The meadow...

I nearly missed meadow season and only remembered at the last minute that we might just be too late. Cant live in England and not visit a meadow at the start of Summer! Its one of those year on year things which I love to enjoy at the same time each year, its the beauty of us having the four seasons in England, they each have their own delights and meadows are my Summer delight.

Thankfully we weren't too late and the grasses, purple clover and tall buttercups were doing their thing, beautifying the cow field at Lucas Marsh Nature Reserve next to Brock's Hill Country Park. (These links take you to my other posts about these places, all the Lucas Marsh ones are meadow pictures, some of my favourites of all time!)

We went through the sun bleached gate into the next field full of wheat and bordered by frothy white.

There's a little gate in that hedge somewhere that most probably gets missed by many as its so overgrown. I like to think of it as a little secret opening to a private woods just for a few of us who enjoy venturing to hidden corners and mystery pockets of countryside.

We met a beautiful long haired cat with such a friendly temperament, if only we could have brought him home, he was just lovely.

I think we stayed in the shelter of the woods with him for about ten or fifteen minutes, stroking, playing and gushing over him as he meowed to us. Then he followed us through the trees and out into another field as we made our way back towards Brock's Hill which is where we had parked.

He was still with us when we reached the car park, he even stuck by our sides as we passed two growling dogs strongly tugging their leads whilst their owner had to lean backwards to hold onto them.

And back at home we filled a few vases with pretty meadow memories, some blooms from a bunch of flowers bought by a friend, and some back garden flora too.

Eggs...

Sorry for not posting more often, I've been busy with this and that and just drifting through the days a bit. A few days ago now we checked the egg box to find that Lavender had started laying. The first egg belongs to Damson, the middle green one belongs to Cherry and Lavenders is on the end.

Damson has laid two of these big double yolkers so far alhamdulillah, D has eaten both of them but next time its mine all mine!

Today little Strawberry who is our smallest hen laid her first ever egg! Its the one on the top right and is a lovely pinky peach shade. We watched her lay it and she was nice and calm without making a racket like the others do! Cherry took a break from laying today but i still love that we have three fresh eggs in the kitchen from our own back garden, cant wait for four tomorrow insha'Allah. Now we are just waiting for Apple to lay, she has grown the most out of all of them but her comb is the palest which means she isn't quite ready.

As a treat they all shared some leftover nettle soup this evening, they absolutely loved it! (iphone pic = poor quality, sorry!)

Gardening with kids...

This post is an entry for BritMums’ #KidsGrowWild Challenge, head to this link on moneysupermarket.com to get yourself a free gardening kit so that you can share the fun on your own blog! 

Of course you know by now that being outdoors in the garden with D or out and about on our countryside travels is crucial to how I see myself as a mum trying to raise a conscious adult. I take the fresh air and learning from nature and all that God created for us thing very seriously, and it helps that I love it all too of course. Id love to see more of my mummy friends taking their kids out to green open spaces or stretches of canal, I'm still working on that!

So when I had the opportunity to share some new gardening kit with D for a bit of child friendly digging and seed planting, I wanted to join in the fun straight away!

On went the gardening clothes and gloves...

We sat in the empty space on the veg patch and D began to dig.

We found lychee and date stones in the soil (from the homemade compost I dug in a few weeks ago) and saved up worms for the chickens in a little pot beside us.

And some time spent with a full watering can always goes down well with kids doesn't it? One of D's favourite gardening tasks.

Its sometimes difficult to let D lead the way outside when I want to make sure no seeds get wasted, plants get trodden on, grass gets dug up or bricks get tossed over and misplaced, but I have found that by buying him his own gardening tools (and using these extra ones we were sent for this post) and allocating him a bit of land, I can relax a little and enjoy instilling in him this love of nature. Whoop to that!

The gardening kit was sent to me free of charge, I'm not reviewing it here, just using it to promote #kidsgrowwild and inspiring parents to take their kids outside for some family fun.

A beautiful music album for children...

Its not often I talk about music here as I'm not really into promoting the act of listening to it. From an Islamic perspective much (some would say all) music is forbidden so when I became Muslim over 8 years ago I culled my collection and sent a suitcase absolutely full to cash generator and left myself with about ten CD's and three cassettes for nostalgia.

I'm weak and still occasionally purposefully listen to music, perhaps a couple of times a week just in the car, not at home. I try to find music which D enjoys and can listen to without hearing all the profanity which comes along with all the hiphop I like so we've been through India Arie, Erykah Badu, Michael Jackson, Aloe Blacc, Gill Scott Heron, and a 1940s compilation (our most recent favourite). I cant bare children's CD's so when I heard about the Megson album I was intrigued. Children's folk music, it sounded perfect to me.

