Back to Blighty with a Piece of Ireland

With that last post, our wonderful Irish holiday came to an end. We hope you've enjoyed sharing our adventures, as much as we've enjoyed the reminiscing. The Northern Ireland chapter of the Friendly Planet Guide will certainly be packed with lots of ideas of places to visit and loads of local information.

But, as you know, we brought a little bit of Ireland back with us, in the form of the very lovable and charming Patrick. Following the Bears Unlimited tradition he was welcomed into our ranks, in the presence of the company flag, by the previous newest member of B.U., on this occasion, Gilbert.


As we've been blogging about Ireland for so long, this photograph is now quite old. Please rest assured that as a mark of his permanent position with us, Patrick has now had his Emerald Buddy manufacturers tag removed. As he is rightly, very proud of his Irish heritage, he has kept the tag safely as his Irish passport.

Patrick has settled in very well and says he is very happy living in Norfolk, although he does hope to return to Ireland for visits and holidays whenever he can.


Gardening bear Tommy, did his bit to make Patrick feel welcome by showing him round the garden to see all the spring flowers which were flourishing as a result of his green paws.


Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Autumn Clean Up

Autumn has arrived with avengeance at our North Norfolk home. There are leaves everywhere and there were far too many for me, Tommy, to clear up on my own, so I had to enlist some help from my Bears Unlimited friends.

In return for their help I was able to offer them an enjoyable scrunch in the leaves before we started work. Scrunching our way through thick piles of brown leaves is, for all of us, one of life's simple pleasures.


It's certainly true that many paws make light work and my team of helpers were willing and able. It wasn't long before we could see grass again. The only problem we had was how to dispose of all the leaves we'd collected. I like to do as much composting as I can, but even so there are only so many leaves I can use. We've got two brown wheely bins for garden waste, but even these quickly filled up. Some of us did a lot of jumping up and down on the leaves to try and fit a few more in.


All in all, a good afternoon's work. It's a bit like the forth bridge though. We can still see leaves on the trees so we know we'll be doing it again in a week or two's time.

Lots of love, Tommy & the gardening gang xxx

An English Country Garden

The other day Bris talked to you about the mini marrows he found at the Hindolveston harvest. Today I bring you the other extreme and want to show you the real stonkers of marrows which I (gardening bear Tommy) grew in the Bears Unlimited garden this summer.


One of them was so big that I needed a big strong bear to carry it into the house. Blue Bear was exactly the bear for the job. Even he thought it was heavy, and when he stood on the scales with it, we found the reason why: it weighed a whopping 15 pounds. Head chef bear Oakley came into the kitchen to find out what was happening and got very excited about all the exciting things he could cook for us with these marrows.

Our marrows might be whoppers now but earlier in the summer the same plants were producing much smaller fruits, in other words they were producing courgettes.


Mind you, even as courgettes, they were bigger than average. They clearly liked the music I played to them and my daily conversations with them.

Chef Oakley got very creative when I presented him the fruits of my labours. Can you see what culinary delights he conjured up. We had delicious ratatouille and courgette cake. Oakley thought he had made so much that there would be spare for freezing but he had underestimated the size of bears' appetites when good food is put before them.

Lots of love, Tommy and all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Green Paws

Did you remember to put your clocks forward last night? After a late night Wherry drinking session, we found it hard to get up this morning but were pleased, when we did, to discover it was a really lovely spring day.

While some of the gang headed for the beach (their adventures to follow), gardening bear Tommy headed for the garden. Tommy works magic in the garden and really does have green paws.

After a good tidy up which resulted in the filling of both of our two brown garden waste wheelie bins, Tommy paid a visit to a local garden centre. On his return he couldn't wait to get planting his new purchases.


Doesn't Tommy look in his element? We're really looking forward to seeing this aubretia spread across our new border which Tommy has cleverly edged with roof tiles. Keep up the good work Tommy.

Lots of love all at Bears Unlimited xxx