Martha's Marvellous Munchies

...of the garden variety, that is! BEFORE... ...and AFTER! The posts surrounding the raised bed at the back of our garden were decidedly past their best.  Some had toppled of their own accord, and some more only needed a sharp tug to come out, like a loose tooth.  I decided to flatten the whole thing, do away with metres of weedy gravel, and create a big vegetable bed where beans, carrots and cabbages could roam free. Graham accordingly ordered a ton of topsoil from the horticultural company he works at, borrowed a rotavator and a wheelbarrow, and we set to work.  The boys enjoyed helping to tip the topsoil off the truck. operating the tipper Like all these jobs, there's always more to it than you first think.  The posts which weren't rotted at the base turned out to be embedded a foot deep, requiring a good deal of hammering and levering with a garden fork.  Then the hundreds of bulbs in the old raised bed had to be fished out and stored...

Well, our big boy is now seven!  Like the Transformers toy he was begging for, Toby is changing rapidly from one thing to another.  He's gone from just starting school to the top year of the Infants, from hanging onto my hand to going round the block by himself, from sounding out letters to devouring Roald Dahl books.  He can beat any of us at Mariokart racing on the Wii (due, no doubt, to far too many hours of practice), wants to be in the Guinness Book of Records (for the fastest spinning hands) and likes maths the best at school.  You won't convince Toby to try it your way unless he's tried it his way first.  But he'll always be trying something, that's for sure: making, writing, building, experimenting.  Sometimes he'll dash through it.  Sometimes he'll storm off in frustration.  Then other times he'll persevere, and produce something amazingly intricate.   Toby celebrated this year by having a few friends over for a birthday ...

You know how sometimes you have to do something because it pleases you , even though you know no one else will notice?  Maybe you carefully colour-code the office stationery cupboard.  Or line up your children's games according to size.  Or keep your spice rack in alphabetical order. Or peel your apple all in one go ( Imgur ) In my case, it was matching Bible verses to the weekly theme at toddler group.  I've recently become part of the leadership team for Little Creations, and one of my responsibilities is updating the Powerpoint slides which scroll on the big screen while the group is running.  In an effort to have some slight Christian input (most attendees have no church affiliation), we have a Bible verse on one of these slides. You see what I mean.  Most parents, on constant alert for two-year-olds misbehaving, will hardly spare a glance for words on a screen.  Of those who do, even fewer will consciously register a saying from the ...

"I love going for a walk," said Theo, "It's so beautiful." A few minutes later, both boys' legs looked like this. Beautiful is NOT the word. However muddy it might have been underfoot, though, our surroundings merited Theo's description.  We wove our way between rocky walls where tufts of grass grew like floppy hair, and moss-covered trees dripped rain down our necks.  Then came a narrow path with grassy slopes rearing up on either side. Slipping on damp limestone, we reached a cave with a square mouth narrowing down rapidly "to a miners' tunnel," said Toby excitedly, and he bounded straight in to explore. Emerging from the darkness, we discovered that the sun had come out and Lathkill Dale was opening out before us.  It was the perfect time for a picnic. We trekked on a little further, to the place where water quietly rose up between the grass and creeping plants, and formed the beginning of the River Lathkill....

"I had to buy a new mop bucket because my old one got smashed by a marrow." That's surely not a sentence many people get to say even once in a lifetime. The marrow in question was left, with a group of its friends, at the back of church by an anonymous donor.  It weighed 7 lb, about the same as a newborn baby, but was decidedly less cute and a lot thicker-skinned.  I adopted it and brought it home. Presumably Theo was just curious about this giant vegetable that I'd left on the counter.  At any rate, he was reaching for that or something else, and shortly afterwards I found a sheepish 3-year-old, a wrecked mop bucket, and a remarkably unscathed marrow lying on the floor. A few days later, I got my revenge on the marrow by turning it into chutney.  This recipe from BBC Good Food made plenty, and used up over half of the vegetable.  The rest I peeled, chunked, and stashed in the freezer for now.  I have vague ideas of making marrow and ginger j...

Write, they say.  And keep writing.  Every day if possible.  That's what you do if you want to be a writer. Right, I say.  Writing.  I'll get to it as soon as I've done the shopping cleaned the bathrooms called some volunteers mowed the lawn hung up the washing got some exercise spent time with my family.  Um.  Maybe tomorrow. So writing has slid backwards from being a priority, when I called Cafes with Kids my job and reviewed a cafe every week, to a sideline, now that I'm the other side of the counter and, once again, calling cafe management my job.  And, as a bonus feature, actually getting paid for it.  It's exciting.  It's rewarding.  It's also all-consuming and completely exhausting, at least in these first few weeks when I'm trying to learn everything and everyone all at once.  That breathing space seems a long time ago already. But sometimes you have to carve out space for who you want to be as well as who ...

Theo and I sat perched on a rocky step in the sunshine.  Somewhere above us, Graham and Toby climbed higher up the path, while behind us, a waterfall splashed noisily down the hillside.  In front of us the land spread out in patches of green and grey and purple, sun-bright and dappled with cloud.  I drew in a deep breath.  We were definitely on holiday. Our usual last-minute AirBnB searching had led us to a cottage on the corner of the Yorkshire Dales.  Technically we were in Cumbria, but this area is far less popular than the more famous Lake District, with the guides tending to use words like "under-rated" and "little-known".  We certainly didn't have the place to ourselves, but then the weather that first day would have dragged the most reluctant walker out of doors.  Or just about.  You can see how enthusiastic our little walkers were! Cows.  On an A-road.  Definitely under-rated. The target that first day w...

Six weeks sounds like a long time when you're at the beginning, doesn't it?  But it's a lot less long when you're halfway through, wondering where the time went.  Here's what we did with some of it. The males of the family (including my dad) went to see the truck racing at Donington, the first Saturday.  They came back full of truck excitement - and with bigger hands than usual!  Meanwhile, my mum and I went for a nice peaceful walk. Next day, Theo was a little tired. Later that week, we drove to Dove Dale and climbed Thorpe Cloud in the rain, which helpfully and unexpectedly ceased just as we got to the top.  We were able to have lunch with a view and without getting soaked.  A kestrel came and hovered nearby, looking as if it were hung from the sky by an invisible string. Coming down, the boys decided that running was the way to go.  This is my new favourite picture of me with them. We also went to a tractor festival (oh yes,...