Trapped toddler parents of the fabled Winter 2020/2021. Puddle suits at the ready..hello Christmas!

[footprintsintheslow]

New thread as the other one is running out.

A place to find find and share ideas of how to get through these crazy times with lockdowns and babies and toddlers.

New members welcome.

As proof of the pudding, I got DD's winter report back last week, and she's in the high 80s and 90s for everything (and that's not even a stealth boast. That's just a boast. I'm very proud of DD1)

That tray is so pretty @footprintsintheslow!

We rent our house and the garden is just lawn, I need to maybe try and do something with it. But I’m no gardener, but we can Chuck seeds in the borders.

I’m stealing that trinity @ReallySpicyCurry2

@MonkeyPuddle try cosmos, calendula, cornflowers, nigella and nicotiana for maximum impact with minimal effort. I grow nicotiana/night scented stock every year, just for my husband, it reminds him of when we first lived together and I grew it in pots on the patio. The smell on a summer evening is like nothing else.

If you've quite a lot of border to fill, The Secret Gardening Club is brilliant for ready to plant perennial plugs. Just shove them in and leave them alone and they will usually be fine. Salvia Hot Lips is a great one if you have kids, because it looks bloody lovely and smells like Ribena. I planted a sensory garden for a local primary and it was an absolute winner, the kids can rub and sniff away at it and it is indestructible. Chocolate mint too, though sink it in a pot or it takes over. I once did a Terry's Chocolate Orange themed border - chocolate cosmos, chocolate mint, Helenium, and calendula.

I am going to shut up now before I bore you all to tears in terms of gardening, picture a deranged woman lying face down on a raised bed, sobbing gently into the frozen soil, because planting season is so near, but yet so far - and that's basically me

@ReallySpicyCurry2 found perfect to me! I'm really enjoying the gardening chat too. Although my husband is against planting anything that can't be eaten. We dug over the front garden of our tiny terraced house and it's mainly strawberries wirh done gooseberries and black currants with a bit of room to squeeze in courgettes and green beans in summer. The tiny back garden is full of unruly raspberries and rhubarb and more courgettes.

I have to sneak in a few geraniums and put up with the moaning.

Anyway we have snow here for the first time!!! Very exciting ❄️❄️❄️

About 5 years ago I put in six plants from lidls and now there must be hundreds out there. Abs we've given away hundreds too. Last year we had 20 kilos of strawberries and we bought a dehydrator to store them.

@MonkeyPuddle. My favourite last year (bit of a novice as we've only had a garden for a couple of years) was coreopsis. We planted some in big pots on the patio and I found the flowers so cheerful to look at. Also, borage - strictly a herb so you can do stuff with it, but we just planted it for the bees .

@footprintsintheslow. I envy you your strawberries. We haven't had much success with ours so far...mostly managed to kill them!

I’m loving the gardening chat! We gave up on our veg patch after DS1 arrived, I’d like to get back to it, especially if I end up not going back to work after mat leave (not yet decided), and I need to pull a few armfuls of nettles out of the flower bed and put something pretty in. But our focus this year is getting back in to chickens, I’ve ordered some hatching eggs to arrive in a couple of weeks, DS1 loves having chicks in the house so that’ll be fun. If we can get our act together we’ll add a couple of pigs in a month or two.

Water tap is set up as pictured, I am currently “having a lie in” whilst DH is in charge, I can hear lots of excited chatting coming from downstairs!

@WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere the pump looks fab, you've convinced me to get one! Although they're are loads on Amazon, can you link to the one you picked please?
I'm also having a lie in, well, going through Mumsnet and having a nosey on next. Is it bad I've bought this year's Xmas jumper for son already?! It was half price! also got him some new wellies as well also half price.

@footprintsintheslow I am also jealous of your strawberries. I can't grow them for toffee - think it's the salt air. The wild ones do well though. 20 kilos! I can only dream. My girls get through berries like a Very Hungry Caterpillar double act.
I've sympathy for both you and your husband when it comes to the flowers/veg conundrum, chuck them all in together and call it a potager garden companion planting is the way to go. I love a good geranium myself.

@WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere what's your chicken set up like? I'm constantly having a running debate with myself re chickens. My parents have always had loads of poultry, until rece, but they are in the countryside proper, so the chooks just wandered everywhere and it was fine. But I'm in the village, and although we have the space, marauding chooks could get through the hedge no problem, and end up God knows where. So realistically I'd have to build them a decent sized permanent run, and that's where I sputter to a halt, because I'm used to insane chickens who march daily up to the tops of 30 acre fields to scold the cows in the next field over, and who then return home via the (empty) road. It just seems odd to not have free ranging hens. So the answer is probably rescued battery hens, isn't it? But then what sort of coop? Ahh so many questions. The last of my mum and dad's flock have gone to the big henhouse in the sky and they're not keeping any more, but the hens were such a big part of my childhood, and then DD1s, that I can't imagine DD2 not having the joy of collecting eggs from under feathery arses.

The one I bought has disappeared, sorry! I just picked the cheapest one with prime delivery.

@ReallySpicyCurry2 we’ve always had a big enough run to keep them in, then let them free range in the day. We had decent fencing round the garden, clipped a wing in the first year, but they never attempted to leave the garden (different if they can just go straight under a hedge I guess). But big run came in very useful when we started having fox visitors, and when bird flu meant chicken lockdown. We’ve not actually got anything set up at our new house yet, DH and I are of different mindsets - he wants to stress because we can’t afford £2k on a huge purpose built coop and run, I’m happier finding a cheap shed and greenhouse frame on marketplace and bodging it together!

