Garden Games, just so very SUMMER TIME..
Unbelievably our Yorkshire Garden has just about dried out. Time for a bit of Croquet. A simple, uncomplicated sport…. NORMALLY. Introduce a 4 legged LITTLE HELPER and mayhem ensues.
A helpful MOLE also adding some additional course features…
What’s he looking at….
Somebody with lots of talent has been very busy.
Talking about talent, I could really do with even just a little bit of that stuff. I was taking the Mad Dog for his walk or more accurately HE was pulling me along for afternoon walk and deep shoulder workout, when a delivery truck pulled up. It was my niece and we had a lovely chat while she got excitedly bounced on by Captain Chaos.
My niece, now covered in dog hair (it’s a sign of affection really) eventually had to head off to make her next grocery delivery. So it was back to being remorselessly pulled while listening to a podcast on my iPhone headphones. But disaster, NO SOUND. Nothing. I stood there for ages messing about with settings, rebooting and generally shouting at the tech.
Then a brief and rare moment of clarity in which the secrets of life and the universe are revealed.
No wonder you can’t hear anything from the iPhone while you still have the earphones shoved deep into your trouser pocket…. What an absolute wazzock, that’s even beyond muppetry.
iPhone should cater for the permanently lost like me and start to make a range of THIGH or HIPphones. Or maybe have the iPhone give the user a short electric shock to warn users that they have started to become completely delusional and falsely claim that technology is in full scale rebellion. Or just maybe a friendly text message reminding the useless user that ‘bizarrely earphones are designed to work best when placed next to the ear, and definitely not in a location around the groinal region….”
Somebody likes a good old water fight. Sends the crazy one even crazier.
Being crazy is hot work, especially when it’s HOT. The little garden weather station reached the big four zero.
That is ridiculous. Maybe not for some places but for Yorkshire, seriously ridiculous. I know it’s unofficial and inaccurate but for what it’s worth, that temperature would have smashed the old UK hottest ever recorded temperature. Many places here officially smashed the old record on Tuesday.
What’s the old Kipling line – mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Well briefly…..
A quick water fight and a well earned ice pop under the shade of the old apple tree, then it was back inside again. NO this is not just a summer thing. This has never been a Yorkshire Summer, not even close.
What have we done.
When are those in charge going to take this seriously.
Our so called Prime Minister skipped an emergency weather planning meeting so he could focus fully on organising a celebration party for himself……. Surely no sane person would ever vote for these self obsessed chancers.
That thought should make all our blood boil. It better do and fast because if it doesn’t then the blood of our future generations will definitely BOIL.
Somedays are more tiring than others. Some days are more stressful than others. Somedays the serious words don’t come. Somedays it’s best just be silly.
It’s been too long. Actually I can hear shouts of ‘not long enough’. But here goes. It’s Terrible Poetry time. The Bad Bard is back. All thanks to Chelsea Owens Terrible Poetry contest.
https://chelowens.com/category/contests/terrible-poetry-contest/
This time the rules are….
You have till 8:00 a.m. MST next Thursday (February 3) to submit a poem to Chelsea.
So which classic poem shall we go for. Something poetic, something beautiful, something deep, something philosophical. Let’s go for a classic opening line that ticks all those boxes. Maybe Shakespeare, maybe Blake, maybe Wordsworth. Or maybe Philip Larkin, maybe his classic ‘This be the verse’ with its uplifting first line…..
‘They F**k you up, your mum and dad’
That’s me kicked out before I even start…..
So let’s use those poetic word gems do type an ode to Captain Chaos. Let’s make it Terrible.
His best buddy is a seriously fat cat, it’s far too quiet, where are THEY
They have just pulled the curtain off the wall, what the F**K
Now it’s on the floor, covered in hairs, well Thank YOU
Captain now thinks it’s great fun to try to hump the cat, that’s seriously messed UP
Even The Cap knows you can’t end a sentence with a possessive determiner like YOUR
But he is a clever dog with a great pedigree, a beautiful white Spitz is his MUM
He gets his intelligence, looks, fluffy hair and cunning from her AND
being a right ruffian, rogue, rascal and rampantly randy from his Cocker Spaniel DAD
There is nothing better than sneaking into the open washing machine as it’s being loaded with clothes. Select a lovely sock and then leg it outside. Once the sock is outside then it’s lost to the wilds…
If only some other things could be lost to the wilds.
