Blue sky Saturday

Good morning, good morning, happy Saturday to you!  I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but we have the most beautiful blue sky up above and it’s promising to be a lovely day.

There’s a meditation that I do sometimes which begins “On this glorious day that I have been gifted …'” and then you go on to say what you are thankful for, and I certainly did that this morning.

Well, we’re half way through the year now.  Midsummer day and the summer solstice has been and gone and I noticed last night when I went to pick up not so small daughter from an evening out in Liverpool with her boyfriend that it seemed to be going dark just a few minutes earlier.  How can that be already?!  Still, it’s most definitely still summer when I’ve been out walking with the dog and I do like sitting outside on those evenings when it’s warm and going dark, the bats swooping and skimming to catch the insects, and we’ve still got weeks of that to come, I hope!

Thank you for all your comments on my last two posts.  I’ve loved reading them but haven’t replied to them all yet (I do go back and do that, I don’t know if you ever see them 🙂 ) .  There were requests for an elderflower cordial recipe and also questions about what the “burdock” part of “dandelion and burdock” is so I’m hoping this will help out!

The elderflower cordial recipe is from a book that I have that’s still in print so there’s copyright on that particular recipe and I can’t share it, but when I looked around online, most of the ones that came up were pretty much the same so I think you could use any of those.  This elderflower cordial recipe is the closest I’ve found to mine; if you add limes in as well then you’ll have it 🙂

Dandelion and burdock is what children growing up in the UK know as “pop” and is called “soda” elsewhere in the world.  As a child, there were all kinds of weird and wonderful flavours (I’m not sure it’s much different now, I just don’t tend to drink pop any more) – my favourites were dandelion and burdock, American cream soda (neon green, probably had no connection to the US in any way) and cherryade.  Many people will remember the “pop man” or the Corona man (Corona was a brand of pop) who used to drive around estates a bit like a milkman did with his bottles of milk, delivering pop to houses.  I loved it if we ever got any because if you took the glass bottle back to a shop, you’d get a refund on the bottle and I was allowed to spend that on sweeties (we probably don’t want to get into the two Fruit Salad chews for a penny conversation! 🙂 )

Back to the dandelion and burdock – they’re both plants; dandelions grow freely in the hedgerows and gardens and dock plants tend to grow where there are nettles, but after Googling, I found out they’re a different plant to the edible burdock that goes in drinks.  I found another recipe for dandelion and burdock cordial that you could mix with lemonade or fizzy water to make your own … I must say, I am rather tempted!

 

I went to RHS Bridgewater with my friend again this week.  I realised earlier in the year that I wasn’t using my membership and those membership cards become an expensive piece of plastic when they sit in the drawer and aren’t used, so I decided I would try to get there at least once every month and my friend was keen to come with me.  It means that we get to walk round the gardens, chat and eat our picnic on a bench every month and because the RHS membership allows a free guest with every member, my card is now proving to be very good value!  I’ve known my friend since we met at antenatal classes with our bumps (not so small daughter was in mine) and we both had our daughters on the same day (it’s very convenient if you can organise this with friends as it’s easier to remember birthdays 🙂 ).  She doesn’t live that far away but unless we make a proper arrangement to see each other, the weeks just slide by and we only communicate by text.  My other good friends live much further away so I’m used to doing that with them, but we’re all so busy that you forget sometimes that you need to do it with local friends too, or at least, I do.

The gardens have filled out so much in the few weeks since we last went (my own garden has done the same but has a rather more overgrown look!) and it’s lovely to see how the stars of the borders are changing every time.  Last time, it was bearded iris and alliums that caught my eye.  This time, the alliums are still looking very striking but the flowers have gone and now there are tall seed heads to see instead.

Eventually, these will go brown and those little green triangular seed capsules that you can see will open up to show the seeds inside.

The Chinese streamside garden is starting to look as if it’s always been there.  There’s still space to be filled by plants but it takes time with some of them, and it will be worth the wait.

