OUT TO WATCH THE BIRDS

This is a regular January event in our household.  It’s a really good family nature activity.  I’m talking about the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch.  A nationwide event where you count the largest groups of birds in your garden and submit them to the RSPB so they can find out what is happening to our garden bird population.   My son is very familiar with bird watching so it was easy to get him to participate.  The binoculars are always part of our holiday luggage and go with us on most family walks.  He’s been a  junior RSPB member, with the great name of Wildlife Explorer, for a couple of years.  The magazines, sent quarterly, are brilliant and geared to specific age range and about all UK nature and animals, not just birds.  As well as free entry to RSPB reserves he gets free entry to the Wildfowl and Wetland Centres.

This year with snow and cold temperatures around it was likely that different, perhaps more unusual birds would be seen.  We prepared carefully and brought new stock of bird seed for the feeders. Saturday’s Telegraph featured the Birdwatch so that was brought in addition to our usual Saturday newspaper,  Birds seem to feed more in the morning, especially on a winter’s day so after a little lie in on Sunday and quick breakfast, but without getting dressed we started. Our feeders are visible from the back of the house in the past we just have watched them and always done the birdwatch from indoors.

Well the birds weren’t playing ball this weekend.  Not a sign of one on the feeders and nothing scrambling around in the flower beds – one of their favourite locations.

Frustrations grew.  ‘Where are all the birds mummy’?’  ‘This bird watching is stupid’ says my son.  There was nothing for it, surely the whole area could not be devoid of birds.  There are always birds in our garden.  We are always seeing them and hearing then.  Sound – that was the clue.  You can usually hear, but not always see them.  But that song, call and coo can lead you to them.  So out we went in pyjamas and dressing gowns.  Yes, we were going to be that mad family next door.

And so we were.  Yet it worked.  Stepping outside the back door we were met with numerous bird sounds.  Our list gradually became longer.  Not that it is a competition, but with an 8 yr old some length and variety on the list does help.  We did not see any large groupings of bird, the flocks of field fares certainly did not appear to have reached us.

2 crows, 1 Greenfinch, 1 robin singing its heart out, 2 starling, 2 pigeons, 1 sparrow, 1 blackbird and the best of best , 1 green woodpecker and 1 greater spotted woodpecker.

One last stage and that was to submit the information online. This year the RSPB have thoughtfully provided a certificate to, say that the children have taken part.  Its been placed next to my son's bed this evening.

Move outside and a whole world awaits.  Next year we will get dressed.

A White Weekend

For once the snow was perfectly timed.  It started after 9.00am on Friday and continued throughout the day.  Those of you with school age children will know the significance of 9 o 'clock. It meant that the school was open on Friday.  The school did, in fact, ask for children to be picked up early so that those staff with long journeys could arrive home safely.  So the weekend started early for my son and many others.  Fantastic -  we were able to spend it in the local playground sampling the delights of the first snow of the year. 

Snow ball fights and sledging were on the agenda.  Yesterday there was a BBC programme highlighting the 60th anniversary of the great winter of 1963.  It included footage of children sledging and snowballing.  Really good to see that some things have not changes in the all that time.

On Friday we also attempted to build a snowman, but for some reason the snow was not sticky enough. Perhaps it needs a night on the ground to settle in. Usually when it snows in London it very quickly does a disappearing trick - often it simply does not live up to expectations.  So the pressure is on to get and and enjoy as quick as possible.  This weekend knowing that more snow was forecast meant we could wander out, as and when, we wanted.  No pressure.

 

Saturday turned out to be a snowman day.  Actually it is a snow penguin.  Now comes my admission of parent fail. My son has just turned eight and we had never built a snowman with him.  OK I have an excuse for the first couple of years of his life as there was no snow.  Not sure how this happened, but it is all now rectified.  Snowman with organic carrot duly built in the  local park on Saturday.

 

 

Sunday we had light snow all day.  We all trotted off to Richmond Park with the sledge, or shield if you are using it to protect yourself in a snowball fight.  The runs near the entrances to the Park were busy.  However if you, like we did, wandered into the Park just a little the people thinned out and you had you own winter wonderland. Perfection.  I even managed to take some shots of the deer.

If ever there was a winter weekend to get outside and play it was this weekend.

Snowdrop Gardens

Are you one of the lucky people who has snowdrops in their garden?  They are justifiably popular and well deserve the accolade as one of the first signs of spring.  It lifts ones spirits to see them flowering right now.

I have a couple of very large clumps with extremely bulbous flower heads in my garden.  They were planted by the previous owner, so I do not know the variety.  They also flower late and bloom well into late March.  This means that by the time the clumps are ready to divide it is April.  And it is division that they are in desperate need of.  That, and the fact that they are so beautiful, that I would like to create quite a few more clumps.   April is such a busy time in the garden that I never seem to move onto to this task.

