All about the sky

I sat down to write this week’s post, looking through all the photos that I’ve taken over the couple of weeks that the Sockalong birthday posts were the focus of the blog – and hit analysis paralysis.  Do I show you what’s happening in the garden?  Or what about the photos from when the dog and I were out in the fields?  I haven’t shown you any current knitting for a while, perhaps that’s what I should focus on … but I’m away in the Lake District this weekend helping out again at big daughter’s yoga retreat as I did last year and maybe I should show you photos of the view across the lake to the hills …  Yes, yes, I want to show you them all but at last count there were 120 photos and you don’t want to see all of those!  We’d be here all day!

As the light started to fade last night, I looked again at my photos and all of a sudden, I could see a theme of the last couple of weeks, and it’s all about the sky.  As we are moving ever closer to summer, the sky is the bluest of blues on some days, and on other days, there’s a reminder of the grey wintery weather we think we’re leaving behind.  I will tell you about the garden, the dog walks, the knitting, the yoga retreat … but another day.  Today, I just want to show you the sky.

We’re starting in Winwick, where the crops in the fields are growing taller by the day.  On days like these, the sky looks so big.  Not as big as the sky in the countryside in Canada, perhaps, or the US, but still big and I love it.

Later on in the season, these heads of barley will turn golden and drop over – they remind me of prawns – but at the moment, they are standing tall.  I love watching the fields when the wind blows and the barley ripples like water.

I like to see the tracks that the tractor has made too.  I always want to follow them even though I know I would just end up in the middle of the field and the farmer would be cross because that’s how crops get spoiled!  It is easy to forget when you see fields like this that what grows in them ends up on our plate.  This is wheat so it will eventually be flour, but at the moment, it’s hard to imagine that!

Not such a blue sky on this day.  Those clouds look quite ominous, don’t they?  It wasn’t cold though, and we didn’t get wet as I thought we might do.

The tractor was out later in the week.  Can you see it, over to the right of picture?  This field is going to be blue flax.  The farmers grew it for the first time in these fields last year and it was so beautiful, and I was really pleased when the farmer’s wife (that sounds so old-fashioned these days as she is a farmer in her own right!) said that they would be planting it again.  You can see photos of the flowers in this post here.

I love this photo.  It looks like a collage of three – a sky, a green field and a brown field, but it’s actually just one view down the footpath.  To the left is wheat and to the right is going to be blue flax.

The dog had a vet appointment last week and after he’d been given the all-clear over a tooth that I thought was broken but was just loose (he’s getting to be an old boy now, apparently this happens), we headed to the nearby woods so that he could have a run.  The yellow rape flowers were in full bloom and smelt wonderful; a heady, heavy smell that no doubt sets all of the local allergy sufferers off which must be tough to live with, but I was glad to appreciate it.  Those colours look like the Ukraine flag, don’t they?  I would never have known that if Ukraine hadn’t been in the news as much as it has, and I wish it had been in the news for happier reasons, but I like that I know something about another country that I never knew before.

This was the sky last night at Coniston in the Lake District.  We’re back at the beautiful house overlooking the lake where we stayed last year.  Big daughter’s boyfriend and I are doing our bit behind the scenes to help make sure that everything runs smoothly and everyone is well-fed and looked after, and it’s a joy to be back here.

This is what’s known as a mackerel sky because the clouds look a bit like fish scales.  There are lots of old rhymes to do with mackerel skies that all seem to involve rain being imminent, but there’s no sign of that at the moment.

Next time, I’ll show you some of my other photos of flowers and knitting – I’ve still not started that Fish Lips Kiss heel although I have finally got my husband to stand on a piece of cardboard so that I can draw around his foot – although by then, of course, I’ll have taken even more so I may be back to the analysis paralysis that struck me down earlier 🙂

I hope you have a lovely weekend and I’ll catch up with you soon! xx