Gardening

Friday

Good looking lemon drizzle cake

Today we had catch up day.  Meaning laundry and baking ready for the Scout's Jumble sale on Saturday.  First though was the dreaded homework.  Tom had to write a story plan for literacy.  His idea of a story plan was one sentence?!  He put it in his book bag and was confident it was done.  I checked it and then spent the next two hours with him whilst he did it properly!  We had sulks, tears, frustration etc etc but we got there in the end.  His reward was to make a lemon drizzle cake for the jumble sale which he did well, although I don't think he can be left alone to make one just yet..

Mowing

Tom then asked to mow the lawn, which I allowed him to do - he loved doing it, in fact he spent a good hour or so out there doing it.   In the end we had to pull him out as we had made plans to meet up with some friends in Hawes.  They were actually friends of friends who we used to meet up with as part of Shell Weekends.  It had been 4 years since we last saw them, but it was like meeting up with old friends.  We had tea and a bun at the Creamery and then did some cheese shopping.  Jessica (who is 6) and Tom got on immediately, in fact she is a real bright spark, you wouldn't guess there were 2 years between them.  They got stuck into the pyramid puzzle straight away and that was them sorted for the afternoon.

Creamery selfie

We got home, had tea and then went for Friday night cricket over on the Community field.  We went loaded with wine and camping chairs etc, no-one else did???!!!!  Oh hum.  We had a good time and we even had some sunshine creep in.  This time the parents were made to join in so I was on catching practise and I had to take part in a match.  Poor Matt was frustrated, as he wanted to join in.

Saturday
The morning was spent doing even more gardening.  Weeds were pulled up, the edges strimmed and all the cuttings dispensed with.  We were very impressed, in fact he got a little extra pocket money for it as he worked so hard on it.  We went to Bernies for lunch, then to the Jumble Sale (as rubbish and awful as always, but we showed our faces)  We were hoping to buy some of Tom's lemon drizzle cake back, but it had already sold!.

All done!

We then packed the car with the garden rubbish for the tip and headed to Settle to the dump, then to a lovely little garden centre, Lay of the Land to pick up some plants for the hanging baskets (we are trying to grow our own baskets this year)  We all chose some plants (luckily they were labelled 'for baskets' otherwise we wouldn't have had a clue) and got some compost ready for the gardener to put together tomorrow.

Next we headed to Hart's Head in Giggleswick and met up with Pat and Bob for tea, very nice it was too.





Sunday

Basket ready for hanging

We wondering what to do - with Matt only semi-mobile and after much discussion, decided to go to Lakeside to get a boat to Bowness.  It is high season now which means the big steamers are on the Lake.  We've only been on the smaller boats before so thought it would be nice to ride a big one.  It was a nice enough day - clear, but cloudy.  It was nice to be on a bigger boat - more space, a bar and a different commentary.  On arrival to Bowness we found lunch at Village Inn.  A very funky venue and the food was really good.  We had a starter each for lunch (mussels for me and ribs for Matt), they were delicious and massive!  Very glad we didn't order a proper dish - we would have exploded.  Definitely one to return to.

Cruising the lake

We got the boat back to Lake Side and headed home.  Tom put the hanging baskets together and we hung them up.  They look good, hoping they don't die too early...  I was then made to go and play cricket with Tom on the astro turf before having tea and bed.