The Garden

My garden always seems to be a work in progress, my shed has moved twice since it was built 'in situ'.  We had the enormous fun a few years ago of rebuilding the brook bank and falling foul of the Land Drainage Act 1972 - who knew?! Well the neighbours that reported me to the council did apparently but hey-ho, I paid a large amount of money to have part of the wall moved 2 inches and I was saved from prosecution - yes, you heard me 2 inches!

So having finally got over that stress, I decided it was time to experience the joy again.

There was a lot of 'unused' space on the very lowest level of my garden I decided to lift to the middle level.

By increasing the size of the middle level it meant I was able to extend the patio a bit.  We lost so much patio when we built the extension a few years ago and it felt a bit cramped.

All went fairly well apart from the firm we used not actually finishing the job and me having to get back the man who saved the day with my brook wall (you'd have thought I'd just learn and use him first time every time.)









But I'm really pleased with the end result.

The garden feels much bigger.

But it hasn't lost too much of the original landscaping plan to have lost it's character.

And we can now sit on the patio without feeling like we are about to fall off the end!

But as always I look around and feel a plan hatching.

We have large patio doors from the living room to the patio and a small door from the kitchen extension but I'm now thinking we can replace the window at the end of the kitchen with large patio doors.  It's a shame not to 'see' the garden completely when it looks so nice!

I'm thinking about going away for a while and telling HWMBO from a distance!

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Dairy Free Carrot and Walnut Cake

Cog has been dairy free now for about 3 months in an effort to improve her skin.  It actually seems to be working so hats off to her, but some part of it are rather hard work.  Finding nice cake she will eat has been particularly hard and with her birthday upon us I was struggling.

I plumped for a dairy free carrot cake.

Cake:
200g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp ground mixed spice
100g light muscovado sugar
50g chopped walnuts plus extra to decorate
2 eggs
1 large or 2 small ripe bananas
100g coarsely grated carrots
100ml sunflower oil

Icing:
100g dairy-free spread
150g icing sugar
1tsp vanilla extract

(keep in fridge afterwards)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Fan 160°C/Gas Mark 4.

Grease a cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
Sift the flour, baking powder and mixed spice into a bowl.

Add the sugar, walnuts and eggs.

Mash the bananas and add to the bowl with carrots and oil.

Beat well until evenly mixed.

Pour into the cake tin, level the surface and bake for 40-50 mins until firm to the touch.

Cool in the tin for 5 mins before turning out and cooling completely on a wire rack.


For the icing:
Beat together the dairy-free spread, icing sugar and vanilla extract until soft and smooth.
Spread over the cake and sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

The first time I tried I used an oblong tray and it was as flat as a pancake with little visible carrot or walnut.

I definitely didn't beat it enough and I grated the carrot too finely.  I've no idea where the walnuts went!! But it tasted OK so I thought I'd try again.

Take two!

I grated the carrots on the holes I use for cheese, chopped walnut halves only into 6 and used a smaller deeper tin.

Initially I wasn't convinced I was winning.  But I iced them both.

The square one tasted ok.















But the round one looked and tasted great.

It may not have been the best looking birthday cake to come out of my kitchen but it was exactly what Cog wanted and she ate a good slice and came back for more later.

I'm happy to see her eating happily these days when it has become such a  chore for her.

Happy Cog, happy mum.

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Am I lonely if I generate experiences in order to share them?

The short media clip "The Innovation of Loneliness" is very interesting.

I often wonder whether my time spent on social media is at the detriment of 'real life'.  I am very guilty of using text instead of the phone to interact with people, it's almost like I'm moving real life friendships into the social media zone.

I'm not sure how I feel about his statement "We are faking experiences so we have something to share, so we can feel alive."

How is 'fake' defined?  Does he mean just lying about what we are doing or have done or is he refering to generating experiences so we have something to share?  Is generating experiences a bad thing?

There are many things I have done over the past few years that I wouldn't have done if I didn't have this blog. I am a home bird, I find doing 'new' stuff a bit of a challenge, we all do I guess, but some are more able to embrace the challenge than others.

