Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

The weather has been sensational all week, and I am not complaining, but I decided it was so hot today that I would just spend it leisurely sitting in the garden alternating between sunny and shady parts. First though, I went out into the garden early, and made many trips with my watercans to feed my thirsty plants before the sun reached them, then I pricked out my last two trays of seedlings. I then settled down in my garden chair to undertake another of my favourite activities, reading. After reading for a while I began to think about books I have enjoyed as a child, mainly because over the course of the past week there have been mentions in different blogs about books enjoyed in childhood and sometimes read again in adulthood because they were so loved or for comfort reading. I then thought I would make a list of my ten best childhood books and post it for anyone who is interested. Note the ten are not in order of most loved, they are all loved and just randomly numbered. Here goes then:-

1. The Secret Garden
2. Ballet Shoes
3. The Borrowers
4. Anne of Green Gables [or any of the Anne books]
5. What Katy Did [again, all the Katy books]
6. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
7. Girl of the Limberlost
8. Little Women [and again, the rest of the Little Women boks]
9. All Nancy Drew Mysteries
10. All Famous Five books [ Even though they get a bad press these days]

There are many more books that I adored as a child, but strangely, some I missed, that I only picked up later as a dippy hippy teenager or to read to my children, such as the Narnia series and 'The Wind in the Willows'. As a younger child my very faviourite books were Milly, Molly, Mandy stories, I used to love the map of the village on the inside pages and trace my way with my finger round the village to and from Milly, Molly, Mandy's house. What books did you love as children?



I am posting, by popular request, another photo of my cat Pixie, this photo was taken when she was a year old and she is sitting in the dining room window. I am due to take more photos of her shortly, and I will post them when I have taken them and got them printed, I am also in the process of taking this year's photos of my garden which I will continue to photo all summer, I will start posting them as soon as I finish films and get them printed.

For a while I have been interested in doing some ATC cards and other collage work, the only collage work I have done so far is in one of my journals. I am very excited because I asked a lovely blogger for some advice which she happily gave and she offered to do a one to one swop with me of a ATC. I am very excited about this and already thinking of different ideas for the card. I will let you know how I get on.