Monday mentor...RHS Wisley

This may not seem like an obvious Monday mentor but for many local (Surrey) based Mummies, RHS Wisley is a godsend.

The home of the Royal Horticultural Society (from hereonin referred to as RHS), the gardens at Wisley provide a beautiful, safe and clean environment where both Mummy and baby can learn about plants, animals, seasons, colours, and life.

Both Anna & I are keen gardeners, we may have mentioned that once or twice, and can often be found walking around Wisley with our terrors, I mean delightful children, in tow.

Gifted to the RHS in 1903, the garden now boasts a huge array of different habitats for us to explore. At this time of year, the heathers in the far reaches of the north east of the gardens - through the pine tress are particularly eye catching, as is the last of the rose blooms in the new Queen Mother's Rose Garden.

Always stunning is the green house with its large artificial waterfall. DangerBaby and I always save a bit of our sandwiches for Mr. Swan who hangs about on the lake near the Glasshouse doors.

My absolute favourite place is the fruit orchards! Pushing the buggy up fruit mount is well worth the effort. In spring time there's beautiful blossom, and in autumn a heady smell of fermenting fruit fall! It's easy to see why people believe that the fruit that tempted Eve was an apple (the actual type of fruit is never mentioned in the bible).

We wander back to the entrance via the Herb garden and cottage gardens, through the roses back to the Alpines, where we can follow the streams down via waterfalls and splash pools back to the house with it's formal grass and boarders.

When we're with friends we visit the WILD AT WISLEY area to play making dens, learning about knots, and improving our balance on logs smoothed by many little hands.

It's a wonderful place with things to discover at every turn, you can't see it all in one day. We've been going at least once a week for two years and still find new things each time we visit.

So pop along to Wisley and have a wonderful time getting back to nature!

Green Fingers #NGW

Today marks the beginning of National Gardening Week with events up and down the country celebrating it’s start.

The Naughty and Danger baby are avid garden guru’s. Tackling a mound of mud or selecting home grown succulent strawberries for an afternoon snack is a natural instinct for these two outside lasses.

   

Both Sarah and I are also lucky enough to be RHS Wisley Garden members and spend many an afternoon enjoying the beautiful gardens while our naughties scream at the outside space available to them. Wisley garden has amazing features for little ones. Today’s visit included building dens in the tipee building area, learning the colours of all the flowers seen, smelling their scents, playing in the children’s activity area and making a kite when not munching on cake and supping a cup of tea. A perfect afternoon.

The Royal Horticultural Society has started a campaign to get schools and pupils gardening. From growing sunflowers in yogurt pots, growing cress and mustard seeds on kitchen roll to harvesting ingredients for tea time- it’s all about getting children outside in the garden and understanding the importance of the garden and gaining key skills for the future.

The RHS are asking as many schools as possible to create “living” classrooms or dedicate outside space to gardening so that wildlife can be investigated, new environments can be made and children can learn about growing their own dinner.

With 14,000 schools already taking part the RHS are asking for more schools to get growing and get gardening and individuals to donate.

To pledge a donation towards this campaign click here.

Work Life Balance anyone?

It's hard to be in business and be a Mum

My former work life
- the only thing that's the same is the no. of coffees!

Anna and I have a system, it's not perfect and really neither of us keeps to it but we're in the early stages so we're trying to stick to it. You see – we're supposed to work 4 days on and 4 days off. So I'm supposed to switch off for the 4 days Anna is rota'd on and visa versa. This includes Saturday as a work day. We have a pretty spreadsheet to track our days, a holiday system and an IOU days system. It's all very organised but doesn't take into account one fatal flaw. Anna and I.

Neither of us switch off on our rota'd off days, OK so we don't blog, Facebook or watch the sales inbox but we both work those days in our own separate ways... Anna will do more press work and I'll do more website stuff. Each day, every day. It comes with the territory of starting a new business, you just don't switch off.

I'm actually writing this blog at 11.30pm on a Sunday, Daddy DayCare is watching some movie by himself while I tippy tappy at the laptop. He'll come and find me every now and then to see if I need anything [aka 'have you finished yet?!'] and then he'll pop back to his movie for a while. Needless to say he's been a little neglected for a while.

He's not the only one. While I still keep 100% of my attention on my daughter, I do find myself watching my iPhone far too often – sorry to say at least once a week I'll look up and she'll have her head cocked to once side and will have emitted a 'eee?' noise. Heartbreaking. I'm more than happy to put the phone down, if the laptop is on and I can hear the email 'bing' for those all important sales emails.

All weather gear

Just to quantify things a little for those that don't know me, I am very much a Mummy. My Daughter and I spend hours a day playing, we spend time gardening, reading, playing ball, swimming and being outside. Both of us have waterproof trousers and jackets so that we can play in all weathers and we often do! But we have our indoors moments as well, which is when I fall into the temptation of working and turn to the technology.

So I'm trying to keep a life work balance, it's hard but it'll be worth it, as long as I have managed the balance just right! 

The result of all this hard work is the website http://www.unikgifts.co.uk and the lovely products you find there.

[Please note DangerBaby and I are meeting Anna & The Naughty later today to walk around RHS Wisley - the kind of work life balance I like!]