Sometimes I have reluctantly embraced an opportunity whilst saying to myself "If nothing else,  it will give me something to blog about".  Usually I am so pleased I did it, the blog forces me to push myself a little harder to do a little more.  I am generating experiences in order to share them.

Yes, it would be better to have the confidence to just go do stuff, but I've always needed a push, a little encouragement.  If I can abseil whilst thinking "one for the blog" does it matter?  I had the experience, exactly the same experience as the next person that walked down the wall, except they may have squealed slightly less!

I don't like spending a lot of time alone, I'm a chatter box, I like to talk to people about the experience I am having. But luckily I will talk to any Tom, Dick or Harry.  When I visited Donna Nook, I spoke to many of the other visitors, some looked at me like I was the idiot on the bus, some were happy to talk.

I went to see a show in London alone once (I've done it a few times since), I found it quite strange not having someone to talk to about it.  Problem soon solved, there was a lone lady behind me, I talked to her during the interval .  These days, I wonder if I would still talk to her or would I talk to twitter?  Would my need for company be as satiated by social media.  I'm not sure truth be told.

Is the use of social media leaving me even less able to be alone with myself, less able to spend time listening to my own thoughts?  It's definitely sucking up time I used to have doing other stuff, but is it less valuable?

Have a look,  see what you think:

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Just me and the setting sun

The weather has had some beautiful moments over the past few weeks.














Making even the canals look clean and clear.














The air so clear it feels like you could look on forever.














But the cooler parts where the sun hasn't touched are a reminder that cold nights and chilly days are just around the corner.











But whilst the sun is there to be found...















...it's best to make the most of it.















with endless quiet paths















Just me and the setting sun

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The responsibility of flicking a switch

Innocuous things switches really aren't they.

My father has been dead 25 years. I don't think about him a lot any more. He is just my happy memories.  Thoughts that make me smile.   Silly things that make me laugh.

It's a time of year that always makes me think about him a little more, it's because we are getting close to bonfire night.  That was the night I knew that there wasn't long left.  As I stood outside watching the fireworks, hovering by the patio doors looking at him inside with the people that sat with him.  He didn't really have an interest in the outside, the normal him would have been a part of it. I looked and I knew.

The day he died was a strange and yet familiar one. The usual panic call from my mother to say he had been taken to hospital (again), the bristle from me that I was at work and I would come as I could (He had been ill for many years and this was a routine that meant it felt like a pain in the butt not a worry and that I know I felt that way leaves me with a rotten feeling).  And yet I knew.

When I got to the hospital he was talking to us, I fetched him a cup of tea.  It all seemed to be going in the usual way.

He was moved to a ward, it was a horrid ward.  I don't recall the time between getting him a cup of tea and us still having a joke with each other to the point 2 hours later where he was in a bed, on a horrid ward with curtains drawn around us and dad saying how dark it was and I said 'the light in here is really bad'.  It wasn't.
I recall being sat in a room with sofas and a doctor saying we have to decide whether to leave him on life support or not, that he couldn't say what he would be like if they kept him alive etc.  I recall saying  'let him go.'

I recall being sat by his bed, watching him take his last breaths.  My brother kept tapping him and telling him to keep breathing.  I said 'let him go'.

And he went.

And that was it.

And for 25 years I have been fine with the decision. And suddenly this week I wondered what he might have been like if we had fought harder, if we had said no, keep him going.  I wondered if he would have been ok with it, would he have still been laughing as I fed him sports biscuits to suck as he couldn't chew a garibaldi!

I've never had that picture of him before, the one he might have been.  It's like 25 years of hurt just barrelled me over. It'll pass.  For a while.

Recently I lay awake thinking.   I was thinking about how I used to lie on the sofa with my head on his lap watching TV. Sometimes I would be so fed up and angry with some one or something and he would stroke my hair and say

'let it go'

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A Brownie Sleepover

 If it's a weekend it must be another Guiding residential.  This was the 4th one in 7 weeks!

This time it was the Brownies turn and very much a just turn up and  help affair,  so much easier than being in charge and having all the paper work too.

It's been a while since we took the brownies away so a one night sleepover is a nice way to get them ready for the 2 night pack holiday we are planning in the early spring.

