Spring Is Here #CountryKids

Spring has most definitely made it's arrival and is busy making itself well known within our garden. Our grass has received it's first trim after the Winter months, the weeds have begun to spring up from the flower beds and have been expertly removed by the two terrors and the ivy, trees and shrubs, which became a little wild over the colder months, have been pruned back to form neat, tidy borders again.

The children have been outside making use of the garden and their toys and helping me with the gardening. We've been to the park several times, something we've not been able to do so often over the Winter, and the children are definitely enjoying the warmer weather and the sunshine. I think we're all happy to see it after the horrible rainy, windy Winter we've had.

We've been taking advantage of the good weather and have been out planting our summer-flowering bulbs, crocosmia and peacock orchids, in the front garden and have started to fill up our borders in the back garden with geraniums, forget-me-nots and veronicas. There is still much to be done but the rise in temperature, the arrival of sunshine and the flash spring showers are helping everything along nicely.

Terror 1 helped me to choose a couple of items that we could add to our garden to encourage the birds to visit. Our neighbours, and the bottom of our garden, have a lot of trees and tall bushes so there are always birds flying around the but they often skip over our garden and land next door. Terror 1 chose a pretty yellow bird box and helped me to find a nice, private place within the ivy that lines our fence to place it. She also found a bird feeder and some fat balls for the birds to pick at while they're visiting. So far, it's working! We're seeing a lot more birds in our garden and the children are loving looking out from the breakfast table in the morning and seeing what they can spot.

After last year's success growing our own chilli peppers and tomatoes, the children and I decided to grow our own vegetables again this year. We've already planted up our array of peppers, this year's consisting of chilli's, barancios and bell peppers. They are residing in a mini propagator on our windowsill and we're all waiting patiently for the first seedlings to appear. We've also got plans to grow our own garlic and spring onions and, instead of buying seeds, we'll be attempting to do so from our own kitchen scraps which should prove interesting.