It’s wet & windy – school’s out for summer!

It’s always been the way here as far as I can remember.  May and June are hot and sunny because it’s exam season so everyone has to stay in and study.  As soon as term ends and freedom beckons, the rain begins.

This year there’s even been stormy weather as an added bonus.  Very sad news for the sunflowers, alium, anemones and basically anything which had managed to grow more than 5cm tall in the garden… I am, however very proud to announce that I have a baby horse chestnut tree growing from an actual conker!

We got ourselves into a good homeschool routine during lockdown.  We took over the dining room and got stuck into learning about fractions, ancient Egypt, persuasive writing, the human body (meet Bony Tony below), healthy eating (meet the Diet Police below), making honeycomb, mini beasts, predators, decision trees…and PATIENCE*!

We watched all manner of birds in the garden, occasionally got distracted by the hares and rabbits playing on the lawn, watched cows racing down the road (they’re back in the field across the way, and sometimes very much on the loose!), and discovered that we have an acrobatic squirrel who comes and does backflips in the vegetable beds.**

Like most of the rest of the country, I wouldn’t have chosen to live the past few months this way, but lots of fun times were had and it’s been great to spend our days with the boys*** without the usual trips away from home for conferences and meetings.

We both already work from home most of the time, so that didn’t change.  We did not make any progress in the garden last spring, so that did change!  I now have a very long list of ‘things to get done’ in the house, so it’s no bad thing that the weather has turned…

Juggling homeschooling, work deadlines, voluntary commitments, and making sure we had family downtime together is harder than it sounds.  The days quickly began to merge and the weeks have flashed by.  I have fallen really behind with the usual life admin again – texts, phonecalls, cards, emails, letters, and the blog!

It’s both exciting and a bit daunting to be easing lockdown, having not ventured out of our local area for so long.  We made a flying visit to the coast this weekend with the boys and they were delighted to see (& get into!) the Atlantic.

No doubt there will be more day trips as the holidays progress, so we look forward to being able to actually see some of you in person again before long!

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*Mostly me trying to get a handle on that one.
**Not yet captured on camera, but working on it.
***OK, that didn’t always feel like a blessing.