 It helps them learn about what bedding is comfy, what works and what doesn't.  Although that's a never ending journey I think - the number of different types of floor mats and blow ups I have in my cupboard as I have upgraded over and over is quite astonishing!

 They learn about having to label their things, to keep them in the right place and the importance of following instructions.  24 girls can't dive off to the small bathroom all at once, they have to go in the 'shifts' they are given.

 They didn't struggle too much with the eating cake and drinking juice lessons!

 The activities were simple and fun and they really enjoyed them selves.  They had afternoon tea (just like the Queen would.)

They designed fairground rides and made them up out of junk.  Most of them were working models too. Fabulous pirate ships, log flumes and dodgems.

 They designed paper airplanes and tested them.














Some one was having a great sticker on your back time.









They sewed badges earned onto their blankets.

The beautiful new brownie yellow ones are so bright and lovely.  I fear they won't make it to the end of guides without being black though, some badge transferring to be done I think!

We had a lovely time despite the brownies not being prepared to play the 'go to sleep' game and also not understanding the 'don't get up before 7:30' game rules.  Somewhere between 3am and 5:30am some of them slept.

I'm pooped and glad that's the last of my residentials until winter camp.

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Octant Beetle - 2nd Edition

You may recall we played Octant Beetle before and the Rangers asked to play it again this term.  I was pleased as it is an opportunity to go over the Look Wider Program.  But I felt the last time we played it, it got a bit swallowed up in Rangers asking whether they could use this or that for their own Look Wider journey and I felt it got bogged down a bit. So I decided to approach it a new way:

I started by drawing the usual octant chart and getting them to add the categories.

Community Action
Leadership
Creativity
Fit for life
Independent Living
Out Of Doors
International
Personal Values

Then I drew a second one and labelled it 'Park it'.

I explained that the idea was to fill in as many ideas as they could on the look wider chart but if anyone asked  'can I' questions I would write them straight onto 'Park It' and we would come back to them later.

My example was 'go to the moon' could be used for a phase 3 out of doors or if they went alone maybe Independent living!!!

I told them to think outside of the box if they could.


They did a Beetle chart.

They had access to a lot of sweets and biscuits!

I gave them all chop sticks and an oversized dice.

I think the large dice and chop sticks make a difference because it makes it different.  The chopsticks helps them learn a new skill, so they are phase 1 internationalling whilst playing and  I also think the chop sticks help with hygiene as they take the sweets and biscuits out of the packets using them.


When they threw a number they could get something for (standard beetle rules e.g. you can't had a head until you have a body etc) they had to write something on the chart, anything, to be able to get the biscuit or sweet.  I didn't question whether what they wrote was right or wrong, or even what it was, they just filled it in.  They started to talk amongst themselves about what qualified as what but I didn't get involved at all.

And only twice I needed to write anything on 'park it'.

They got on with playing and they enjoyed it.  Much more than last time I think.

At the end of the evening I quickly ran through what they had written down and only one thing got a straight 'no, you can't use that' everything else was ok on it somewhere even if it was in the wrong level, which we discussed.

They did well.







They do really enjoy just playing but I think it's a bonus if that can pull in 'with a purpose' at the same time.

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Night Hike

The latest adventure for our Ranger unit was a night hike.

It was at night. Definitely.

It may not have been a hike.  It was 10k.  But is was a good start into the idea and the girls really enjoyed it.

 The weather was superbly kind to us.  Perfect for walking.  Dry, no wind at all and just a little cool.  And a huge bright, full moon.

We really didn't need torches.

 Although the girls felt they did!!

I honestly could see more without the torch as my eyes adjusted and I could see all around me, whereas with a torch I could only see in the pool of light it made.


Although we definitely needed torches in the tunnels we walked through.

Don't be fooled by the flash of my camera in this picture.  It was pitch black.  We did get them to turn their torches off for a short time and they really didn't like it at all!




But they were never quiet.  There must have been a mountain of wildlife watching us as we walked.  I didn't see a single thing.  I wonder why:


  




 And even less quiet!


We walked to a Guide hall where we had cake, hot chocolate and smores and slept over.  A cooked breakfast then home.  It was a really good fun night for us all.

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