All’s well

A week on from last week’s post and I’m so glad to be able to tell you that all’s well in the Winwick Mum household!

Thank you so much for keeping me company with your comments and emails, and for your good wishes for the dog.  It was so lovely to hear from you and what you’ve been up to, and I’m sorry to hear that some of you have been poorly as well – I do hope that you’re feeling better this week.  I’ve replied to all of your comments – I never know if you see them or not but I do like to reply when I can anyway 🙂

This photo is from Wednesday last week, and I just missed the grin before the hippo wallow into the water. 

💜  The dog went for his scan on Thursday, and the vet said there’s nothing to worry about and he’s in very good shape for his age.  It was such a relief!  I spent all day on Thursday trying to keep busy and jumping every time the phone rang (we don’t usually get sales calls but we got them all on Thursday!), and I couldn’t wait to go and pick the dog up.  He was very wobbly as he’d been sedated and it was really quite funny to watch him, but we were just very glad to have him home and know that whatever had been making him sick wasn’t something unpleasant inside that we would have to deal with.

We’re no wiser as to what was making him poorly, but the vet thinks maybe he had gastroenteritis and it’s passed now.  The dog is certainly back on his food so whatever was putting him off it seems to have left his system.  He’s got to go and have a dental at some point (a scrape and polish – ugh, I hate those visits to the dentist!) and he may need to have a tooth out, but I’m brushing his teeth every day now to try to avoid that.  Yes, yes, locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, perhaps, but if there’s any chance I can save his tooth then I’ll do that!  We’ve never been able to give him anything to chew to clean his teeth as he swallows it whole, or cracks bits off it and swallows it (so no bones for this boy) so I probably should have started cleaning his teeth earlier, but I didn’t.

He’s been shaved so that the vet could do the ultrasound – they did warn me that they would be doing that but I don’t think I expected quite such a big shaved area!  I can’t decide whether he looks like a Belted Galloway sheep …

Source: @herdyshepherd1 (I contributed to the crowdfunder for this herd of cows!)

or a clipped horse!

Source: Tara Gregg via Horse Illustrated Magazine

No, I’m not going to show you, I don’t want to embarrass the boy 🙂  I don’t think there’s any reason why he can’t go back in the  muddy ditches without any fur other than it might feel a bit cold, but I think I’ll try to keep him out of them for a while!

💜  The wild garlic is out in the woods.  I don’t remember noticing it here before, or maybe I’ve just gone at the wrong time.  It’s starting to flower now, and it smells wonderful!

I’ve got a recipe for leek, potato, spinach and wild garlic soup which came in the veg box the other week, and I’m really tempted to give that a go.

💜  Also in our veg box – coloured carrots!  Oh, you might have been eating these for years but these are new to me.  I was the child who was always told off for making a decision about whether to eat something or not based on what it looked like, and I would not have chosen to eat purple carrots, no matter how much I love the colour.  Yes, I know that all carrots originally used to be purple, but that would have been as persuasive to me as trying to tell me that if I didn’t eat my dinner, it would be sent to Africa to someone who would appreciate it (I may even have gone to get an envelope … I was a difficult child sometimes!).

Now, however, older and wiser and with these turning up without warning in the veg box and me having a different view about food waste, I have discovered that these carrots taste just like carrots and it’s absolutely fine for me to eat them.  In fact, look at the purple ones on the inside!  I love that!

Our veg box is very good for me, it’s a good combination of veg that we always eat and something that might be just off my radar but should be on it, and I am appreciating the opportunity to expand my horizons.

💜  Back to the woods – wood anemones.  I love these little white flowers, they make me think of fairies and I can imagine them being the latest style in headgear 🙂

💜  The bluebells are out in the woods too.  Every year, I post a photo because I really love them, and every year there’s a discussion about whether they are “real” bluebells or not (as opposed to the Spanish bluebell interlopers which are taking over in lots of areas).  I think these ones are proper English bluebells but the white ones in the bottom photo aren’t, and the ones in our garden that we inherited when we moved in definitely aren’t so I won’t show any of those this year so that I don’t cause offence – but there’s something about seeing that sea of blue in amongst all the green that makes my heart lift, even though the dog and I were tramping along in the rain (yet again).  It’s my Wildflower yarn season and it makes me very happy!

💜  This has made me very happy this week too.  I’d completely forgotten that I’d planted tulips in my new border, and even if I’d remembered, I probably wouldn’t have remembered what colour they were (no, of course I didn’t write it down!).  It has been such a joy to see these open up over the week, and I am very grateful to see them this year – and I’ll keep my fingers crossed the mice haven’t spotted them as they’re the reason that all my tulip bulbs usually disappear!  Hattie the cat likes this border (I have a feeling there are lots of little parcels under that bark) but if it keeps the mice away …

💜  Sock knitting … well, there has been plenty of that going on this week but not the Nepal sock and nothing that I can show you, I’m afraid.  Sometimes, when it all feels as if it’s getting a bit much, I just need to knit.  Nothing special, just my Basic 4ply Socks pattern, round and round in those little circles with yarn that doesn’t need any attention other than to make sure it’s coming out of the ball fast enough.  It’s like coming home, and it soothes my soul in a way that nothing else quite does, not even being in the garden.

I have knitted a whole pair and another sock this week and I’ve got the second sock of that pair already on the go so as you can imagine, there has been plenty of sock knitting and I have so appreciated it.  The yarn is a brand new one, not launched yet which I why I can’t show you, and I’ve been very grateful to have the opportunity to try it out – the good news is that when it is launched, I’ll have some photos to show you so that you can see what you think, but for now, it’s secret knitting that’s has brought me back to me.  That, and your company this week, that’s done it for me.

Thank you xx