Allotment Update

Or - What went down at the allotment in 2013:

I originally took on my allotment from the local council about 5 years ago, shortly after we moved into the area, things have changed so much there over the years, but I am still not on top of it.  I wonder if you can ever be "on top" of mother nature?  This year I knew that I didn't want to over do it by planting loads of different, exotic vegetables, so stuck with what I know works and what I could manage.  With it being such a dry hot summer things didn't flourish as much as they could have if I had watered on those dry days but I still
harvested a modest amount of food considering how little work I put in.  It is so difficult to get down there with a toddler in tow, he is so curious and loves to explore so I have to either go there and hope he falls asleep in the car on the way or wait until I can go there with someone else who can watch him while I get on.  I am still so thankful to have it though it will be wonderful when Boris is a bit older and I won't have to worry about him eating something he shouldn't or wandering into other peoples' plots.

So now I am just starting to shut everything down at the allotment in preparation for both winter and my impending childbirth, covering the ground in plastic and picking the last of the harvest, a few small beetroots and, some runner beans and a couple of courgettes.  My mum helped me a couple of weeks ago, tidying the edges, tucking everything under the plastic and laying more plastic to keep the weeds at bay.

So I thought it was a pretty good time to do a little review with some photos of the allotment I took a few weeks ago.  I can't believe how much the weather has changed in such a short amount of time!  We were in the heart of summer what seemed like yesterday and now it seems like everything is closing down.
So here is what went down:

The last of the courgettes

The last of the rather straggly looking runner beans,

Small harvest

View of the whole allotment, my mum helped me put down the black plastic. 

What are you currently doing at the allotment?  Are you putting anything in?  Or just taking things out and covering things up? 

Fun Things to do with Toddlers - Shaving Foam Play

I think, as with most ideas, I found this activity for the first time on Pinterest, I thought it was a great, fun idea and had to give it a go.  Obviously I had to wait until a time when it was unlikely that Boris would put the shaving foam in his mouth and as we had such lovely weather this summer it was no problem waiting for a good day to go outside and do it.  If you have wood or lino floors you could do this inside, but I felt it was too risky with carpet. I had put off doing this activity for ages because I was thinking it would be a waste of money because Boris wouldn't be into it, and neither my husband nor I use shaving foam, but when I saw I could get a can for 26p I thought why not?!
The basic idea is to spray some shaving foam on the mat or floor, drip food colouring onto it then allow the little one to smear the colours into the foam with their fingers or, if like me your toddler hates getting stuff on his fingers, with a paint brush.

 He soon became very interested in the little food colouring bottles and had a nice time lining them up, chewing them and trying to take the lids off. 

He picked up a plant pot the was lying around and I was very impressed by his creativity to press the pot into the foam and watch it squirt through the holes. 

It was an entertaining activity for me as well as Boris, he had a go at smearing the colours round with the brush and was fascinated by scooping the foam up onto the brush and flicking it about.  It was funny for me if he got even the tiniest bit of foam on his fingers because he insisted that it immediately be wiped off.  He is so funny about having stuff on his hands.  He was very disturbed when I sprayed a blob onto his hand!

This was a great fun activity,brilliant for sensory play and learning about the qualities of materials, but does need careful supervision, it was no trouble to clean up, I just hosed down the mat.  You could do this in the bath too, but I am a bit paranoid about all the chemicals and not really wanting them on Boris' skin. 
I think there are opportunities to develop this activity further with bowls and spoons and scooping and maybe squeezing it through different objects, also would be fun to make beards and hats and the like with it if you aren't paranoid about parabens and artificial fragrances like I am!!

Have you tried this activity or something similar?  What are you doing with your toddler now the days are getting shorter and the weather less welcoming?

What I am Currently Reading - Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

This is a fantastic book which turns everything you thought you knew about behaviour managements and discipline on it's head.
It advocated reasoning, love and persuasion as means of working with your children is preference to rewards and punishments, including time-outs and praise. Our society is so used to using these sorts of behaviour management techniques without question thanks to TV programmes such as Super Nanny, that any alternative seems hard to imagine but Kohn puts forward very persuasive arguments in favour of a different approach to working with children which is far more loving, nurturing and caring than the traditional techniques. 
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about this book going round such as that children are allowed to just get away with anything and aren't given any guidance as to how to behave, but it isn't like this it all, it really needs to be read to be fully understood and I think if you do read it you would find it very hard to fall back on the old techniques that are so frequently peddles by "behaviour specialists". 
The only negatives I can say about this book are that it is quite a hard, challenging read, it requires quite a bit of concentration to understand and would probably take several reads for all the information to truly sink in (this is the second time I have read it, although the first time I didn't manage to finish it)  The other thing I didn't like about this book was a small section which had a bit of a Bible bashing feel.  Kohn argues that an authoritarian approach to discipline has it's roots in certain religious belief systems, citing old testament fire and brimstone as proof of conditional love from God.  However I would argue that the Bible is filled with evidence that God loves us unconditionally because of what he did for us through Jesus, I would also argue that Christianity doesn't assume we are innately bad (as Kohn suggests) which is why we need saving and why we must be taught to behave, but that we are innately good but have gone astray.  This is obviously an extremely simplistic explanation which requires much much more that I can write in this book review (if you are interested read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell), but ultimately I think that in spite of this small section, Unconditional Parenting is still an excellent and extremely useful read.

When I began reading I was furiously underlining sections with a pencil for future reference, but fell behind when I didn't have a pencil handy, so here are a few quotes,, but they are mostly from the beginning of the book:

"What counts is not just that we believe we love [our children] unconditionally, but that they feel loved in that way.

"This approach (unconditional parenting)  offers a vote of confidence in children, a challenge to the assumption that they'll derive the wrong lesson from affection, or that they'd always want to act badly if they thought they could get away with it.

"That's an argument not for more discipline, but for grown-ups to spend more time with kids, to give them more guidance, and to treat them with more respect."

"On balance, the kids who do what they're told are likely to be those whose parents don't rely on power and instead have developed a warm and secure relationship with them. They have parents who treat them with respect, minimise the use of control, and make a point of offering reasons and explanations for what they ask."

An extremely good book for anyone who is interested in gentle parenting, gently discipline and building a strong, respectful relationship with their children.