I started reading Kathreen’s blog – Redcurrent – back in 2005 when I was still in the games industry, still doing stupidly long commutes and W and I were planning our wedding. I didn’t know her personally but I followed her blogging to Whipup and so have been reading what she had to say about life and craft and family for 8 years.

I was shocked and saddened to hear about her sudden death, and the death of her husband Robert Shugg nearly two weeks ago. They leave behind two young children and an education fund has been set up in their name. You can follow handy links to donate here at Mason Dixon Knitting or here at Whipup.

Kay and Ann of Mason Dixon Knitting ran a memorial weekend for Kathreen, where people posted their favourite Whipup posts.

This is mine: Creativity is the Soul of Motherhood:

Creativity is the soul of motherhood. And motherhood is the messiest, best, hardest, most-frustrating, rewarding, most heart-stopping creative project I have ever pursued.

This weekend was the late spring bank holiday and weather was beautiful! We didn’t spend very much time at the allotment to be honest, just wandered through to check on things a couple of times. Luckily my father in Law is back in the country and is planning to come do some weeding later in the week once the weather improves again (today it has done nothing but rain…)

Anyway what we did do was to go for a daily family walk and I have photos from that…

This is a tiny bit of woodland that used to be part of the early morning walks W and I took before we had children. There is now a proper clearing there now, with logs to sit on and lots of sticks to make shelters. Efbee and Ellarr had a ton of fun adding to the shelter that was already there.

Further on our walk the wellies were deployed and they went paddling down a stream.

On the way home they found a beautiful copper beech tree that was perfect for climbing. (I didn’t have much opportunity to be a tree climber when I was little so I’m amazed at my children’s climbing abilities – as well as their knack for finding good climbing trees. Luckily they have a daddy who is equally able to shin up a tree to rescue them if they get stuck.)

On Sunday evening W’s bee buddy J came over to help with a bee inspection. Unfortunately W got stung on the nose, which sounded really painful. He was a trooper though, and put the hive back together before escaping to the house to apply a bag of ice to his nose.  Double unfortunately a couple of times W has had a bad reaction to a sting and this was one of those times – by the morning his face was incredibly swollen and he didn’t look like himself at all! (Weirdly he also got stung on the hand and that was completely fine. Last time it was his arm and it swelled up like a sausage.)

The children are always interested to see what comes out of the hives during a bee inspection. This time there was a number of queen cells that needed to be pinched out (though now W is wondering why a colony that has a lot of room still available needed to make a number of extra queens – only time will tell I guess.) I hate to admit it, but I find bee keeping too gooey for me.  All the grubs and things make my skin crawl, which is a bit disappointing and not very ‘urban homesteader’ of me!

Hopefully W’s face will be back to normal by the end of the week.

Shall I start posting again? Yes! I think I will. Let’s start with some Allotment Monday…

Blossom EVERYWHERE!

Fact of the day: Rhubarb flower stalks are hollow.

Hops reaching upwards.

I am determined that we will actually get some gooseberries this year. (Damn you birds! *shakes fist*)

This is a very exciting picture for us – after 5 years (!) this is our first asparagus harvest. (And it was delicious!)