Sharing with caterpillars

I didn't tell them to pose for this, I promise. I was just walking around the garden with the camera. Aren't they gorgeous?! And I hope Brendan never grows out of that jumper. Actually, I take that back. I hope he does grow. Just not too quickly.

Here we are picking caterpillars off the veggies and checking out the egg we found just lying on the lawn. A neighbour on one side has a bunch of hens of different breeds so it may have come from them- but how it got onto our grass I'll never know. Anyway, a few days before this I was out picking caterpillars off the basil plants on the patio and telling Brendan that they were eating our food when Brendan said "but mama, shouldn't we share with the caterpillars?" So I stopped squashing them and we took them to their "new home" at the end of the garden.

Reading books in the garden. We pulled out a bunch of nature-y themed books but of course Brendan snuck in a couple of fire truck ones.

Tadhg and Spiderman bring in the supper ingredients.

Here's the view over the back fence of a lovely field of weeds. We are without a single tree in the garden so we actually have plans for this small patch of weedy field right outside the fence because it has a wee tree in it. Steve and Brendan are planning a tree house :)

Anyone know what this is? Steve bought a bunch of different, unlabelled seedlings at the flower market and we've forgotten what this is. Maybe cauliflower? Maybe brussels sprouts? We'll see soon. If the caterpillars leave it alone.

And Steve came back from the food market the other day with a pumpkin on the back of his bike.

It may look as though we've settled in to the garden but it's actually the only "problem" with this new house and is still a work in progress. This week sometime the landlord and a gardener are coming to turn over the topsoil, clean it of all the bits of bricks, rusty metal and broken glass, add some better quality top soil and then sow new grass seed. Then we have to stay off it for a couple of weeks. ouch. We're in the garden all the time so that will be interesting. It'll give us a reason to do lots more exploring in the neighbourhood.