagine we’ll be back there again in April 2012.
March 2011 on Twitter – 1st April 2011
March was a busy month for me on Twitter with 569 tweets sent, my most in a month since December. It was also a month for the youngsters, with @hugh_evans and @andrewburdett1 finishing top of the tree.
March was also the month of the Japanese earthquake and both Japan and earthquake feature in this month’s cloud.
March was Twitter’s 5th birthday and Twitter, birthday and happy all show up.
The cloud also contains pancakes!
Finally, looking at the cloud, I must try and send fewer tweets containing the word ‘good‘!
Let’s see what April brings.
Lost and Found – 30th March 2011
The photos below were taken during the summer of 2006. For a long time I thought they were missing but eventually found them, albeit not the full-size images, where I was least expecting to on a different laptop!
It all seems such a long time ago now, photos of Dad when he was healthy taken in my Grandma’s garden…life can change very quickly.
I’m glad they turned up.
A Few Ramblings... 