Banham Zoo

Ali and I have been lucky to visit many zoo's in this country and others in our life and we recently took the kids to Banham zoo.  We think this is one of the best we have been to, because the whole experience is much closer to the animals and more intimate making the magic of the zoo more special.

It was wonderful walking among many of the animals and they really didn't seem at all bothered by us at all which was a real treat for nature girl Sophie.  Who also loved Zorbing and now wants one for the garden, I think this is a great idea Soph!!

The Girls had a wonderful day and we will definitely make a day to revisit here as the whole experience was awesome.

Our garden Spring 2016

 Here are some shots of our garden and lots of goodies growing ready to feed our family, as you see we have a good onion bed and we love a pickled onion here so grew an entire bed of shallots.

 We also got an entire farmers trailer pulled by tractor pile of muck this year and I am so grateful for this gold for the garden, we even popped some pumpkins and cucumbers in there to grow and they seem to be super charged.

 Our layout has changed a lot since last year and we have had to do a lot more rabbit proofing and we have made more paths but we are now happy with our rotating grid system although the wild flower meadow was a flop this year as I think all the mice ate the many seeds we sowed.  however we seem to have good success in growing tall grasses, well there is always next year after doing a bit more research.

 We finally have 1 small greenhouse and it is already bursting at the windows with all sorts of plants growing on and we would very much like to have more glass houses bigger ones but they are hard to come by.

Above are two really pretty plants that grow in the garden and I have to keep weeding them out but what pretty weeds to have.  Below is a Hot lips salvia and an Allium, a local lady stopped at my fence to comment on what impressive tight balls I had, I was a bit confused until she pointed.

Sophie is a monkey as always refusing to get out of the sprinkler and you can blame her with all this hot weather.

Bug hotel

 Sophie is really a nature girl, she is not the sort to shy away from a spider but rather pick it up and give it a hold and I am always catching her chasing frogs and toads about the garden.  So we thought with out new garden we needed to attract some insects and give her a little project.  So after searching out some old pallets we got her busy with Daddy setting about making one amazing bug hotel.

 Not only did we want to get bugs but we made the lower floor a hedgehog home and two mouse bedrooms from broken flower pots.   This is one of our beds we cut and although it looks very bare in early spring by summer everything if fighting for space making it a great wilderness to hide among.

 After careful cutting to make the different pallets fit together they were stacked in their final home under the willow tree, and we started to decorate them.

 Collecting bamboo canes together and bundles of sticks and drilling holes in logs as well as gathering pinecones and hay for all the different levels finally the rooms on the multi level were complete.

 We didn't forget the roof and went for something a bit different to give any hungry bees something to eat as they emerge and made a flowering alpine roof top garden all complete with wild jungle animals.

Bluebells

Easter 2016

Easter time once more and its great having Ella just a little bit bigger and joining in a lot more.

 Every year we have a hunt in our garden and we use the plastic eggs and fill them with treats and the girls go hunt for them around the gardens, and we use nests and they each get a large egg container as the prize one plus plenty of golden eggs to find along the way.  I found 2 eggs 2 weeks later as I was out mowing or moving things around that they had not found and I forgot I hid. 

Baker ross Spring

We love nature treasure as you know and we have these wonderful lotus heads from Baker Ross, and think they look pre historic so we couldn't wait to make a dinosaur landscape for all our dinosaurs to roam around on.

after school fun with decoupage farm animals we are going to take the rest up to our youth club and see what the children there can do too.

 May day fun and we made these lovely bracelets and added our own bells and beads
we also got to paint some lovely natural bamboo leaves with these fab florescent powder paints which we are now a firm convert on