Family here! Mark II

More family here! It's my brother, my SiL and their two boys, 10 and 7. My brother has already promised the boys that they'll get to sleep in the “poolhouse”. “We don't have a pool,” I say. “Yes, you do,” says my brother and points at the frog pond.

The boys have grown up on a well-to-do estate with immaculate gardens. When they see the riot of green, overgrown dwellings and leftover scrapwood that is our back garden, they're delighted. Up to that point, the boys never struck me as particularly inventive or self-starting, but it is amazing that, when released into a “wild zone”, they come up with brilliant stuff. The “poolhouse” is, after all, my art studio and carpentry workshop and houses all manner of sculptures, paintings, artifacts, many of which are unfinished. The boys instantly appropriate my acrylic paints and proceed to paint signage onto scraps of ply or make protest banners against nuclear power out of our old bathroom blinds and some hazel rods. Their parents are quite apolitical so I can only assume that the older boy has found my stack of posters from various marches, which, I should say in my defence, I had tucked away under the worktop. Nice one! And I wasn't even protesting against nuclear power.

Of course this branch of the family is dragged to the allotment too. My SiL goes yay! and disappears into the raspberries with a container, and emerges half an hour later with about a pound of berries. I swap gardening anecdotes with my brother while OH tries to entice the boys into helping him harvest spuds and other veg.

OH harbours hopes of one day enlisting the boys for proper allotment work. Having observed their fast-waning enthusiasm, I don't think this is going to happen. :D

My brother can't get enough of our chimenea in the woodland area at the bottom of the garden. He's always been a lovable pyromaniac, and now he can cook too! He assumes responsibility for our evening meals -- barbecue sausages and steaks, and on one memorable occasion, even spaghetti with tomato sauce, all cooked on, or rather inside, the chimenea. Taught me a thing or two about self-sufficiency! Delicious it was too. At 9pm or so, the boys are packed off to sleep in the "poolhouse" while the adults sit chatting around the fire under the old pear tree, drinking beer and herbal schnapps. Proper summer!