A lovely Autumn Garden

We bears have recently enjoyed another little holiday with our human guardians, Polar and Grizzly, which was a lot of fun.  We visited a place called Cornwall, where we stayed with some of their friends and, later, Grizzly's sister's family.  

As it is a long way from Staffordshire, Polar decided we should break up the journey and stop overnight in Devon, at a nice small pub with a thatched roof.  Polar picked it as it was very close to the gardens at Rosemoor, run by the Royal Horticultural Society, which she was very keen to visit.

'It's a very big site,' she said to us, as she carried us to the entrance in our special bear bag.  'You can run about and explore but try to keep us in sight and then, if you want to save your paws, you can always jump back into your bag and let me carry you.'

The first thing we noticed when we came into the garden was a lovely smell of apples, coming from a display by the entrance.  As soon as Polar let us out of our bag, Hanley climbed up to sniff them.

'No nibbling, Hanley Bear!' warned Polar.  'Although I don't expect they will mind you eating any you find on the ground later.'

Hanley, who was feeling hungry, as usual, ran off to look for the fruit garden.  

Endon and I kept closer to our humans and started to explore the flower gardens.  The trees and shrubs looked beautiful, with colourful berries, pretty bark and, of course, glorious autumn leaves.  

There were lovely roses to admire and to sniff and we loved the bright colours in the 'hot' garden.  Hanley and Endon found plants they could climb for a better view.

I found a trough with some small alpines in, that made a perfect small bear garden.  I showed it to Polar and suggested that we bears could make our own little garden in a big pot when we got home.
'That's a lovely idea, Sonning,' she said.  'There might be a corner of the patio where we could put one.'

I was very pleased about that and skipped away to tell the other bears.  Hanley and Endon had found a play area for human cubs with big insect sculptures in it.  

We had lots of fun climbing on them, especially the woodlouse, then we went in different directions to explore again.  I found some very pretty leaves to skip through and roll in but Hanley and Endon found even more exciting things to do.  

Endon went climbing in a ferny glade and saw a lovely waterfall and Hanley discovered a dinosaur skeleton!

It was a long way to the top of the hill after that, so we scurried back to Polar and Grizzly and had a lift in our bear bag up to the arboretum, which is a collection of trees from all over the world.  We jumped out of our bag to play in the leaves again.  

After lots of rolling down the hill and running on the grass, Polar gathered us up and put us back in our bag as it was time to go.

We were very sad small bears to leave Rosemoor, as it was such a beautiful garden, but Polar says she would like to visit again next year, in the spring, so hopefully we will be able to see it again.  

'Cheer up, little bears!' said Grizzly.  'We are going to visit some friends who have been reading your small bear adventures - and they live beside the sea, so you can go to the beach tomorrow!'

We all cheered and then we sang happy small bear songs for the rest of our journey into Cornwall.

An Afternoon at the Allotment

I have shared some pictures in previous posts of Grizzly and Polar's garden, which has lots of flowers, some little ponds and a vegetable patch.  We bears love to explore it, as there is always something new to see or do, and we like to help our human guardians to look after it.

We know that some of our vegetables - like the onions and potatoes - come from another place, called 'The Allotment'.  We have often wondered what it is like and last week we found out, as Polar and Grizzly took us to see it.

'I'll have to carry you down in this,' said Polar, holding up a carrier bag.  'I won't have a free hand to carry your bear bag as I need to take my cultivator and this garlic for planting.'

We sniffed the bag suspiciously.  'Poo!' cried Hanley Bear.  'That will make our fur stink and we'll need to have baths.'

'No!' squealed Endon.  'It's too cold for bear baths!'

'You won't be in the bag for long, little bears,' said Polar.  'The garlic is inside another bag and anyway, the breeze will blow any smell out of your fur before we come home.'

We climbed reluctantly into the carrier bag, sure that we would be very smelly bears by the time we reached the allotment, but it was only a few minutes walk away and, as Polar had said, it was a nice, breezy, fur-fluffing day.

Polar and Grizzly's plot was at the top end of a sloping site, with very neat plots on each side which belong to Mr Chris and Mrs Jean.  They have other allotment friends, including Mr Steve, who likes engineering things, and Mr Peter and Mr Andrew who keep pigeons.  Unusually, Polar and Grizzly were the only people there that afternoon, so we did not meet any of the others.

