Could this be the patter of tiny feet on the horizon?!

Our urban semi detached garden farm is 4.7 miles from Canary Warf and 9.2 miles from the Shard, thanks to google maps for the details, yet when I set up in the garden room for a morning of online work I can hear the birds singing their little wake up chirp songs, the chooks in our garden and those nearby scratching round for food fallen from their feeders and the lady four doors down sweeping her patio, a morning ritual in our street.
We read all the time of the overcrowding and congestion of London and its suburbs, of the poor air quality and noise pollution so we must be on the lucky list here because we can be in Soho for dinner within 25 minutes courtesy of Southeastern trains or walking in ancient Oxleas woods within a hundred strides of our doorstep. Never before have we taken such advantage of our location until now when we have the time to enjoy it.  Don't hang in there until retirement, make it a reality to enjoy your surroundings more now.  Build it into your daily life...easier said than done I know having spent 20 years rushing out the house into the car through the busy south circular routes to rush into a school building only to emerge into daylight again after 5pm and perhaps enjoy an hour or two of down time before the whole process repeats itself again the next day. Anyway off on a tangent there for a mo...the real purpose this morning is to catch up for the record the events of past few days and to celebrate the countryside within the city that is Londoninium.
Whence last you read this blog...if indeed any one is reading it as the stats only show us how many people visit the page, google is yet to be able to report on what you are each doing whilst visiting any web page, that is probably a good thing...anyway it was last week and we had just finished building our room with no walls.  We can say it has been well used since it's creation and is my place of choice for writing, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, online shopping and my latest hobby online scavenging.  Thanks to www.scavenger.org.uk I am hard on the trail of some willow whips for weaving an edge to our new salad bed design and offering some excess tomato plants to anyone who can pop in and take them.  This alongside preloved.com and freecycle are my new places of pleasure looking out for items in need of want that can be put to good use in our urban farm.
Success so far has been in the shape of a great oak table for 99p (eBay), 2 hanging baskets rescued from an outlet shop in the high street, willow withies cut from a local allotment with an overgrown patch and bamboo shared by a good friend from her Greenwich garden when we lunched there yesterday. All this style for £7 is an achievement we are proud of and using daily as an outdoor office and garden room breathing in the fresh morning air that wakes my brain these days rather than the treacle resembling substance I used to rely on called espresso!
And in other news...
Also over the past few days the self sufficiency ways have kicked in with all salad, parsnips and beetroot now being grown at home and strawberries fresh every day from the greenhouse. With regular sowing rotations we should be in stock now throughout the summer, and are working on ways of extending the growing season into winter. Also midnight one of our Japanese Bantam hens has gone broody, so we have worked out the days and are going to let her have a go at hatching some chicks naturally starting early next week so they should hatch when we get back from France...could this be a patter of tiny feet on the horizon?

This is Midnight, the proud father to be Dr Horacio and hiding in the background is lady the egg donor!