Rolll up, Roll up!

The circus is in town. All winter we've rattled past in the tram looking out for the Big Top and here it is, we wait no longer, no more sleeps - it's today - magnificent Circus Oz.

"Ella the Acrobat here" is how Ella answers the phone first thing in the morning. Suitable outfits are picked. Acrobat tricks (eg somersaults and leg pointing) practiced.

Boy Clown gets into role, having cheered up from his earlier performance as World's Most Miserable Clown while having his Clown Nose applied.

Do not try and escape little multi-directional clown. It's not a dissappearing act.

Almost too much - nearly time for the show to start.

Circus circus - sway pole, pole, trapeze, clown, group bike, hoops, contortion, juggling, teeterboard, hula hoops, upside-down acts, kangaroos, MUSIC, magnificent.

Grey - with colourful spots

We've had a lot of grey lately so I've been on the lookout for bright. There's a lot of it about, as they say, if you look closely.

Early morning

Early morning balloons. We are suffering a bit of TOO-EARLY at the moment. With small pre-breakfast snacks needing to be served to noisy boys at 6am when it is still pitch-black outside. So time to watch the sky brightening and balloons (our favourite balloons) float overhead.

Early morning Blossom. Dear Apricot tree - what are you up to? You've only just finished dropping the last of your leaves - but you do hate to be bare. While we were eating lunch a week or so ago Ella shouts "Mum - LOOK! Look out there!" She had seen the first blossoms breaking through, and when we went to explore and examine we were so happy to find the whole tree covered in bursting buds. It's only June - but this tree looks like and smells like spring, wafting it's fresh beautiful blossom-scent in through our back door.

Early morning tail. Do cat's sleep in? Never. This tail is taking a little quiet exercise before a full day of toddler tail-tainment. Trot-trotting into the frame comes one small boy, fluent in cat language, but deaf to these firm words: "SOFTLY, SLOWLY, GENTLY! And NOT his TAIL! NO! NO!"

This was posted by tamara (not Edward) - why does blogger insists on reorganising me?

Eat, walk, explore

a happy grubby curry-eating boy.

A very busy walk - and what a fabulous big blue street-drum

A bit of winter colour, a few problems with a camera.

Great Garden T

Just to surprise me, the winter garden has not completely perished. After spending loads of time (in my mind at least) in summer flapping about with potting mix, plant food and water for some pretty hard-to-spot results, I decided to give it all up for the winter while I pondered the problems of not enough sun, disappearing worms and Very Hungry Caterpillars. To expand: the worm farm seemed deserted, nothing grew much and what did grow was immediately munched up by a really healthy, happy herd of beautiful, fat bright-green caterpillars. So I left it all alone and expected nothing, but I noticed that the mint is BACK (sssshhhhh - don't tell the caterpillars), the parsley's poddling along, and the worms were just hiding - I snuck up on them one morning and caught them all diving into the compost. So I got a couple more pots at the market the other day and might get to reorganising the deckchairs soon and then giving them some more healthy neglect - as obviously the survival of the fittest approach is what works best for this garden. Don't be fooled though - it's not that great. I found a book the other day on Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh, which E and I visited in 2000 and got to longing for those lush greens and that blue ...

First day of winter

Everything was looking pretty wintery over at the "Natanic" Gardens, and it was coooolllld and a little bit foggy, but Jamie's mates Mr and Mrs Swan came over to greet us (although hadn't taken time to polish up their beaks we noticed) and Jamie found that walking about on his own was a pretty exciting prospect with much to explore, like sprinklers, leaves and seeds.