Important questions

This week, I have been pondering some of life’s important questions* like:

Why is it that when you wash any clothing that has removable padding, such as a sports bra or a bikini, the padding from one side always ends up on the other side?  I never take the padding out myself because the hole that’s been created to do that is usually so small and fiddly that it’s not worth the effort – but somehow the pad manages to remove itself and not only that, find its way into the very small hole on the other side so that you’re pad-less on one side and over-padded on the other until you realise why your clothes feel peculiar.

 

Why is it that even when you think you’re perfectly capable of counting the rows of a heel flap, you end up pulling it out three times to re-do it because it turns out that you can’t?

I’ve been doing a bit of driving around this week so I’m back on with the Emergency Sock, the one that usually lives in the car for when I’m waiting to pick not so small daughter up or I’m stuck in a traffic queue.  I first wrote about it back in August last year and I can’t quite believe that these socks have taken me nearly a year to get finished!  Anyway, I’m well on the way with it again now and if I can manage to keep up the round-counting success, I’ll be nearly finished by the end of the weekend.

The yarn is Pleiades sock yarn from VeganYarn.co.uk, a blend of bamboo, cotton and elastic, and the shade is Purple Reign.  It’s quite different to woolly sock yarn to knit – that elastic makes for a super-stretchy yarn!

 

Why is it that the dog feels the need to wallow like a hippopotamus on a walk even when the watering hole is a tiny puddle in a gloop of mud that smells like a swamp monster’s armpit?

He knew exactly what he was doing too – look at that grin!

 

Why is it that these beautiful poppy (Papaver somniferum) flowers only last for a day?

At first, I wondered what had happened to them when they bloomed in the morning and they had all completely gone by the evening.  I couldn’t even seen any petals on the ground so I couldn’t think what had happened to them!  The next day, the same thing and now I think that’s all we get.  A succession of beautiful flowers and then they’ve gone.

Oh, the bees absolutely love them, they’ve abandoned the foxgloves for the poppies completely and sometimes it’s a two-bee job to gather the pollen …

They shouldn’t really be growing in the veg garden but they are, and I’m so behind with my gardening this year that I’ve left them to it.  One of them, a huge pink poppy that I’ve never seen before, has come from my Dad’s garden, I think, because I remember them being there.  Poppies don’t like to be moved so I knew when I brought one of the plants over here when we cleared his house, but I was hoping for seeds.  I didn’t think I’d got any but 8 years later, here they are.  I know it’s just how Nature works, but it always feels like magic to me!

 

Why is it that on the hottest days we’ve had so far, our pets insist on sitting in the hottest rooms of the house?  Hattie could go outside (I’ve cleaned out the water butt and have stopped the use of the hole in the lid as a post box for dead furry things and feathers), but Astrid has been lying next to the Aga (I’ve been taking her out into the garden in the evening when it’s cooler) and even the dog has been gently cooking himself when he could definitely be somewhere not quite so hot.

Astrid spent some time in the dog’s old puppy crate outside yesterday, just to try to stop her overheating.  (If you’re new to the blog, Astrid is now a stay at home cat after being hit by a car last year.)  She wasn’t too impressed at first, but when we put her back in the house, she wanted to be outside again and by the end of the day, seemed to be quite comfortable in her restricted outdoor space.  I’ll only be putting her in there for short bursts of time and I won’t be leaving her unattended, but it seems to be a good way to have her outside whilst the weather is nice and she can at least feel the fresh air on her fur.

 

Why is it that dandelion and burdock tastes sooo much better after a long walk on a hot day?  I went up to Skipton to see my friend Lucy on Tuesday and we went out to Bolton Abbey to walk … and we walked … and we walked … and it was just lovely!

We were very glad of a sit down with a drink and cake after our 5 mile-ish walk from Bolton Abbey up the River Wharfe to Barden; it was mostly in the woodland shade so it wasn’t a tortuous slog in the heat, and we did have an ice cream half way round as well 🙂

 

And how about you?  Have you had a lovely week?  I hope so – and if you’ve been pondering any of the Big Questions too this week, do let me know!

 

 

* totally important-to-me questions, that is – nothing that’s going to solve the world’s problems 🙂