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Harriet showed us how to use a Dutch Oven to bake a cake today. Let’s just think about this. You put your cake in to a sealed container which you can’t keep opening to check on it. Then you bake it at an unspecified temperature for about as long as you think necessary and it miraculously produces a delicious cake. How does that work?

Today I wanted to explore mud play and was introduced to mud holes and mud play equipment. I was particularly pleased with my mud pies which looked considerably more appetising than anything I have ever made in the kitchen!

Lily laid out her emergency kit bag for us today so we could look under the hood.

Often my camera doesn’t quite capture nature in the way I see it. But today the unworldly glow of these crocuses shines out of the image.

I can’t look at this photo without smiling. I guess Osla’s face sums up Forest School. End of lesson.

We looked again at the 6 Forest School Principles today in the context of the question words – Who, Why, When, Where, What and How.

Crocuses are definitely flower of the month for February. These beauties where sunbathing near the house at Scotswood Community Gardens,

Back this morning for Day 5 of my Forest School Leader course. The weather was an unseasonable high and it was difficult to believe that this time last year we were under 5 inches of snow from the “Beast from the East”.

• I thought I would share my collection of objects dug out of the garden over the last 8 years. I’m hard pushed to say which is my favourite. The metal mickey mouse head is most certainly rare. I thought it might be from a Pez container but I have looked on line and I realised they were nothing like that. In the middle bottom is a brass lock from an old safe. 5 in from the right on the second row from the bottom is a lead cow; presumably a child’s toy from the beginning of the 19th century.

I always considered “Strip the Willow” quite a tedious dance – not unlike planting large numbers of trees. I set myself a target and tell myself I can’t go in for a cuppa until I have planted that many.

I use a tree planting spade which has a long thin blade. This goes in, often several times, until I find a rock free area where I can sink the full blade. I then waggle it back and forth to make a deep slit. The whip roots are thrust down in to the slit and then the gap is closed with my heel. I pull back any grass and heel down well to delay the regrowth of any grass. Then the stake goes in, banged home with a large lump hammer which I throw down in the grass and lose with monotonous regularity. After the stake I ease a plastic guard over the tree and tighten the tie wrap.

Commercially, once the trees are in, they spray the area around the tree with a herbicide, however, I would rather replant more trees than adopt this environmentally questionable approach. The field is full of mice and ground nesting birds and I can not believe that widespread spraying would not impact adversely on their welfare.

Another 54 trees in today. Over half planted now. I am concerned that the weather will be too hot for planting at the weekend, so I have placed the remaining bare root whips in a bucket of water in the shade and hope they will survive until better conditions return.