Solar Flair

It's an overcast and chilly Flash Your Stash Day! My day is a bit too hectic for rummaging through stash – howabout I flash my newly finished Sunrise Kaibashira instead? They're easily the brightest, girly-est socks I've ever worn, which seems appropriate – after all, although some cultures personify solar power as a male hero, in others the sun deity is a radiant and terrible woman. So behold my radiant and terrible legs!



I'm inordinately pleased with this pairing of pattern and yarn, Zarzuela's Fibers Shiny Sheep in DC Sunrise. I love the shell ruffle, wavy purl welts, cheery colors, and sheen on the yarn. Plus they're my first successful Sockdown! project of the year.



Speaking of flashing, I've had occasion before now to observe that for all its seeming gentility, gardening is really all about sex. Here's graphic evidence from the Philadelphia Flower Show, a totem cactus, Pachycereus schotti monstrosus. Just about everyone who noticed the cactus had similar, albeit gendered reactions that I differentiate as men's wtf (furrowed brow) and women's wtf (pop eyes). See what I mean?



Meanwhile, I recently heard a lecture by Sir Peter Crane, a former director of Kew Gardens. He noted that most of our food is grown using chemical fertilizer derived from oil or coal, which means most of the nitrogen in our bodies comes from dinosaurs. Except for legumes, of course, which fix nitrogen from the air.