So this year when they started peeping their heads above the ground I decided to defy the experts advice.  I would not wait until the bulbs had stopped flowering before I divided the clump, but would try to split now, quickly whilst the soil was not frozen. Armed with  a large fork and long handled fork I dug down.  Not an easy task as the bulbs were well over 12 inches into the soil.  4 bulbs were prised out of the ground. Unfortunately the stems also came off two of them.

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

I replanted the 4 bulbs.  I think it is unlikely that the two still with stme will flower this year, but you never know.  Hopefully all four will flower next year.  So my task was accomplished.  If you are trying this next year it would perhaps be easier with smaller snowdrop bulbs not planted quite so deep.  Dividing the clumps with still be on my list of gardening tasks this April.

 





 

 

If you like to see large drifts of snowdrops then there is bound to be a open snowdrop garden close to you.  My favourite site for finding one is National Gardens Scheme's Snowdrop Garden Openings.  Openings usually take place in early to mid February.  Half term fits neatly into this period so the children can get to see them as well.

If, like me, you live close to London the Chelsea Physic Garden has Snowdrop Days from 2 to 10th February.  Thats where I'll be visiting.  Hope you manage to visit one as well.

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY

Three years ago it had been snowing in London.  I know that because I mentioned it in my very first, rather short, post on Out2playinthegarden.  Well it has been a great three years.  Happy birthday Out2playinthegarden.

I have had so much pleasure in blogging about playing outside and gardening with my son and family.  The feedback and comments I have received have really helped me to follow the mantra ‘Growing gardens helps to grow your kids’.

Looking back over the 3 years the two most popular posts in terms of visitor numbers are Kids Garden Activities: Painting Pots, Bunches of Herbs and the Odd Decorated Pebble and How Green is my Garden?

Painting pots and pebbles are timeless and ageless activities.  The post covered how to make those lovely creations found in the photo collage above. You can never have too many of them and you and the children, whatever their ages, will always have fun designing and creating them.  Recently I have come across chalk-based paint which I have used to repaint some bedroom furniture.  I think it may also have great potential outdoors so I am looking forward with experimenting with some outdoor painting this spring.

 

 

 

 

The green leaf game featured in How Green is my Garden is so simple and easy.  I now have a collection of numerous colour charts covering the whole rainbow and we often take one out on a walk so we can do a quick colour and shade treasure hunt.



 

 

 

Last year an outing to a local bluebell wood proved to be a popular post.  It was a day my son spent with his cousins.  The weather was just beginning to warm up – so much so the children had their coats off for part of the walk.  It was a day for outdoor activity and very happy family memories in which the bluebell wood provided the most perfect natural setting.

 

 

A night time visit to an enchanted woodland at Syon Park in Isleworth was the 2012 post that received the most visitors.  Darkness, light, reflection, shadow and shape all do give a garden very different perspective and this garden really did provide some very different experiences.  It made me realise that perhaps there is potential for some small night time changes in my own garden.  We also tuck ourselves away on early winter evenings when perhaps a walk or stroll to a local park or river (if safe) would help us to keep in touch with our local environment.

So I raise my glass to the next 3 years.  Here’s to keep playing with my friends and family in the garden and the great outdoors.

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.--

George Bernard Shaw

 

Make a Twig Reindeer

 

 

 

 

Find a few twigs on your next woodland walk and you will have the main ingredients you need to make a twig reindeer.  The simplicity and naturalness of the branches used makes a really wonderful Christmas decoration. 

We collected twigs from several walks.  We found that those from horse chestnut trees were ideal as they had thin branches that divided nicely like reindeer antlers.  We also cut some stems from the green and red dogwood in the garden.  So you don’t have to go too far for your supplies.  This meant we started with a lovely bunch of twigs which actually look quite good on their own in the vase.

 

 

Any young children helping with this project will need to be assisted with cutting the twig.  You could use scissors or just snap any very thin twigs.  For the thicker stems I used secateurs.

For the body you will need a piece of twig about 8/9 inches long.  Then you will need 2 “Y” shaped stems about 7 inches in length (though you could go shorter to about 4 inches).  You then need to attach the legs to the body.  Set them back about 1 to 1/2inch along the body.  We firstly tried to glue together.  However as this seemed not be too easy we opted for tying with red twine.  I think this also adds to the overall image of the reindeer.  We tied as tight as possible and kept the reindeer on its side until both sets of legs were on.  The front set of legs was very slightly inclined backwards.   You need to cut the stem on the back “Y”.



Choosing the piece de resistance was the best bit of the whole project.  We opted for some twigs that my son had found still with a few leaves on.  They were perfect.  Again we tied the two antlers to the neck in 2 different places, rather than sticking them with glue.

