Rain cannot dampen our wildness!

I spend the baby's morning nap writing up my wildlife story about an Owl who got lost in a flood and entering data from my butterfly survey. I like rainy days for catching up with myself and doing things I wouldn't do in hot weather.  Having said that, once Jamie back from school we did exactly what we did on the hottest day in June: went for  an excursion for clean tadpole water from the stream. We currently have tiny tadpoles in the tank, 2 emerging froglets in a wash basin with things to climb out on and several larger tadpoles in another wash up bowl. We were the only people by the stream today! No dogs, only fishes for company. We got a bit cold and wet though after only a banana rather than a four course picnic for a snack.

Day 27 was about enjoying the raindrops on the roses. We were watching tadpoles and at bedtime my eldest chose a fantastic story from school about 2 children who get told off for a hole in the garden that has actually been made by a badger!

Days 24 -26 #30Days Wild: Woodpeckers, Butterflies, Streams and Friends.

I thought weather had broken over the weekend but today was a gorgeous sunny, warm day without too much wind and so I took the baby out for our butterfly transect walk. We only met one other person at the end of the walk. The freedom and joy of hiking through the long grass as clouds of butterflies few up was unparalleled. There were many small skippers about and I caught a glimpse of swallows perching on wires. I have separated 6 near froglets and several larger tadpoles from the many in the tank that is now topped up with stream water we collected again from the river in an impromptu after-school picnic.

A large skipper now amongst many other butterflies on Speltham

swallows on wires

Goat's Beard

The oldest kids have reached a "river island"

The perilous crossing on stepping stones to reach the island

Swathes of Meadowsweet

One of the best things about day 26 of our random acts of wildness was bumping into our friend with her young toddler who is a similar age to my youngest. She has just moved into the village where we go to the stream and we offered to show her our secret wild place. Her baby can toddle very fast and is "on the go" compared to our baby who is still just crawling and sitting and dependant on us to show him the water. It was a great exercise for my older children to show which parts of the river and stream were suitable for the little boy to paddle in holding his mum's hand. We also shared our wild thoughts and picnic. I've mentioned before in commenting on others' blogs that sometimes we need a friend or other people to engage in nature around us. "Wild" does not have to mean "solitary"

We spent most of Sunday having dinner at a friend's house in town so today my post is of a book I started reading which has amazing descriptive wild powers. It is "H" is for Hawk.

I had let the day fly by in a whirl of indoor children's sports: swimming, gym badge day. Little heed paid to a nature activity. And as I contemplated my lack of wildness at the kid's bedtime we spotted not one but three juvenile green woodpeckers in our garden. One had landed on the hammock frame. I don't have a good telephoto lense to capture such a sight but it is ingrained on my memory forever. Wonderful!

Spot the baby woodpecker from the window!

Days 20-23 #30DaysWild Metamorphosis and a Heatwave

 It was a day I'd hoped wouldn't come to pass with all our water changing and tadpole care. I was a tad depressed this morning to fish out a few dead tadpoles and 3 apparently drowned froglets (even though Isaac had carefully provided perches and routes out of the water for them). Had they been overfed? Was it natural selection or overcrowding in an artificial environment? Maybe with the heatwave there wasn't enough  water. I felt awful that most conservation advice was not to move the frogspawn in the first place and that I hadn't turned down the tadpole gift. Later I consoled myself that there is natural high tadpole mortality in the wild and we'd tried our best. We went to stream on a rescue mission with just baby as 30+ tadpole lives depended on it. Eventually I decided upon a 2 wash basin supplement to fish tank as with the heatwave there was not enough oxygenated water for them. This has since far worked well. There was hardly anyone at the stream and just birds singing so I dipped my toes in the water and let the baby splash his feet. Some of my sombre mood ebbed away into nature. A lady walking her dog stopped and saw us at one with the stream. "More mums should do that" I nodded and decided not to over-share the rescue mission nature of us visiting the stream. Later in the day I  carried out the butterfly survey after school with Isaac. Marbled Whites newly emerged. I  spotted Ringlet butterflies too. Isaac was suncreamed to maximum effect and full of energy and goodwill even after a full day at pre-school. We shared an icecream after our butterfly search. It was a good end to a scorching and suffocating day.

In the morning I took my youngest child to the aquatic section of a garden centre and purchased 2 large bunches of oxygenating pondweed. I didn't go and take any from a wild pond because I was afraid of my nearly-toddling child falling in. As the tadpole situation was improving with the measures taken and the hottest day ever was forecast I went onwards to collect more stream water. This time taking Isaac and baby for picnic. It was indeed a very hot day. We all dipped in water. Arthur caught purple flowers he found bobbing in the stream near where we paddled. It was beautiful. We filled our wash basins. Life was good again.

Isaac with our tadpole water containers replenished with good clean water

I counted out 15 tadpoles in tank and one basin with Isaac. We could see which tadpoles were losing their tales and becoming froglets. My oldest was off School with a bug. It was a long, tiring day but there was a moment to appreciate the new roses in bloom in our garden.

