Mudlark

Well, I'm not so sure it's a lark playing around in the mud. I thought I was onto a kid friendly holiday activity in which I could appear to be the most congenial of hosts by offering a pile of clay, sand and straw and the wet end of a hose and get them in there and squishy with me. Not to be. One child (he's 3) took a tentative step into the muck and looked up and me and said plaintively, 'Bath?'
They were OK with playing in what I turned into slop with an array of interesting objects formed out of it, but no,and there I was thinking that boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dogs tails with a side order of mud. Perhaps the old rhyme needs to be updated to chips and cokes and playstation games.

I'm getting old and crusty and it has nothing to do with drying mud. Made myself a resolution to make 24 bricks a day - right before I had 2 full weeks working, but manage to get through them in the weekend. I need 524 of them to build a small 4 metre by 2.5 metre shed for storing beekeeping and gardening equipment, soapmaking, seedsaving and storing all those 'bloody' jars. I suspect there is an element of a need for a space away from the 6 X 3 metre shed that we gravitate around during the day is also a motivator.

I'm looking around for old windows, will have a go at using scrapwood to make a door. The roof will be scrounged from somewhere. Then of course I want to use the catchment area of the roof to fill a small pond in which ducks can quack, and when they're not doing that they're running around avoiding small seedlings and gently prying away the millions of slugs that plague the place. (picture Trevor with a smug look saying, 'yeah, right' to that concept).

I'll post photos of my mudlarking as they progress.