Finding Day

Friday was a very special day for me, as it was exactly a year since Grizzly and Polar found me beside the River Thames and let me join them on their journey back to Stoke-on-Trent on Uplander II.  As I do not know when my birthday is, I celebrate this day instead, as my Finding Day.

I hoped we would go out on Uppie for my Finding Day, but it was so hot that we decided it would not be good for either humans or small bears to be toasting inside a metal boat, so we stayed at home.  Us bears decided that, as it was Finding Day, it would be fun to spend the morning 'finding' things.  

The first thing Hanley and Endon 'found' was a big punnet of strawberries from our garden.  We had the biggest, ripest ones for breakfast and Polar used the rest to make jam.

After breakfast, Polar and Grizzly 'found' some new potatoes growing in the garden.  We decided to see what other fruit and vegetables we could find.  We checked our broad bean plants and found they were much taller than small bears now.  We found they had pods full of beans, which are almost ready to eat!

Then we found the runner bean plants were even taller - Endon Bear climbed up the poles and said they were at least as tall as Polar!  This variety has white flowers, rather than the usual red, but we hope the bees still like them.

We found a good climbing tree at the bottom of the garden and found something very surprising growing in it - figs!  Grizzly likes figs but never expected them to grow in North Staffordshire.  He thinks it is because the weather has been so hot.  Polar says it is because she pruned the tree properly.  I think it is a little of both.

We found currants which were almost ready to pick.  The birds had eaten some but other bushes were covered by a big tent of netting to keep them off and they hadn't figured out that these white-currants weren't under-ripe redcurrants and some were already ripe (I helped Grizzly to pick some yesterday).

We found lots of pretty flowers too, like these roses Hanley and Endon climbed up to smell. 

We had toast and some of our bear-made lemon marmalade for Elevenses, before doing some more exploring.  Then we found Grizzly's deckchair was empty so, as we had been such busy bears, we all had a nice nap in the shade.  

When we woke up, we found Polar and Grizzly had made us a cream tea, to celebrate my Finding Day, with scones, our homemade strawberry jam and clotted cream.  Delicious!  We ate scones, jam and cream until we were all quite fat little bears.  We needed another nap after that!

When we came indoors for our supper, I found Hanley and Endon had a surprise for me.  They had sneaked out shopping with Grizzly and Polar and bought me a present.  It was a DVD of Paddington Bear's latest adventure!  I was so pleased, we all had a big bear hug together, as Paddington is my hero and I love hearing stories about him and watching his films. 

I wanted to watch it at once, but first Hanley Bear had to check that we would not miss any World Cup games.  Luckily, there was no football to watch so we enjoyed the film instead.  It is the best film ever because, as well as having Paddington in it, it has narrowboats, steam engines, a balloon and even a little flying boat, and lots of marmalade too. 

I had a lovely Finding Day and have had a really exciting year.  I hope to have more adventures with my human guardians and my little bear buddies soon, and I will tell you all about them when I do!