Spring gardening!

It's that time of the year, the sun is warmer and we are getting out in the garden! We just bought our very own fruit trees so we're making space for planting them!

Esther is having the bestest time helping dig the hole!!
Smiles The Torrents'

DIY Terrariums {perfect party favours for a woodland party!}

 

 

Gardening is a whole lot of fun!! There's dirt, there's learning, there's Nature!!
For my birthday back in May (see HERE) I wanted to make for each of my guests something special to take home after my party in the Forest! Terrariums was the perfect gift!! I searched the net for many a design and idea and in the end came up with wanting to make little mushrooms and filling the jar itself with moss and lichen covered sticks!
We went hunting for the moss locally and the sticks too and then with all our supplies gathered got to work on making 15 terrariums!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The children LOVED it, and Sophia in particular had a real flare for details and adding just the right stick or moss!

We were all sooo excited about the process that we had to make more and so the extras now sit happily on our outdoor table.
I would have to recommend to anyone to give them a try, terrariums really are sooo simple to make and the end results are truly wonderful!
Smiles The Torrents'

Bees & Lavender

There are sooo many things that I'm loving in our garden at the moment! The bees are also loving it too with the lavender and the raspberry flowers starting and the little flowers all around!

It's been sooo nice to have some sunshine at last too, with warmth in the days and growth everywhere!
Smiles The Torrents'

A nest In our garden

I'm loving our garden at the moment, it's full of soooo many of my favourite things. I wanted to show you the birds nest I found! In actual fact a few weeks ago the children and I watched the Mummy black bird put the finishing touches to her nest with paper bark, then we saw her sitting on the nest! It was totally amazing!! Sadly though I think she thought it wasn't a safe place for her babies as I didn't see her anymore. I thought about why she went away.... it was sad to think there might be eggs left in there....... So after a week I pulled out the ladder and let my camera peek in......

This is what I saw when I played back the pictures! Isn't it amazing!?!? WOW those three precious little bluey eggs, just sitting there..... but no Mummy bird to care for them.........

For now we are keeping an eye out for any other birds making their little homes for spring! We watched some Starlings collecting dried grass yesterday for a nest and then saw she flew into the top of the church guttering right next door! Haven't been able to catch a pic of those yet! And some Collared Pigeons keep flying into the Paper bark tree in our nature strip, perhaps their home is in there somewhere! I'd love to see... but for now we will keep watching and learning about the birds that our God has created! AMAZING!!
Smiles The Torrents'

busy preparing...

Hello!!! It feels like AGES since I've chatted to you all! I've been "bum down tail up" trying so hard to plan my WHOLE SCHOOL YEAR that it's not left much time of sitting blogging! Still I couldn't let the day go without saying
HAPPY LOVE DAY!!!! I wanted to share with you something that I totally LOVE in our garden right now....
it's the first time we've planted sunflowers and they look sooo amazing! Such a happy flower!

So I hope that you have a day full of love and happiness and flowers and even chocolate!
Smiles The Torrents's :)

backyard vegies

Each year I LOVE to put in a vegie garden. There really is nothing that compares to you going out to the backyard and picking some home-grown goodness. Yesterday when we were out and I was fixing some of the HUGELY grown tomato plants after all the rain I showed Zeke some little bugs.

I told him that when I was little that I used to touch their fluffy "bum" and they flick away, so for me, I've always called them...
FLICK BUM'S
funny hey, it does sound a little silly now that I'm a grown woman but Zeke LOVED IT!!! (of course he did, it's the perfect name!!)

Hannah and Soph soon got in the mix of it and they all happily flicked these little "flick bum's" away off the plants!! SO much fun!!!!
(even for me too!! he he)
Question: Does anyone actually know the real name of these little bugs??
Must do some Googling to find out!!
Do you have a bug that has a Family given name??? Love to hear what it is??!!

I can't wait to cook up these babies into some very scrummy RELISH! YUM YUM!!! Slowly but surely they're getting there!!

Smiles The Torrents's

yummy summertime treats

We picked these the other day!
I love our raspberry patch, all thanks to our super Nanny who helped us get it started! Next year we will have a BUMPER crop, there's been sooo much growth this year with all the rain.

Hope your day is filled with sunshine and yummy summertime treats!