Silver lining

Hedgerow harvest

Before I tell you about the silver lining, let me first get the cloud out the way with. About half past nine this morning, one of our neighbours knocked on the door to tell us someone had broken into our car last night. The passenger side window of our Ford Escort has been smashed to smithereens and Mark's Sat Nav, charger and stand have been stolen. There is glass all over the driveway and inside the car and Mark is far from happy. The policeman who came out this afternoon told Mark that there have been several similar thefts in the area recently. Not a nice thing to happen on you own doorstep, particularly when the area is such a nice, quiet neighbourhood.

Although we have the car booked in for a replacement window tomorrow (Mark will have to take time off work for this), problems with our other car meant that we couldn't drive anywhere today. Because of this, we actually had a lovely day with the Podlings on our own doorstep...the silver lining. We took the children up to the park behind our house this morning and while they played with Mark, I went blackberry picking. Tom ate as many as he could get his hands on and ended up with a distinctly purple face! I nearly filled a 2 litre ice-cream container in a relatively short length of hedgerow and there are still loads of berries on the bushes still to ripen. It doesn't look like people round here gather blackberries, so we should do very well for the fruit this year. I'm looking forward to filling the freezer with blackberries and making up a few batches of bramble jelly. I never understand why people buy them in supermarkets when you can just gather them from the hedgerows for free!

It rained again during lunch, so in the afternoon we went for another walk in quest of some muddy puddles to jump in. As you can see from the pictures, we found some!

Muddy puddles

Muddy Podlings

After getting thoroughly wet and muddy, we went home to a lovely home-cooked tea. We finished the afternoon up with some delicious apple and blackberry crumble (made with some of our morning harvest) topped with lots of custard. My dream pudding!

Homemade apple and blackberry crumble...Mmmm!

Whilst we could certainly have done without having our car broken into, we tried to make the best of it and ended up having a really lovely family day. As the adage goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!