So 'When I was a lad' by Megson came through the letter box and me and D put it on in the car. Honestly, already at track one I was almost crying - it was so beautifully written and played. Here it live on YouTube here. At track two D had already decided it needed putting on repeat. A song about bakers and butchers and hosiery shops and fleas, mites and grannies feet which is so listenable as an adult! With each song my enjoyment grew and so did D's, I've even been keeping it on when he isn't with me and singing their songs none stop around the house. 

The music is beautiful and themes revolve around farming and village life, if you didn't listen to closely to the lyrics it would be easy to think this is an adults album. Its rare to find such good quality children's music. There's quite a lot of the 'over emphasising regional English accents' thing going on which is very popular nowadays but pretty annoying to me because its become so typical, but I can overlook it because their voices are so beautiful together with such relaxing peaceful music being played by the pair of them (husband and wife team with a little baby of their own, hence the inspiration behind making an album for children).

Honestly, if you have kids and love folky, floaty, music about traditional English life then this album is fully recommended by me. Even my mum listened to it on the way to and from a carboot sale and fell in love with it - nearly had her starting up her own blog so that she could review it too!

Buy it for £10 here on the Megson Website.

(This CD was sent to me for the purpose of review but I 100% absolutely love it and its in the car stereo to stay!)

Tea India...

Today is supposed to be the first day of British Summer and alhamdulillah it was a beautiful summers day! We visited Sheffield for a family birthday party (it was my first time visiting Sheffield, and from what I saw its very hilly and industrial!) and D spent the day smiling on the bouncy castle whilst I sat making small talk and people watching. It was a good day but i was so pleased to come home, take D to bed and then sit down with a cup of tea. I LOVE that evening cup of tea when work is done and the boy is sleeping, ahhhh.

Tea India sent me some more tea to try last week, their regular Black Tea and some Vanilla Chai. I love their packaging with the Indian style teapots. The black tea is nice to have whenever, the vanilla Chai is something id have once a day slotted in between black tea and fennel tea which I also drink a lot of. The vanilla was very mild when I made a cup each for me and my  mum (I took the teabags out after about 3 mins) so when I tried it again I left the teabag for the whole time and the flavour was much better. The downside for me was that I still needed my half teaspoon of sugar to flavour it where as I normally only add sugar to mugs of black tea.

I made some Spicy Black Tea Cookies using the Tea India teabags and I've just eaten one now and they are delicious, crumbly, and not too filling and I will be making them again insha'Allah. Would you like to make some? Here's the recipe...

Ingredients...

• Two Tea India black teabags, the leaves inside only
• 125g butter
• 100g brown sugar
• 70g self raising flour
• 120g oats
• 1tsp ginger
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1.5tsp mixed spice

Method...

• Preheat the oven to 160c which is about gas mark 3 i think
• Cream the butter and sugar
• Add all other ingredients
• Roll into a log shape and wrap in cling film then leave in the fridge for 5 mins. (I didn't bother with this and just shaped them into biscuits and put them on the baking paper lined tray)
• Cut the log into biscuits and put on a baking paper lined tray (i managed about 10 biscuits)
• Bake for 15 - 20mins until browning
• Allow to cool and eat nice and warm - how can anyone resist?

Thank you Tea India for the teas which you sent to me for the purpose of review.

Get some free Tea India tea!!! Click here to go to their facebook page to claim.

The month flies by...

A few bits from this month (which seems to be going very fast for me... its all that gardening I've been doing...)

:: In the dining room the Joules calender reminds me of my day in Market Harborough which is where Joules  first began. The advert on this months page is just sooo English :-)

:: In the kitchen writer Leo Tolstoy speaks the truth of how my Spring always is.

:: On the window sill we have my weekly bouquet from D - this time its bluebells and grape hyacinth.

:: From the garden we had our very first egg (and much sooner than expected too!) and I think it might from our biggest hen Damson as she also has the reddest comb which is a sign of maturity. D found the egg next to their water bowl and we were soooo egg-cited!! It really is so enjoyable to see food come from your own garden isn't it?

:: The following day she laid another and then later that day we noticed we hadn't seen Cherry for a while so we went to investigate and found her just leaving the coop after laying her first egg in one of the egg boxes. Its so pretty, a lovely shade of pastel green.

:: We have now had three regular coloured brown eggs and two green ones (although one of the greens was soft shelled and laid from the perch so was soggy and smashed when I found it in the straw this morning :-(