Is That Blood or Strawberry Juice?

Yesterday's Tudor banquet was a lot of fun. Emily and I spent all afternoon making apple mousse, herb and nasturtium salad, cheese tart, sweet jellied milk cubes, and pea pottage. She worked really hard, there was a lot to do. She's become a very good pastry maker since being home educated! Apart from the cooking she'd also spent ages writing out a posh menu in gold pen, and writing place cards for various Tudor personalities. Got the recipes from a gorgeous little Tudor Cookery book. It was all pretty tasty too, although neither me nor Emily were impressed with the nasturtium flowers, and Jon couldn't be persuaded to try that bit!!

This morning a male goldfinch finally found his way to the niger seed, which prompted much excitement - we'd only seen females/youngsters before, so Emily rushed to fill in her birdwatching book.

Went off strawberry picking with Hazel and Romy this afternoon, and got two enormous basket fulls. Yummy. Then back to Romy's house for a play in the paddling pool and on the waterslide. It was all going swimmingly well until Emily cut her knee and went into major meltdown mode. Hysterics. I think it was made a bit worse by the fact that she was all wet so the blood was spreading, and so it looked a lot worse than it was. Poor Romy endured not one, not two, but three separate bouts of panicked, I'm-going-to-be-sick-and-I-can't-breathe near asthmatic sessions from Emily before we called it a day and went inside for a play instead.

Still, tears aside, we have a lovely afternoon. Emily wants to go back strawberry picking again tomorrow, although I think we have enough to be going on with...

Arrgh. Still can't work out this photo thing. It's starting to annoy me now!! All I want is pictures on the left and the choice of starting the text next to or under the pictures. How can that be so hard???