My youngest two in the late afternoon rays of sunshine. At one with the garden picking Campanula flowers

First roses that bloomed for Father's Day

Munstead Wood my absolute favourite rose

A flash back to earlier in year when we'd planted bare root roses and were waiting for growth.

It is a good end to a difficult week of parenting.2 froglets are released into my friend's pond where there are plenty of plants for them to climb to edge. My friend has never seen a froglet in all her life and her children are also impressed. Her pond is walking distance from our tadpole tank but we stop every 5 minutes to check the froglets are ok. on their final trip via container at bottom of pushchair.

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Day 19 #30DaysWild listening to the Wild.

 The super-hot weather has continued and we have tadpoles metamorphosing into froglets which is keeping me up late at night thinking around a whole lot of wild issues. Do I now have too many tadpoles in the tank? Have they got enough food? Are they going to eat each other's tails before I get around to sinking a shallow barrel into the wild area for their release? Should I have already given them back to the friend who gave the tadpoles to us to add to their pond? And so on. There are some helpful sites like Frog Life with the correct advice. There are also some supportive sites such as mumsnet where tadpole-keeping mummies can relate their life/death tadpole events to each other. I can feel a trip back to the clean river water and some serious digging in my garden beckoning for tomorrow. Tonight I stepped outside, looked up at the stars and breathed. I could hear a Tawny Owl calling in the distance. I said a silent prayer for the froglet that remains still in the tank and for the young Great Tits I can hear in our log nesting box then went back in.

 Today was a special treat day for the boys as it was Father's Day. I'd booked the 9am Hovercraft and organised picnic items so that we could head over to the Isle of Wight for a long hot day. As we got into the car to head on to Portsmouth  I noticed that most of our bare root roses in the new front garden bed have come into bloom for Father's Day! Our weeding and nurturing is paying off! We left our car all day at Clarence Pier and had an amazing hover over the Solent. On arrival we took the Southern Vectis Bus from Ryde to Newport and then another bus on to Yarmouth. Once in Yarmouth, using our Day Rover Ticket we took the open-top tour bus called "The Needles Breezer" all the way to the Needles New and Old Battery where we enjoyed our lunch with outstanding views and wildlife. This is the only time I've been to the Needles with the sea like glass, hardly any wind!

Beetle on thrift - to be identified (gold and green/shiny!)

 Remember earlier in June we took a train to see a jellyfish? Well we are out-doing ourselves now. We had walked back from the Needles to the Alum Bay stop to admire wildlife and jetskis, nipped back on the tour bus and walked a little way from the main road to the beach at Colwell. Within 5 minutes of me changing into a swimming costume inside our tiny beach shelter I heard excited screams "mum get out of the tent ...LOOK it's a jellyfish! Mum, this boy's catching it for us". And so in a yellow bucket the poor dead beast was displayed upside down. I think it's a compass jellyfish from it's distinctive markings. And, this one does really sting. Again, no-one had thought to touch it!

Compass Jellyfish

The Needles Breezer Bus we took to our picnic

 I'm proud of the way my whole family co-operated with the bus time-tables and our ideas for wild things on our day out. I'm also very impressed with the bus operator for never having to wait more than 5 minutes for our connecting bus.

The Beach Shelter we had carried rolled up under the baby carrier by bus. Essential with 3 young kids.

 The main opportunity for wildlife was some time in the garden before my 6yr old went to a friend's party. I bought him a notebook from the supermarket but he didn't want to wait for me to supervise him nature journaling and so stuck in this representation of a flower sketched while I was elsewhere hanging out washing. The spellings are a bit suspect, the card a bit ripped but I'm very proud of him for taking the initiative to do his own wild thing.

Day16 #30DaysWild: Born to be free: Our wonderful release!

 I stayed up far too late last night writing about the slugs we attempted to make on day 15 which were very engaging but very messy and made me debate whether the idea was worth publishing (I did anyway). This morning I was very soundly asleep when two boys jumped on me in bed at 7am shouting "mummy, mummy get up we've got a mouse in a box" "huh? eer what?". "We've rescued a mouse with papa" "Can we keep it as a pet?" "MUMMY get UP you have to see it?".

 I went downstairs to find two half-eaten childrens' breakfasts and a poor little mouse huddled next to some muesli flakes in an empty PG tips box which still had sequins stuck on it from pre-school junk modelling. I quizzed my husband. The mouse had been found on our staircase alive looking scared. Maybe our cat had brought it in but not killed it. I suspect it may have let itself in when one of the children left our outside door open. I explained to the boys that it was a wild animal and it wouldn't be fair for us to keep it as a pet (which has what the tadpoles seem to have become to them....but they also understand this will change when they are frogs). I also explained that mummy had to release the mouse quietly as it looked quite frightened and mice and small birds can have heart attacks if they are in such a scary situation. The boys were happy with this idea and watched me through the window. I took the box right up to our hedgerow with long grass at the back of our garden and gently turned it over so the mouse was facing the hedge. I dug out my reader's digest mammals book as Jamie, my 6 yr old wanted to "investigate the mouse, what it eats, where it lives and its name". We decided it was a Wood Mouse.