These runs are good, we had two flocks going at one point and we built one of these round a small coop gardenlifedirect.co.uk

Ah wow thanks @ReallySpicyCurry2 that’s really helpful info! Our house is ex council so it’s huge! But it’s a funny shape with a brick outhouse which has been plonked in the middle of it. We back up onto some woods though which are beautiful, it’s an absolute joy to watch the birds. We have lots of brambles growing along the back fence, DS loved picking them last year.
Currently we have no separation between ours and next doors house, just some old shirt posts and a couple of rose bushes but I’m thinking of planting a few shurbby bushes along it, we’re hoping to buy the house in a year or two.

@MonkeyPuddle that's a gorgeous space
We had the same issue with fencing along one side, and we bought sheep wire and a few fence posts and some bamboo screening-DH had it strung up in an afternoon and it's been rock solid. Also good for growing sweet peas. Our garden was a total mess when we moved in, to the point where at one point we couldn't get a survey done because nobody could actually get into the garden. Nobody had been to the back of it in years. I ended up going in with my loppers and clipping an actual honest to God tunnel through to the back wall. Found a few lost Amazonian tribes in the process., but it meant the bloke from the bank could get through without ruining his nice suit. That was three years ago this weekend, actually, and it's unrecognisable now, and we've had piss all money to put into it really.

@WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere your coops are an inspiration I'm veering back towards chickenish ideas fairly strongly now, though not until this bird flu thing is sorted I suppose

Placemarking to read later! Great idea, thank you OP.

Loving the chicken talk, we used to have 400 of them when we lived on a small holding, I was known as the egg lady. We've been toying lots with getting some at this house as DS absolutely loves chickens and eggs.

@WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere. Yes, please link your pump if you can...looks great!

This is so interesting - my current gardening efforts are limited to some indoor hyacinth!
Hope you’re ok today @Souperspooker? I know what you mean about a schedule - having a routine is saving us! A way through to the end of the day when things get tough!

400 chickens! Bliss. Are you not on the smallholding now, @Motherofmonsters? (am nosey, sorry)

We had SNOW! A tiny skiff, but enough for DD to spade it into her little wheelbarrow and waddle it up and down the garden. And also eat it. Honestly it's the most low effort messy play ever.

I would like to stick to a schedule, but I just can't seem to manage the bit where you sit down and work one out, and I'm liable to change my mind a lot. But really it would be so much more sensible to follow one

Can't wait for my pump to arrive now, I've ordered one from amozn for £9.99. Not sure of it's any good or not but they all look similar.

All the gardening talk makes me jealous! I haven't a clue where to start. I always think every summer "I should have planted some seeds/bulbs" but have left it too late. The garden out the front where if like lots is very shady. I've tried to grow lavender a couple of years but it all died :( I love the smell of lavender.

What lavender did you plant? If it's French and you're not in SE England, it'll probably die. You need the English sort and it does like plenty of sun. Bulbs are usually fine in shade though. Our local shop has little pots of snowdrops and daffs and mini irises for a pound - I've bought some and shoved them straight in. If you can get something like that, they'll bloom this year. To be honest I just shove bulbs in any old time, I mean preferably Autumn, but they all come up eventually and better than forgetting about them as they languish in the back of the shed. Hostas are good shade plants too.

Please give me a virtual snack if I bore on about plants btw

We stayed in an air b n b in the summer with chickens - ds went out in the morning to feed them with my mum, its was lovely! Thinking of booking somewhere(with a good cancellation policy) soon for a summer UK break, give us something to look forward to!

Also jealous of the gardening, I'm desperate to get out and sort ours, I've neglected it since ds came along!

Today we went for a walk breaking the ice puddles then another walk in the snow to meet our bubble. Obviously rather than sled or build a snowman they insisted on going to the park... like we do almost every day 🤦‍♀️

Then ds and dh had a bath to warm up / splash about in (I cannot WAIT)for splash parks and pools to open, and then we started watching soul.

Not a bad day considering my ratbag woke at 5!

Ah really spicey curry-,you should completely be proud. Holy trinity is perfect. Well done that mum.

Footprints, beautiful tuff tray!
I'm taking mine out now. So much excitement here for out tiny smattering of icey snow-ish -ness. DD was telling all on zoom about how daddy made them a whole snowball! And put it in a tinfoil pie dish. DS2 repeating enthusiastically 'pie pie' he loves s mince pie, sausage roll, anything pie ish..

Miserable DD this morning, after snowball thrills, she's been so sad I felt like needed to go all out to chill her up with an at home day. Actually did me good not going out for s change.

A recipe to cheer up your children.
Whip up bubble bath plus food colouring in food processor adding hot water bit by bit. It's amazing how big it grows!

Put on edge of bath with children in bath along with contents of kitchen - cups bowls spoons jugs - cue monster supermarket, making meringues, feeding ducks etc
Plus pond sludge at the end!

I got acupuncture yesterday and feel like new woman. I bought a book of kids baking nd planning to work through the whole thing. They were leaping about with excitement looking at all the sugary pictures..

We had hugely successful afternoon making fairy cakes and covering them in brightly coloured gloop - and eye ball sprinkles! Thanks Amazon. They came in a kit with food colouring pens so v arty DD had enjoyable half hour drawing tiny pictures on rice paper to stick on the cakes.

And then to spend the rest of the week delivering to friends and actually seeing real people!!

Dahlias. Thankyou XX

@reallyspicycurry2 - sadly not anymore. We were renting and the fields were then listed as being in an sssi so we were told the animals had to go. There wasn't any point in us staying then so we moved back to the town. We've always got our eye out for another opportunity.

Love the bubble bath idea @super, I'll have to give that a go.
My pump has arrived so I might incorporate the pump and bubbles into a tray