With the Great Bloggers ‘Festival of Love’ Bake-Off fast approaching it was time for another creation. Yes it was time to move to Def Con 3.
I tried to keep this simple. A basic sponge cake. Dairy and Gluten Free. Well it started well, with carefully measured out ingredients then the first disaster. For some reason my mind mixed up 20ml of tepid water with 320ml…. Talk about a mucky swimming pool. Not quite the smooth batter I was looking for.
I’m sad to say I panicked. I grabbed the flour jar and just poured. But why was the flour brown…. Yes I had grabbed the cocoa tin. Then I checked the next tin, this one had white contents. But as I poured it became clear this was caster sugar. By the time I had found the proper flour tin the cake mic was looking a right mess. Hawklad recommended that the best course of action was now just to randomly add more ingredients. So we added cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, orange peel and maple syrup.
The end result. Well it looks like a cake. Bizarrely it’s feels like a cake. As for the taste….. Well love can take many forms, but this cake probably isn’t one of those…
Do you feel the baking love.
We would love you to take part as well!! Please send your baking photos and baking ideas into:
Already Mel is receiving so many fantastic submissions and the occasional disaster 😂😂😂😂.
Some pets will stand a respectful distance away while you exercise. The yoga instructor I follow has a dog that sits perfectly still and just behaves. No interference.
Then there are other pets.
Pets that like to get involved.
Close to the action.
Take over….
A walk with seemingly endless views. Plus seemingly endless adventures for a mad dog.
I better not let him off the dog lead, we might be gone for hours.
Yes who doesn’t like a romp in overgrown meadow. Certainly not this little chap.
I know the lawn needs sorting out….. I will try as our gardener is clearly lying down on the job.
After ‘school at home’ had finished for the day I managed to drag the broken toe Hawklad outside for a while. Normally that means him pacing around the garden. So it’s an odd feeling just getting to sit in a garden chair. I was starting to worry about Hawklad getting bored and frustrated with being so immobile WHEN….
“Dad did you just see the mole hill move…..”
And yes it was. The mole was clearly active and soil was being pushed to the surface. Lots of soil. It went on for about an hour. How exciting. That hour rushed past. It almost felt like we were observing some majestical big wildlife event. All we needed was a camera crew and the wonderful David Attenborough. Even Captain Chaos became transfixed for a time until he was sent inside as he had decided to help out the excavation work.
Just goes to show. You might feel hemmed in by life but if you keep looking you just might start to see some of that real world come to you.
Unbelievably some snowdrops have survived the paws of the mad one. Flowers are always welcome especially when they herald the arrival of Spring. They are even more welcome when they sort themselves out. We just have to enjoy and try to stop the dog trampling them into the ground.
This morning was felt like another Groundhog Day here in our family lockdown. Very like every other morning. Doing the same things. That included trying to find some socks to wear. Where do they go. Ok I will reframe that question. Where does the sock monster put them. It’s not as if we live in a big house with loads of rooms. Only a month ago I had to buy 7 more pairs to boost the numbers floating round our little world. Sill struggling to find a matching pair.
But here’s the thing. Here’s another reason to be thankful of the lockdown. No one will see what I’m wearing. It doesn’t matter. Odd socks rule….
This will be where I go for my one permitted trip out of the house. The farmers field at the back of the garden. One bit of outside exercise is now permitted by the Government. So that’s taking the dog for his morning constitutional. A few laps round the deserted field.
But look at those puddles. How tempting are they. So want to channel my inner Peppa Pig and jump in those muddy puddles. But I don’t want to get the dog drenched and caked in mud. So maybe I could go back home, drop him off and then come back.
But surely that would count as a second exercise trip out. Breaking the rules.
I bet those sheep would dob me in as payback for feeding them cheap biscuits.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 