Part 1- Birth of a Tiny Urban Garden Our small apartment comes with a tiny balcony- just 2 m x 1.6 m- which would be just enough for us all to sit out for a meal. Thankfully the housing association (BRF) we are members of allows owners of ground floor apartments, as we are, to […]
garden
How to Create a Tiny Urban Garden
You’d be surprised the size of patches people around the world are creating their tiny urban gardens! It really is possible to create a miniature urban haven of greenery in the smallest and most unlikely places. Take example from Paris’ urban gardening initative Have you heard about Paris’ incentive to add more greenery to the […]
An enchanted hall, garden and castle, Belsay
Tucked away in the Northumberland countryside is a magical place: Belsay Hall, gardens and castle. Luckily for us I picked an especially lovely spring day to explore Belsay with the children. I really had no clue of what we were in for when I decided to add it to our agenda. It came highly […]
A glimmer of Spring and our family garden opening ceremony
We were celebrating on Sunday evening. According to Hugo, my 5 year old, we were having a family garden opening ceremony. The weather had finally turned and the whole family spent the entire day in the garden tidying and playing. The kids were so overjoyed they wanted to have BBQ opening ceremony on Sunday evening. […]
Jumping into Gardening with the #KidsGrowWild Challenge
Thanks to Chris who blogs at Thinly Spread and Annie’s linky, the inspiring How does your garden grow?, we have been a bit more active in the garden this year, cleared weeds, trimmed hedges, prepared our veg bed. I had pledged to get the children more involved too. Then along came the #KidsGrowWild Challenge from […]
Bank Holiday weekend in and around Oxford
With the Bank Holiday weekend on us we have so many options, so many things happening in and around Oxford. We did plan to go camping on the New Forest, but decided to stay home instead and do a big spring clean. Over the week fliers and emails have been tempting us with what’s on […]
What lurks in the garden
– Turning off the garden tap I had to jump… because a little green frog jumped out from just beside my hand. I resisted the urge to scream (thinking of having to set a positive example), then quickly summoned the Littlins. They were over joyed that by the sight. Little Man, as always, wanted to […]
Chicken Gallery
– Here’s our adventure in keeping chickens thus far: Is that really a Chicken house inside? A heap of wood to be turning into a chicken coup and a small run We are almost there! We can highly recommend Farmer Mike Very happy chicken at New Barn Farm. So who wants to come home with […]
The Economics of Keeping Chicken
– Apparently chicken are the 3rd most popular “pet” kept in the UK. As I explained in my previous post, I do love the romantic idea of them pecking away on the scrap heap and producing delicious fresh eggs. …but does it make financial sense? Well, here’s the run down of costs: In preparation for […]
The Chicken have arrived
It all started off with a romantic vision of seeing chicken scratching away at the bottom of the garden. That was a year ago, when we moved to this house. There is a decent garden and as a huge supporter of recycling I thought chicken would be great: We love eggs. We eat lots of […]