Living in Colour...

We’ve been living the ‘Good Life’ following our holiday in North Berwick. Nothing complex, nothing major – just good, simple fun. Apart from a trip to Edinburgh for the festival, we’ve generally been to be found in the garden – enjoying the fruits on offer and making our own fun – all helped by a reasonable splash of sunshine. 

All 3 girls have been top-tastic with the veggie beds this year and our world has exploded with peas, beans, salad and potatoes. On top of that blackberries and raspberries are filling our hedges, the apple tree has a reasonable crop (plums not so good though) and Emily’s sunflower is a Rooke record breaker. For my part I’m delighted with the cottage style garden and the roses that have bloomed – a labour of love for the last few years, now starting to come into its own. 

The kids are back at school/nursery, so weekends are the preserve of fun and laughter – which makes the working week a bit harder as summer unwinds and its back to routine proper. Still I can’t say we’ve had a bad summer….it’s been one packed full of lovely family memories – truly life in colour…but as the year progresses I'm having to work really try hard to smile because it happened not cry because its over! Ho-hum - more adventures needed methinks...

 Niomi with new friend Hector (just a visitor)

 Fun in the sun with more visitors

 The start of the main crop

 Wildflowers still doing well

 As is the cottage garden

And front garden too

Videoclip: Living in Colour

One finger one thumb keep moving...

A late cancellation, and one thumb operation later and we were off to North Berwick, with the addition of a thumb all splinted and bandaged up. Poor Emily was a little traumatised by the whole affair but was putting on a brave holiday face. (For details see here - turns out it was 'trigger thumb'.)

Once again, with the Gurney’s abroad, we’d been given the onerous task of looking after their cat, house and garden (in no particular order) and, once again, the house and garden were more receptive to our efforts than the cat. I wouldn’t say the poor thing was traumatised but he does get A LOT of attention from the girls. Emily was even going for her animal lover Rainbow’s badge for looking after Squeak for a week. But with thumb bandaged up, and clear direction not to get it wet, then a change to our normal North Berwick agenda was required.

 Rookes on tour - the North Berwick chapter

Thumbs up, she's still smiling

 In more thoughtful mood

Delight lies in a big deckchair

Generally in fine weather we visit the beach, enjoy the sea and apply a more maritime aspect to our lives. But, necessity being the mother of invention, we were forced into moving the goalposts and thinking more out the box for new options to entertain. So off we went on the move…Traprain Law and the Exmoor Ponies, Hailes Castles (old and new), Smeaton Garden Centre and lake, East Linton for Preston Mill and a few other attractions, Archerfield Fairy Trail, Tyninghame and Binning Woods, Fringe by the Sea, the hostelries of North Berwick, a few playparks, and by special ironic request of Emily – a trip to Finger and Thumbs craft shack. We even invented a new family activity - the Walcycle - some on bikes (mainly Niomi) and some on foot (mainly the rest of us).

All in all we didn’t miss out by our pollexial deficit, in fact we gained a whole wealth of new experiences and a lovely week away. Thanks for another year to the Gurney’s!

 Exmoor ponies on Traprain Law

 Scaling the castle walls

 Flax and Rape

 Walcycle in the Woods

 More traditional walk in the woods

 Happiness is dangling feet off a branch

 Dressed for the cycle but walking instead

 Preston Mill - as seen in Outlander...apparently

 Wheat - I now definitely know the difference between wheat, oats and barley (rye is a little trickier)

 A 'mindful' summers walk

 A slightly less mindful activity

 Uh-oh - what's she found now?

 They come in lots of shapes, sizes and colours

 Ours aren't quite this good

 Bad thumbs don't inhibit wing growth

 What a picture!

Farewell North Berwick!!

Ee by gum

Yorkshire, Yorkshire, ee by gum
We’re the Rooke family and we like to have fun
We travel in style in our yellow camper van
So watch out Yorkshire here we come

And so with the obligatory holiday song penned and words committed to memory we were off for our adventure in the land of the White Rose.

To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Yorkshire. I had vague memories of a family holiday as a child but really I was pretty much a blank canvas. We were staying on a farm which promised to let the kids feed the animals every day – and this turned out to be the highlight for both Emily and Niomi…Donald Duck; Mad Mable the hen; a pair of angry geese; Buster, Angie, Annie and Chloe the pigs; Molly and Mandy the lambs; and about 50 hens were all duly fed every morning by the girls and eggs were collected, graded and packed. It kicked off every day in style. Then there was the swimming…the farm had a quite simply superb indoor swimming pool which could be booked to ourselves for up to an hour and a half every day – it even had a sauna and steam room for us older children. So the pool, came a close second in the highlights.

Eggsperts

Milk-tastic

Buster the NBF

Private swimming apart from the ducks

These 2 things alone filled up quite a bit of the action, but we also packed in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Castle Hill, Cannon Hall Farm, the National Coal Mining Museum, pony riding, Yorkshire Yummy Ice Cream and a couple of walks on the Kirklees Way. And all these things added up to a great holiday full of simple holiday fun. The sun shone most of the time, the van pootled up and down through winding country lanes and idyllic Yorkshire villages, the family sung, laughed and enjoyed the fresh air, and we ate great home cooked food and local produce. A real recipe for success…

 Worried about journey down pit

Leaving the others behind 

 Sheep racing

Sister racing

 Peace at the YSP

Mummy-daughter time

Fake strop on top of Castle Hill 

 Hide and seek

Stand off

Horse joy

Sister bond

And to top it off we had a lovely couple of days down in Birmingham with my Mum and Dad, and a quick overnighter near Preston with friends Edward and Ewa (despite torrential weather from the Manchester tornado making for an epic journey).

 Ice cream face

Ice cream face

Half the Rooke clan

Now it’s back to work for 5 days before we’re off again to North Berwick…Phew. Ee by gum indeed.

Release...

release
verb
1. allow or enable to escape from confinement; set free.
2. allow (something) to move, act, or flow freely.

We all need ‘release’ every now and then…it’s important to allow ourselves to flow better and feel relaxed and recharged. I’m a great believer in meditation and fasting to let me flow better, but there’s been plenty of other release going on in the Rooke household.

First up following release from school was some summer adventures round and about. Then it was the Kelburn Garden Party to kick off the summer holidays in style. This quirky, hippy delight is an annual festival taking place in the grounds of Kelburn Castle – itself a quirky, hippy delight. We rocked on down there and had a marvellous time - Niomi stealing the show with her non-stop grooving round the grounds.

 Chilling in the woods 1

Chilling in the woods 2

The iconic Kelburn Castle

Still lovin' the unicorn

You don't get this at Glastonbury!

Videoclip: Festie veteran

And then there were butterflies. The girls have been growing these beauties from caterpillars…watching them every day going through their miraculous metamorphosis via chrysalis to emerge as wonderful Painted Ladies. And then release to our garden.

Release!

A painted lady on not so painted nails

3 butterflies

2 butterflies

Having a drink in the sun

Delighted at butterfly success

But not every release needs be so dramatic – some gentle time in the garden can also do the job. My ongoing horticultural opus has progressed well this year – particularly with the inclusion of my earth-loving spouse. She’s certainly getting her release from growing our soul food – ‘my veggies’ they are now referred too….Geez – I’m only allowed to touch the flowers these days. Still the whole place is looking resplendent this year – particularly ‘my roses’…

And with holidays to Yorkshire and North Berwick right upon us – hopefully they’ll be plenty more release coming right up.

Garden release 1

Garden release 2