Picnics with tea and...frogs...

I had one of those days yesterday which just make you happy. It started with a picnic on my allotment with all the people I work with. I'm very lucky to work with a great team with the added bonus that they can all cook really well too:) so we had some great food, not a dry cheese sandwich in sight! Must admit I was a bit worried when the idea was first suggested about having a picnic on the allotment...where are they going to sit without getting stung by nettles or throttled by bindweed? Shouldn't have worried, we smothered the weeds with Chelle's beautiful quilt (there's no way if it was mine that I'd let it out into the dirty outdoors!) They were also lovely enough to be very complimentary about my little plot that has been quite seriously neglected lately (it needs more than the few snatched hours I've had recently). It is bursting with peas an beans though which made me very happy, they obviously don't mind a bit of neglect...and my first asparagus pea pods are forming which I'm ridiculously excited about trying. There is one bonus of having a bit of a wilder plot...the wildlife, in a past post I excused my long grass as being a haven for frogs, and what should I find today in my long grass but...baby frogs!

We went from our picnic to a tea tasting session at the truly fabulous Birdhouse Tea Company in Nether Edge and had a great time tasting some loose leafed teas I would never have considered trying, I'm just ever so slightly suspicious of flower petals in tea. It's a lovely shop and Rebecca knows her tea...she's got me drinking something called Milk Oolong, pretty sure not many people could do that and it's delicious;)

As we were leaving Amy just happened to look into her bag...and found...a baby frog! He must have crawled in thinking it was a great place to hide out of the sun, not sure he was as impressed with his unexpected journey and ending up miles from home in a shop of tea. So me and daft dog had a great excuse to go back to the allotment and release him by his pond. He jumped so quickly out of sight I never got a photo of him but I'm glad to know that there are most definitely frogs on my plot even though they've got a bit of growing to do before they can help tackle the slugs!