I have always dreamt of keeping bees. On my good life wish list, it has ranked somewhere alongside tending an orchard, building a treehouse and creating a wildflower meadow for many years. Lately, I have been reading bedtime stories to my children from a book called Tales from the End Cottage, which has rekindled that …
In our house, we’re always keen to find quirky, new uses for worn out things and reduce the amount we put in the bin. And if recycling something involves a fun activity for a rainy day then so much the better. However, I'm not the most arty of mums, so I like to keep it …
Continue reading Six crafty recycling ideas for kids (no.5 is a bit bonkers)
I am not normally one for dispensing parenting advice, but if you were to ask me for my ultimate, all-time, number one, ‘can’t do without’ tip for looking after little ones it would have to be ‘camomile tea ice lollies’, known in our house as simply, ‘camomile lollies’. I’m not entirely sure how they came …
We are lucky to have a lovely little open space at the end of our road. The bigger parks can get too busy for my liking but Brunswick Park is nearly always quiet. During the lockdown we have been there lots and lots. Even while the playground  has been closed, we have made our own …
When I tasked Mr Rixon with the project of constructing a sandpit two summers ago I had pictured long afternoons of the children happily making sandcastles side by side while I got on with other stuff. But right now I’m having to dash outside every two minutes to prevent the garden from being covered in …
Lesson two: Don’t piss off the locals. I’m talking about the four-legged, bushy-tailed, red-furred, nocturnal, cunning kind. Upon moving in we discovered that a family of urban foxes was using our garden and its neighbouring ones as a ‘suite of rooms’. The south-facing garden with the wide, sunny lawn? The playroom. The overgrown garden full …
I’m going to share some of our mistakes in a series of blog posts, partly to remind me not to make them again, and partly in the hope that others might learn from, or at least laugh at, our foolishness. Lesson one: Do not poison the soil Plants tend to have a short lifespan in …
It's been a loooooooooooooong time since I last wrote. I’m now mum to two beautiful, delightful and extremely cheeky daughters: Gwendolyn (aged three) and Josephine (aged one) and right now, while on lockdown in our terrace house in Tottenham, London, with their daddy, and our two cats, I’ve decided it’s finally time to dust down …
When you start pushing a pram around London you end up discovering lots of hidden green patches and pockets you never knew were there before. At least, that's what I have done. In the old pre-motherhood days I would stride the quickest route I knew from A to B, from our house to the tube, …
Continue reading Discovering new green spaces and planting trees on them
At The Tree Council we are lucky to have a large collection of excellent books celebrating all aspects of trees. With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I'd let you know what I thought about three very different books to recently join our little library: Trees in Towns and Cities, A History of British …
Little Wild Tales 