International Tolkien Reading Day

"He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different." from Leaf:  by Niggle by J R R Tolkien

March just after the Spring Equinox

Beautiful day spent in the garden, digging out weeds (one particular weed that is unidentifiable and is killing my lawn - everything else like nettles, dandelions and so on are not "weeds" in my book), withSpringy and her friend doing Easter egg colouring in pictures, making a den and with the hens wandering about, Lily watching the hens (and occasionally having to be stopped from being overzealous with squashing Violet) and the 2 guineapigs grazing away again. Next door came over for a bit and we had even more children doing colouring and following round the animals. C went rowing around the harbour earlier in his little rowboat and then later he and I did some salsa dancing (well I tried - I usually step on him and then nearly fall over) to some music he'd found on the net. I watered the borders this evening (from the water butt which is starting to look low again) to aid the rose bushes and then listened to the song thrush singing his magnificent repertoire in the top of the big tree in the garden. There's now a mist over the fields and a pink haze in the sky.

Chocolate Brownies - recipe

Ingredients:

3 free range eggs (beaten)
100g butter
150g dark chocolate

100g self-raising flour (preferably semi-wholemeal)
Pinch of baking powder
175g molasses sugar
Nuts such as walnuts, almond slices, peanuts - unsalted (optional)

Beat up the eggs.  Fold in sugar and flour and baking powder.
In bain-marie melt butter and chocolate.
Add melted chocolate mix to the egg/sugar/flour mixture.
Pour into a baking tin (lined with baking paper that has been buttered) - add nuts to mix if you want once in tin (just sprinkle and push them in)
Bake at 170 deg C for about 25 minutes
Serve with yoghurt

Ronia

Today we started to read Ronia the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren.  I can't remember it although I'm about 80% certain that I read it as a child.  We love Pippi Longstocking here so I am hoping that Springy will enjoy reading about another character by the same author.

Springy also had an Irish dancing class today as next Saturday is St Patrick's Day.

Springy's latest hobby is...

A light thump, a whoosh and ...8, 9, 10, 11...

Yes, that's right it's skipping with a skipping rope.  She loves skipping in the house (although I'm trying to have some rules on that) and outside in the garden, especially on the trampoline.  I think it's great exercise for her and she really enjoys it.

 

A new bantam leap

We have 3 hens as of today. I went out and came back to another hen!  I'd been on a course and whilst I was out Springy and C had gone out in the garden to check the hens and only found Cutie.  Violet was just a mass of grey feathers on the ground and despite looking all around the garden for her they couldn't find her and feared the worst.  Springy was very upset.  C got in contact with someone over some secondhand bantams for sale as he knew when we lost Frazzle that Cutie had gone into pining mode and she already seemed distressed.  Anyway they picked up a hen and came back here to find Violet waiting.  So now we have 3 little hens.