Do you remember last time I went to RHS Bridgewater, I showed you a photo of Primula vialii, a lovely purple and red spike of a flower?

This is what it looks like now, a month later …

They’re so tall!  So beautiful, I really am tempted to give them another go in my garden although it does look as if they’re happiest near water and my garden doesn’t have anything like that.

In the kitchen garden, I couldn’t resist snapping these neat rows of lettuce …

and the rows of sweet peas behind him.  If it looks little dull in the photo, that’s because it was absolutely throwing it down with rain and we dripped around under cover of a large umbrella, taking it in turns to hold it whilst we were each taking photos.

This little Calendula (marigold) flower looks lovely with the raindrops …

I’ve got Calendula in the greenhouse in my garden this year.  They’re usually all around the garden but these are the only ones I’ve seen this year – I think the rest of it has got so overgrown that there’s no space or light for smaller plants at the moment and I really do need to be a bit more ruthless with my secateurs on the bigger shrubs.

I also wondered about creating something like this which I spotted in one of the Bridgewater borders – I think it’s probably one of those things that looks like it would be easy enough to make but would probably end up taking a few more hours than you expected and look nothing like as good as this one, so maybe I’ll keep on wondering for a bit longer 🙂

Elsewhere in my garden, I must show you these because I can’t believe that we’ve got to June and there are blueberries still on the bush.  Usually, the blackbirds have had the lot by now so they must be getting well-fed elsewhere!

The blackcurrants and redcurrants are also doing well.  I’ve noticed that the birds tend to leave these alone so there’s more chance of a crop for us to eat.

Finally for today, there’s good news on the knitting front.  I’ve FINALLY finished the Veganyarn.co.uk socks and they are ready to go on my feet.  Hooray!  I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have them finished after they’ve been on my needles for so long – and I seriously thought I was never going to finish them at all when I had to re-do the heel flap three times and then re-knit the toes on the second sock as I hadn’t made the foot long enough.  The yarn is very stretchy so if you decide to try it out, don’t pull the foot when you try it on to check for the toe decreases or the fabric will stretch further than it should do.

The colour is fabulous, isn’t it?  It’s called “Purple Reign” and is just my shade of purple 💜  It’s been quite a long time since I wrote a no-nylon sock yarn review but I’ll wear these socks for six months or so to give them a good run and then write a review.

I need a new Emergency Sock now so I’ve decided to get on with this pair that I started in one of the Winwick Mum colours, Autumn Leaves.  I remember casting these on to take with me to a Harry Styles concert that I went to with not so small daughter – and looking back through the blog, that was a year ago too!  Honestly, you’d think I’d done nothing at all over the year with all of these abandoned socks that need finishing but I can promise you that I have been very busy 🙂

I am at a standstill with my husband’s Yarn Badger stripe socks, though.  I was getting on with it really well until I realised that there are only three stripes’ worth of yarn left and I need about seven … usually, if someone is intending to make a second pair of socks out of ball of yarn, I recommend that they weigh the yarn that’s left in a ball and compare it to the weight of the first pair so that they can be sure that they’re going to have enough.  Did I do that?  No, I didn’t.

I need to find the second ball of yarn leftovers from the pair I made before and weigh that to see what’s going on, and then I need to decide what to do.  It may be that these will become a pair of socks for me instead as I don’t want to have contrast toes that come halfway up the foot – it’s not the end of the world and I did get to practice my Fish Lips Kiss heel.  Nothing is ever wasted!

I’m hoping I’ll be able to update you next week but that does depend on where I’ve put the second ball and whether I can find it.  I’d like to blame my current disorganised mess on spending all my spare time out in the garden, but honesty compels me to tell you that it was like that before and I chose to ignore it and go out into the garden.  There’s always time to tidy up when it rains 🙂

Actually, that does make my house sound like some kind of bomb site and it’s not at all – I just know that I put this particular yarn somewhere safe when I was moving from my tiny office space to share a bigger room with my husband and I threw most of my stuff into boxes which are still not unpacked.  I’ll get round to it.

The garden is looking good, though 🙂