'Don't run onto other people's plots and stay away from where Grizzly is trimming the edges of our paths with the shears,' Polar said.  'You can play anywhere on our plot, though - why don't you take a look at the pumpkins?' 

We found some squashes and pumpkins which were ready to bring home, but they were too heavy for small bears to lift.  There were some bear-sized ones, but they were too small to bring home.

'We'll leave those for a few more weeks,' said Polar.  'I'm going to plant this garlic now.'

There were several big bulbs in the bag, which Polar started splitting into individual cloves.

'Let us help!' cheered Endon.  'Sonning can rake the ground, I can use my walking stick to measure how far apart to plant the garlics and Hanley can dig the holes!'

'That's very kind, little bears.  Are you sure you don't just want to run and play?' asked Polar.

'We like to be helpful bears,' I said.  We set to work, just as Endon had suggested.  There were almost fifty garlic cloves to plant, so that kept us busy for a long time.  We were very pleased with our work.

'Well done bears!' said Grizzly.  He helped us up into his deckchair and Polar gave us a little pot of freshly-picked autumn raspberries, which we ate straight away, as we were hungry after working so hard.  Luckily, there were plenty more to take home for tea.

Grizzly and Polar carried us home in the trug holding the pumpkins, which had a much nicer smell than the garlic bag.  We helped to put them in the greenhouse, with the last of the tomatoes ripening in the sunshine.  

We are looking forward to having some nice roast pumpkin with our autumn dinners or even helping to make soup, and might save some seeds from them to grow next year.

Three Bears go to RAF Cosford

After our visit to Cameo and her humans, Grizzly and Polar decided to make a day out of their journey home, so took us to the Royal Air Force Museum at Cosford.

When we arrived, we were delighted to be met by a pilot bear, who welcomed us to the museum and told us what we should see.

'If you're careful, you can climb on the planes outside the hangers,' he said.  'But don't get muddy paws on the planes inside, chaps, as they are very special and historic, and we bears and our human helpers have to keep them clean.'

We promised to be good bears and scurried outside to see the aircraft, before Polar and Grizzly had finished their cups of tea.  It was lucky for Hanley Bear that they weren't far behind us, because he climbed too close to the nose of his plane and started to slide off, but Polar caught him before he hit the ground.

 I liked the flying boat but Endon was fascinated by a Harrier jet that had been taken to pieces.  It reminded him of the Lego plane he had helped Grizzly's grandcubs to build.

Our favourite hanger was the first one, which had very sleek-looking planes which had been built to break speed records and were flown by very brave and daring test-pilots.  We would have liked to climb on them, but remembered we had promised the pilot bear we would not.  

We met a Red Arrows bear, who was allowed to climb on the planes, as he helped to look after them.  He told us that only the best pilots got to fly with the Red Arrows and he was very proud to be one of their bears.

There were some much older planes in the next hanger.  We thought they looked very flimsy, so we were surprised and sad to read that they had all been warplanes.

'Aren't humans silly,' said Endon, looking at an old biplane.  'Fancy making such a nice little aircraft and then using it to go fighting, when it might get broken?  It looks more like something you would use to fly out to the countryside for a picnic.'

Which is what small bears would use planes for, of course.  You could have loaded a delicious picnic for lots of bears and human cubs into some of the Second World War planes, for example, but humans used them to drop bombs instead.

'At least some of the humans were sensible enough to take their lucky anipals with them,' Hanley said.  'There are some very old creatures here, including a penguin who was a prisoner of war!'

We said a very respectful 'Good Afternoon' to the old hero animals, especially Percy the Penguin, and thought how lucky we were to be peacetime bears.

We didn't like the next part of the museum at all, as it was all about a time called the Cold War, when humans came very close to having a terrible war which might have killed them all - and most of us animals too!  Grizzly was in the RAF at the time of something called the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was one of the worst moments of it, and said it was very scary.  

Fortunately, there were also some wise and sensible humans who solved disagreements by talking to each other, like small bears do, but there are still lots of nasty big bombs in the world that hurt human cubs and creatures, and we think this is a very bad thing.  

We went very quiet and our ears drooped, because we were so sad about this, but Polar knows that a good way to cheer up gloomy bears is to tell us it's teatime.  We had some tea and cake back at the café and that made us feel much better.

Before we left, we said goodbye to all our new bear friends and the old hero animals, and we promised to visit them again one day, which I hope we will.