Art, Picnics and Walks

Everyone had a massive sleep in this morning after the excitement of the circus last night. Well, I say everyone, but someone had to get up let the dog out, pick up the poop, feed and water the chickens, water the veg in the greenhouse, give the cat her breakfast, the dog his biscuits and the greedy turtle her dried shrimps. Yes that was me! By which time of course the children had woken up and were also wanting to be fed! I was keen to have a relatively easy day today, Aardvark and Rhino spent the morning drawing pictures of the circus and it was today that I got to cook Herman, the sour dough cake that has been bubbling away on my kitchen side for the last 9 days. Typically, as I am writing this on my iPad, I can't be bothered to faff about with images, so I will post pictures and the recipe on another day - but FYI, it tasted totally lush. Anyhow, as Herman was cooking, I was thinking about our activity for the afternoon, which was going across the border into bandit country - sorry, I mean Scotland, to visit The Hirsel and have a bit of a wander about. On a whim, as the weather was very nice today, we decided to pack up lunch in picnic form and take it with us. I won't bore you rigid with information about The Hirsel, you can find out all about it here; http://www.discovertheborders.co.uk/places/26.html £2.50 to park in the car park, but apparently there are no wardens, so risk it if you feel inclined. After lunch at the lakeside, I did a quick detour to the craft centre to see Laura from Briget of Edinburgh as I am face painting at her businesses 5th birthday party next month (it's a free event btw with bucks fizz and nibbles!). We then went on the blue walk, which is about a mile around the lake. Even though there hasn't been rain for a few days, part of the walk was very muddy, so suitable footwear is still recommended. The children thoroughly enjoyed looking out for rabbits, listening to birdsong, watching for fairies and smelling the wild flowers that they managed the walk with ease. And not one of them slipped over and fell in the mud! There is a nice playground for the children, what looks like a lovely tea room - but today we didn't sample it as I had my skinflint head on and we took a flask of coffee and homemade flapjack in the picnic hamper! The sun beamed down on us and we trundled the 20 minute journey home happy. That changed of course when we got back as Aardvark decided to kick a chicken and got caught red handed, so quite appropriately she got a massive telling off. Aardvark and tellings off, do not go well together, she doesn't cope very well with it, but we think this is positive as she now shows empathy and seems to care about what she has done. So for the rest of the afternoon, she made sure she kept telling me she was sorry and that she wanted to tell the chicken she was sorry. We agreed that she would go out tomorrow and feed them, she could apologise then - how she will remember which one she tried to drop kick I will never know.