Playing in Bute Park

We had a little trip to Cardiff yesterday, Squeaky & I, and were joined by Daddy when he finished work.  We had a bit of a mooch around the shops, a face-painting treat, a nice cuppa in M&S, and a look around to see what we could see.

A slightly instagrammed moment. Be glad it wasn't my coffee

We spotted these lovely flowers in the churchyard at St John the Baptist, right in the middle of the city centre.  It's an odd place to find a church, though much like the castle, it's clearly been there longer than the shopping centre.  I've found the church often has amazing things to look at in the grounds, a couple of years ago they had massive poppies on their trees for Remembrance Sunday..

Once we'd finished shopping, we took off to Bute Park for a play, as it was a surprisingly nice & sunny day, and that's where Daddy joined us.  I'm not too great on history (or geography, science, art, etc!), but Bute Park is a mature park in Cardiff City Centre, sandwiched between Cardiff Castle and Sophia Gardens, and we could easily hear the cricket going on in Sophia Gardens when we had a little coffee break.

I'm a butterfly, Mummy!

Squeaky had loads of fun exploring the flowers, and being a butterfly, to go with her facepaints, though we're really not sure what variety of flowers they were (I can identify daisies, sunflowers, tulips, daffodils & roses. Other than that flowers are just referred to by their colours!)  There was also a spot of slightly reluctant tree climbing, frog riding, and claiming of a tiny red tree as her own personal shelter.  Why she needed a shelter on a sunny afternoon, I don't quite know.

This is my shelter, you can't come in.

Giddy-up froggie, giddy-up!

Can I get down now?

And then, in the middle of the park, completely without warning, we came across, errr yeah.  The Transplantable Living Room!  We just missed the performance, but what a strange thing to find in the park.  A whole vintage living room, set up in the park, but all planted up & edible, much of it donated by members of the local community. There was a TV with things growing in it, chairs with ferns coming out of the back, and my favourite of all, shoes with flowers in.  I wanted to sneak them away in my handbag, but realised it could get a bit messy.  I'm sure I could recreate that at home though, given time.  The whole thing made me smile, it was so unexpected, so fun, and they gave me a vegan chocolate brownie - sure way to win me over!

The Transplantable Living Room

Edible Telly, move over Nigella!

Shoes! I totally want these.

Squeaky, of course, found something perfectly to her taste.  A vintage rotary style phone.  Where she spent a good twenty minutes phoning me & daddy to tell us she was standing next to us in the park.  Strange child that she is.  Kept her out of trouble, I suppose!

Mummy! I'm on the phone!

We're linking up with the Coombe Mill Country Kids linky.