A Mouse Took a Stroll Through the Deep Dark Wood...

Last week on two days we visited different woodlands and gardens. Very nice places to be in the hot weather. Already though the temperature is cooling here, the max temp was a "mere" 22C / 71F (normally anything over 20C is pretty hot!) and the forcast is for rain tomorrow. Och well, it was wonderful while it lasted.

To the woods then. The first one is a woodland play area with adjoining formal gardens set in the estate of a country house. We visited it with a friend of A's, her Mum & little sister. Here are a few images that I liked from the day...

 

We finished the day with the children guddling in the burn. Guddling just means playing around in water, a burn is a small stream.

Now to the following day. It was very hot but the woods were lovely and cool. We were just killing time really between visiting one friends house for lunch then another's for a paddling pool session. We were early arriving for the paddling pool fun so I sneaked a couple of photos of my friend's front garden while waiting for her to return.

These hot summer days have been lovely. Our school holidays are halfway through already, I hope the rain doesn't stay for too long. Our garden will enjoy it though and I have to say the novelty of watering my pots was starting to wear off, I have a lot of pots...

As to the post title, I'm sure you'll recognise it if you have young children. It's from a well known and loved book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Here's a tiny bit more of it:-

 A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood.
 A fox saw the mouse, and the mouse looked good.

 "Where are you going to, little brown mouse?
 Come and have lunch in my underground house."

 "It's terribly kind of you, Fox, but no –
 I'm going to have lunch with a gruffalo."

 "A gruffalo?  What's a gruffalo?"
 "A gruffalo!  Why, didn't you know?

 He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws,
 And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws."

 "Where are you meeting him?" "Here, by these rocks,

 And his favourite food is roasted fox."

 "Roasted fox!  I'm off!" Fox said.
 "Goodbye, little mouse," and away he sped.