After the Snow

The snow has melted and today the sun came out.  After taking a walk outside and checking the grass, Polar decided that the garden was dry enough we could go out to play.

'Stay away from the vegetable garden, where we've been digging,' she said.  'I don't want you coming back in at lunchtime looking like mud bears!'

We promised to be good and ran out onto the lawn.  All the flowers which had been covered over by the snow were flowering again and looked really pretty in the spring sunshine.  The little snowdrops smelt nice too.

After we had run around on the lawn for a little while, Hanley Bear and I decided it would be fun to do some climbing.  There are several good climbing plants and trees in Polar and Grizzly's garden.  We scrambled up the clematis first, until we noticed there were some very delicate shoots and buds on it.

'If we break these off, we'll be in trouble,' I said to Hanley.  'There won't be as many flowers on it later in the spring, and the bees and other insects won't have as much food as they need.'

'Let's climb something else!' suggested Hanley.  

We found a much more sturdy plant with thick, twisted stems which was brilliant for small bears to climb and didn't have fragile little shoots and buds.  We climbed right to the top and scrambled around on it, looking out over the whole garden and watching the birds on the feeders tucking in to seeds and peanuts, which made us feel hungry.

'I wonder if we could catch fish from that pond, like wild bears do?' I suggested to Hanley but, when we looked into the pond, we didn't see any fish - just a big frog, swimming about deep under the surface.

'There might be fruit or berries in the vegetable garden,' said Hanley.  We looked to see, sitting on top of the water butt, but there was nothing ready to eat and, as Polar had said, it looked like there was lots of dirt and mud.

'Let's see what's growing in the greenhouse,' I said to Hanley.  'There were tomatoes and peppers when we first came home.'

 I thought I could smell beans but, when we climbed up to where the smell was coming from, we found tubes full of compost and the beans in them had started to grow.  There were herbs, which we nibbled a little bit, but they tasted bitter on their own, so we scurried out of the greenhouse and back into the garden.

'I can smell cooking!' cried Hanley Bear, looking up the path towards the house. 

He was right - Grizzly was making Bubble and Squeak out of the left-over vegetables from dinner the night before.  We ran up the path and into the kitchen and, after washing the dirt off of our paws, enjoyed a tasty lunch. 

Afterwards, we did think about going back into the garden, but it suddenly got colder and there was a heavy fall of hail, so we decided to stay in our bear basket and make bear plans, although they can't have been very exciting, as Hanley Bear fell asleep half way through the afternoon!

'It look like you two could do with a nap,' said Polar.  She tucked us into our beds but I have stayed awake, as I am very worried that we might sleep through tea, and that won't do at all!