Category: countryside

countryside · general stuff · in the woods · spring

all is well

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)40 Comments

If you’ve popped in here for a visit over the last 5 days you may have been greeted by a blank page and been wondering what has happened to me and the little cotton rabbits. Last Thursday Typepad (who host my blog) were targeted by a rather massive and sustained distributed denial of service attack which knocked out all of their services and since then they’ve been working round the clock to get up and running again. Fearing for it’s safe return has made me realise just how much I love my blog and the contact it gives me with others who like woolly stuff and similar things and I’m very happy to have it back.

Anyway, I’m getting back into the term time swing of things here, catching up (albeit rather slowly) with an email backlog that built up over the school Easter break, settling back into pattern tweaking and writing for those seasonal sweaters that I promised and generally just enjoying having some time to call my own instead of Toby’s. This morning I’ve been on a bluebell walk as the local woods are full of them and we have a lovely sunny morning here today so it would be daft to sit inside all day.

I always think of April as the month of unfurling and those bright chartreuse green shoots emerging everywhere from little brown tree buds are quite magical. The most magical sight of all though is the carpet of bluebells.

For just a couple of weeks each year the woods are transformed into a place where you can really believe that fairies exist. When you sit quietly on a mossy log in a bluebell wood, troubles fade away for a while and you feel a sense of timelessness and peace, at least until a dog comes bounding up to lick your face as one did to me earlier! Still, it’s a lovely way to escape from modern world stresses and I have resolved to go walking in the woods on my own more regularly, and of course it is the regular weekend activity with Toby – the woods are his favourite place to be.

Hopefully if you pop in again you’ll find everything in it’s place but if things do go wobbly again please don’t give up on me as I will definitely be blogging here for a long time to come 🙂

countryside · general stuff · summer

walking in fields of red

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)50 Comments

The recent bouts of alternating rain and sunshine have resulted in an explosion of local wildflowers. Today I went for a walk through this amazing field of poppies that’s just up the road from us, red as far as the eye can see. It’s such a shame that they will all have withered away in another week or two and this will just be a green field again. Still, they’re lovely right now and seeing them has made me happy.

Hope you have a happy week where you are.

autism · autumn · countryside · general stuff · in the woods

Wood walks

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)21 Comments

Going out to the woods has become a definite highlight in Toby’s weekend. A few months ago he would cling on to me when we were out but now he’s more confident and likes to skip off and explore a little. It’s lovely to see him enjoying the different textures of the path under his boots as it travels through crunchy leaves, squelchy puddles and over echoy wooden walkways. It’s a special and gentle time together.

In keeping with our drive to build on his communication I’m going to be using these walks to add to his vocabulary by using a comment board. I’ll be trying to teach him to name what he notices so that when he comes home for instance he can tell Amy and Daddy that we saw a dog in the woods.

Hopefully we can add to this and in time help build him a functional language.

Thanks so much for all of the kind comments on the last post. It’s always really helpful to hear from anyone else with experience and great to read some different ideas that we may be able to adapt for Toby, it’s also a very nice feeling to know that there are people out there just wishing us well – many thanks x