No make-up, hair loose, bread baking and nothing concrete on the schedule until this evening, unless you count watching the final of the current series of Countdown at 3.25.

It's been a busy week, and for the last couple of days I have been teaching Trug to Table to year 1 children.

Trug to Table is a workshop based on the walled kitchen garden, and has more variants than any other workshop we do as it covers the full primary school age range and history, maths, science and geography elements of the curriculem. The teachers are sent a choice of more than a dozen worksheets to select from and duplicate to use with this workshop, and we don't know until the school arrives what sort of slant is required.

On Wednesday I drove to work through pouring rain busily devising strategies to bring large parts of the workshop indoors, but as I drove into Normanby the rain stopped and the sun hesitantly sneaked out from behind the clouds and more-or-less remained out until the schools packed up and went home. Just as well as the other workshop the children were doing was Pond Dipping and Linda was much relieved not to have to do this in the rain.

If you flick on to Liz's blog www.trickymum.blog.co.uk for April 23rd you will see how her cat Sid responded to large numbers of nursery school children. In the walled garden Victoria and Ginger responded with equal stoicism to children a couple of years older who were far more interested in the cats than they were in what I had to say. At one point I had to start licking my paws and washing behind my ears to grab back the children's attention! (At home Albert had been disturbed in the night by the strong wind which blew over the garden furniture and took a branch off one of the chestnut trees: he took his worries out by going for a nocturnal perambulation every half hour or so - I can sleep through most things, but not a cat walking across my face.)

I was very impressed with two children: in the morning Alice is clearly both a budding historian and gardener. She answered all the questions nobody else could, and identified a great many flowers, vegetables and fruits. In the afternoon, we were doing our tour of the sheds and we reached the tool shed. I sent the class in to take a look at the bothy and one little boy awaiting his turn started to talk to me about the display of historic lawnmowers. I told him to wait and tell his classmates, which he did. When the time came his talk was really impressive - brief, delivered in a loud clear voice, with all the salient points made in a cogent order in properly constructed sentences. There are many adults who could learn a great deal from this five year old - both about lawnmowers and about how to give a talk.

Yesterday's group which was combining Trug to Table with a self guide rather than a second workshop (often a good idea with such little children), had a little workbook (16 pages made from two double folded, cut and stapled A4 sheets) which I felt was much more manageable than our A4 worksheets and - at least for this age-group - a big improvement.

So, two pretty good days with much better weather than we had been told to expect. However, yesterday's group made me feel a bit old - the teachers in charge looked like children - like the policeman I saw directing traffic one day and I couldn't help wondering what his mother thought she was doing letting her baby do something so dangerous! Were these two little girls really old enough to have charge over fifty children or should they still be playing with their dolls?