A little everyday...

I've been thinking a lot lately about getting things done and being better at things generally.

Take our garden for instance. I'm no seasoned gardener and my fingers are certainly not green. But more and more I'm enjoying it. Seeing things grow and watching the abundance of colour. However to keep it nice takes regular trimming, weeding and care. It occurs to me that this applies to other almost all other areas of my life.

I've always been an extreme sort of person, a walking contradiction. My friend once commented on how I was the messiest person and the tidiest person she had ever met. There was no in-between. My surroundings were either spotless/sparkling or trashed/looks like there's been a burglary. I'm like this in every area of my life. Near perfect (yeah right) or complete disaster. Remembering friends birthdays with beautifully wrapped and thoughtful gifts to forgetting where my phone, diary is or even what month it is. Exercising solidly for 2 weeks to barely leaving the house. Without going down the perfectionist guilt spiral I'm thinking about balance. While I want to accept the real me, it doesn't hurt to try and find this balance. A little everyday. Its hits me every time I am gardening. If I want to be better at drawing I need to draw a little everyday, take photos everyday, tidy every day, get down and fully play with the children more everyday. It's that simple. Yet I rarely manage it all. 

Mind you who does? Still it cant hurt to keep trying...

With all this in mind we planted our veg patch this week. Since we only just moved back in we were late doing it. I think this is a good thing as we have had nearly no rain in April and the earth was dried out. This last week though, we've had much more rain and even thunder storms (Man I love them). 

The plan is to take care of this veg patch every day with the children. Starting with them helping us plant the seeds. Mainly because its fun but also in the hope that they stop using the veg patch as their personal sand box...

Lucas is the most guilty of this. As soon as he is outside and he thinks I'm not looking, he kicks off his wellies and heads straight for it...

And its difficult to resist letting him because I'm a sucker for bare baby feet...

Isaac has been excited by the prospect of planting seeds for days...

 Eagerly waiting with his little spade...

And now the time for waiting is over. It was time to rake and sow those seeds. We didn't give Lucas any seeds to plant because he would just eat them so Isaac took his role very seriously.

In reaction to this Lucas tried to plant a large stone... Isaac was seriously unimpressed...

The whole operation was overseen by a supervisor

Who certainly didn't take it as seriously as hoped...

Lucas moved on to playing with the bird bath...

During which time we were planting the runner beans. Isaac gasped when he saw them exclaiming 'look magic beanstalk beans!!!...'

You would not believe the trouble we had putting up the poles for the beanstalks, I mean Runner Beans... Maybe we should have looked it up on ehow or something...

We are such amateurs.

But we got there in the end and the veg patch was looking pretty darn good...

 All that remained was to water it (which did not mean water the children Daddy *sigh*)

Look at the state of Lucas...

But its good. Exploring, getting your hands dirty is what its all about right?

 Although I draw the line at eating me plums before the've has a chance to grow and ripen...

And after days of 'is it growing yet mummy?' and 'we are going up the beanstalk aren't we?' by some miracle something started to poke its way out through the earth...

'Hey there little lettuce leaves, I'm going to try to take care of you a little everyday...'

And in the spirit of all this, another thing I haven't done since we moved back in was go for a bike ride. Which I did do first thing Saturday morning. And by first thing I mean 8.30am because I can barely form a sentence when the kiddies get me up at 6am. I don't know if I'll exercise a little everyday (even though I intend to try) but I'm so glad I did on this day. Because I had an amazing time. Must have been those magic beans...

I found this lovely spot. In order to get these pictures I had to leave my bike on the hill and clamber ungracefully over a fence with barb-wire. Luckily no one was around to see...

Seriously beautiful...  

Here's to 'a little everyday'.