A creature that Isaac my 4 year old particularly likes is a snail. When we are looking for butterflies he is really looking for snail shells and if they are empty he puts them in my bag. If they are alive he talks to them and makes sure I don't squash them by accident.

 I took the baby and Isaac to Southampton today as a special treat to hear classical music for babies in a church. Randomly we arrived on the last day of an art trail of giant snails on what is grandly termed the "esplanade" but which really is the outside of a large mall called West Quay. We viewed them from the old city walls.

It is very late as I write this but I want you to know that Isaac spent a good half hour tadpole feeding and watching today. He discovered only one tadpole has arms AND legs and starting changing into a frog. He named it but the name was so random I can't remember it (Hafalak or something). He took a piece of kindling from my woodshed and put it in the tank instinctively for the frog to have a "log" to hop on. We also found that the tadpoles were absolutely starving and eating the meaty food rather than the lettuce today so they must be at the next stage. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. I'm finding this #30DaysWild challenge getting very exciting.

Day 15 #30DaysWild: Idea Warning: Make a slimy slug instead of a fairy door...

It's a flower, mushroom and hedgehog mummy!

1. Clay
Its hot again today and focus has been on my 4 year old who not only has been practicing independent gymnastics at a club but also had a stay and play session at the school he'll start in September. When my eldest got home from school we decided to do some craft. I obtained a wooden fairy door for the kids to paint from a well-known discount store some time ago and that's what we'd planned to do but magically it disappeared (only to re-appear later) just when we wanted to paint it. I delved around the shelves and found 2 wild mediums that would appeal individually to my two older boys. The first was terracotta air-dry clay. They loved this. Jamie my 6 year old created a flower, a mushroom and a hedgehog (above) while Isaac said "I made nothing" with a big smile on his face while stabbing a ball of clay with a pencil.

2. Slime

Out  of Jamie and Isaac we have a slime-o-phobic child and a slime-a philic child. I discovered that Jamie is a slime-o-phobic child when we got invited to a 6 year olds hands-on science party where they had to make slime...he could not bear to touch it! His brother is the opposite and if he sees something slimy he needs to touch it...just demonstrating how completely different kids can be. Consider that while making a slimy slug for #30DaysWild was mummy's brave award winning original idea (inspired by a science pack) and while at least one of my kids would comply, it really should be shelved and NEVER printed on an idea card. Why? Because I can guarantee that although most kids would love it it would be sheer torture for a precious few to even watch their parent make a slug. Also for several other reasons I later discovered.The slime I used was in a pack that I'd bought second hand at a nearly new baby sale (you heard correctly: came home with babygrows, new pyjamas and a horrible science make a slug kit...). The slime had uncongealed itself and slipped out of the slug mould into a giant mess. It didn't look like a slug to me but a dripping monster from startrek. In five minutes I got it on my shorts, on the wooden table I hadn't properly covered, on my baby's babygrow where I was holding him away at a distance to watch. The kids shrieked in happy disgust and worked out which toys they were going to use to kill my slime-monster. It went in the bin against all my principles of sustainability and I have not got the wildness in me this evening to make the "top-up" slime suggested in the pack using PVA glue, cornflour and food colouring. Not today folks!

Day 14 #30DaysWild: a nature story at kid's bedtime 13 # gardening and butterflies (again)

 It was so hot today and the baby was still under the weather from teething/virus that I decided to stay at home and garden with just one trip out after school to GP for baby. I got "curry pasty mix" out of the freezer thanks to my 4 year old's prompting and let it de-thaw on the garden table. Later I made some shortcrust pasty and we had a pasty and salad picnic in our garden. The kid's had got really excited with the paddling pool out under their climbing frame slide to toboggan into. I realised that none of day had been especially wild, just lazy and hanging around mainly so I got Nicola Davis's "My first Nature Book" out for a treat at bedtime. Love the spring tadpole section. My bilingual children were stumped when I asked them what a tadpole was in French: it is têtard. I have bribed them to remember and repeat it another time to their french father.

What I am most excited about in June, especially in this warm weather is the abundance and blooming of roses. I am very excited that most of the bare root roses in our new front garden bed look just ready to bloom in time for father's day.

Albertine Rose rambling in our garden

 Baby Art chose to help me in the garden today. I have a lot of plants and seedlings placed temporarily above our well cover and he likes nothing more to try and get them out of the pots!

 I have started to plant out seedlings in earnest. I felt very happy to get this small frame of runner beans set up.

 First Large skippers have emerged on Speltham Down. Had to go back to photo and identify as I wasn't sure if they were small skippers or not as it's a year since I last saw any, especially as one I spotted had deformed wings. Aaggh! Butterflies!

 On the return trip with camera and 3 boys accompanying me. Jamie (6) my oldest pointed out this ladybird.

 I let them choose their own routes and they found their usual tree swing and did "rocket blasters" on it.

The skipper butterfly that confused me!