We will be making more of these in the coming days as it is a great way of bringing the outdoors inside – though not sure we make enough for them to pull Santa’s sleigh.  Merry Christmas.

Missing the Mistletoe

It was a rather drab, grey and damp day when we started a December walk before a late lunch.  To add a bit of interest I proposed that we went on a search for mistletoe.  ‘What’s mistletoe?’ queried my seven year old.  ‘Well it grows high up in the trees, has white funny shaped berries and forms in a large ball rather like an overgrown bird’s nest.’ was my rather inadequate reply. ‘Look upwards and keep your eyes peeled we are bound to see some.’

 

  

 

As we pottered along a slight nagging started in my mind.  I could only remember actually seeing mistletoe growing a couple of times in my life (I’m sure there must have been more).  Once was in an old orchard where every apple tree seemed to be host to a large bundle.  I’d also seen some earlier in the year in a snowdrop garden, again in an apple tree.  Perhaps they only grew on fruit trees.  We had seen an apple tree devoid of mistletoe at the beginning of our walk, but we were unlikely to see any more fruit trees.  So holly and Ivy were added to our find and seek festive list.  I was pretty certain that we would be able to tick these off.

We saw a lovely cascade of old man’s beard, high in one tree – a seed head usually found scrambling amongst the hedgerows. We also spotted several large birds’ nests, easily seen in the bare branches this time of year. Our hopes were raised that mistletoe might be close by when we saw what could have been a Mistle thrush at the top of tree.  Its favourite food is mistletoe. Alas its lunch was not in sight. We wondered what was named first the plant or the bird. Can anyone help?

 

 

 

 

 

Tipping your head back and looking towards the sky does bring a different perspective to a ramble. Sure enough we saw many trees covered in ivy and a large bush of holly still holding some of it berries. We were surprised what a lovely shade of plum the berries on the ivy were. They were almost more stunning than those on the holly.

 

 

 

 

Linear walks always work well because you always see vistas on the return journey you missed on the way out.  And yes, yes in the distance on our way back a large ball of vegetation was spotted in a faraway tree.  At last we could cross mistletoe off our list, but by then my son was busy using the dried stem of a cow parsley as a blow gun. His interest in our Christmas hunt was over.

 

On our return home my research confirmed that the main host plants for mistletoe are apple, hawthorn, lime and poplar trees. Mistletoe is apparently much more common in gardens, orchards and parks than in the general countryside.  At least I was able to show everyone my photos of mistletoe from the snowdrop garden.

We may have another go at this game with some of our walks over Christmas, when the location will be more carefully planned. By adding some more types of berries, such as rosehips, perhaps pine cones and, of course a Xmas tree, and we will have a full blown Xmas hunt to have fun with.

I am linking up this post with Learning for Life and Countrykids where you can find out what other families have been up to outdoors.

Salt Dough Christmas Decorations: A Tale of Competition between Friends

I recently spotted a great idea for using a handprint made from salt dough to make a Santa Xmas decoration.   It looked so cute that I shared it with friends and followers on Facebook.  My son had had a go at something similar a pre-school, but we had never tried salt dough at home. That rather misshaped ornament he made is now treasured and brought out every Christmas.

My garden craft is fine, but this kind of craft was more like cooking.  A day off school for my son provided some time and an opportunity to make and bake.

Here is the recipe we used:-

½ cup of salt

½ cup of plain flour

¼ cup of water, but only use as much as you need to make dough

 

Yes I did have plain flour in the cupboard.  What about the salt?  I only had a small amount of relatively expensive sea salt so I plumped for dishwasher salt thinking, it would probably melt in the oven.  Ist mistake.  It didn’t.

 

Apron donned – it really was just like making pastry.  We measured, stirred, kneaded and rolled out with a rolling pin.  Then we made the hand impression into the salt dough.  By then I began to realise that a 7 yr. olds hand is quite large.  Any imprint would make quite a chunky decoration, maybe not so easily hung from the tree.  So we decided to just make one and cut out shapes with our Xmas cooker cutters with the remainder of the dough.  We remembered to punch a hole in the top to enable hanging.  They were then baked in the oven 100c for about 2 ½ hours.



 

 

 

 

 

 

We were really quite pleased with our results, despite the rough texture caused by the dishwasher salt.  I should say, I was pleased until two of my friends posted some photos displaying their decorations.  I am sure you can guess which ones are ours.

 

 

Oh well, baking was never my forte.  Not sure we will ever get around to decorating our ornaments.  It’s been great fun sharing ideas and experiences with friends.  It has helped us all get into the festive spirit.  Next time though, I may just check things out first.  So please don’t be put off, but do use table salt. My excuse for coming last in the class is that one friend’s profession involves dressing windows, hence the lovely photo at the beginning of the post.  My other friend, well her surname is Jones, so it really was a case of keeping up with the Jones’s!