Friday, March 15, 2024

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 11

Well here we are again at the end of another week. We have enjoyed some lovely sunny days so I am starting with another photo of the garden flowers. The little winter violas that I planted months ago, are still flowering and looking so sweet, and they have a surprisingly strong perfume. Of course the fresias in the pot next to them also smell lovely so I have a fragrant garden. The jasmine is over on the front wall and these two sit near the front door, so I can enjoy their lovely perfumes  every time I go out, or open the window.

Chris gave each pot a gentle water using a can this morning. They are used to me waving a hose around out there, but we cannot be seen to be so wasteful right now, so we give them just enough to stay alive. We did have a very little bit of rain here this week. Saturday was quite wet, but there was more just up in the hills which has helped to raise the level in the reservoirs a little, and they are hoping that when the snow melts at the top of the mountains, more will flow down to us. But in the meantime, we have to be careful.

I am very lucky to have a new 'toy' to play with in the kitchen. I know I am a sucker for kitchen gadgets. I buy anything that I think will make life easier for me and assist my weak hands, but I found I had far too many appliances taking up space, so I have replaced them with one that should do everything that they do, and some more. So here is my Ninja. 

It has a lot of accessories, but I needed them to be the right size to fit in the pot comfortably. I can now use it as an electric pressure cooker, an airfryer, a steamer, a dehydrater and yoghurt maker. It will prove and bake bread, make cakes and roast a whole chicken, and although the timing for each is much the same as the main oven, (except for the pressure cooker of course), it takes far less power, and does not make my kitchen so hot.

There is a lot to learn before I can realise its full potential, but I have started practising. Yesterday I cooked individual meat pies in it, and today I made a chicken satay for dinner, and then made a batch of cupcakes, and a loaf of bread. My cupcake tray has small, deep holes, so the cakes are a bit oddly shaped, but they will have some lemon curd put in the middle and I am sure they will taste fine. Hopefully the next batch will turn out more even.

I had fun one afternoon when I went to put away a little pot of glitter glue. I pulled the drawer just too far and the whole lot spilled all over the floor. I hadn't realised how many glitter glues and pearl drops I had accumulated! So I spent a couple of hours collecting them all up, sorting them into colours, and trying each one out. I threw away any that had dried up and now have a neatly arranged selection that I know are working and a test sheet to show how they look. Now to keep it that way...!

We have had a busy time with hospital appointments this week. On Monday Chris had his first treatment for macula degeneration, which went smoothly and wasn't too traumatic for him.  And yesterday I had a follow-up to my hand biopsy, and they have decided to remove some of the troublesome tissue from around the scar. I have to wait for them to ring me with an appointment now, but it will only be a quick trip to the day surgery unit. It will be good to get it sorted.

Yesterday I walked up to the farmacia to collect my prescription and I saw two swallow-tail butterfies having a great time flitting from flower to flower on a lantana shrub. Needless to say they weren't stopping to pose for me so I grabbed what I could and managed these two. It was like being out on a summer's day in England.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Ben last night, helping make a few tweaks to his webpage, and it is now up and running. He has worked hard on it so I hope it generates some work for him.

And with that, I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and do my best to visit you all.



Friday, March 8, 2024

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 10

Today is known in this area as Día de Vieja, or Day of the Old, when families go to somewhere out in the fresh air for a family picnic. Some say this originated from the time when all villagers worked for the monastry and the monks realised that fasting for the whole of Lent meant that they could not work well, so they designated this day (Lent break) when everyone could eat what they wanted and renew their strength to work until Easter. It is also the day when the children make or buy 'puppets' of old women, and occasionally men, built around a wooden cross with tissue paper clothes, and a head like a piñata which contains sweets or small toys. After their picnic, the puppets are stood in the ground and the children throw stones at them or use sticks to beat them until they break and their treasures can be retrieved. Here are some children about to have some fun!

There has been a big building project ongoing in Mojacar for the past year. It includes a new bus station with seating and shaded waiting areas, and also a new medical centre which is much more accessible than the old one, and convenient for those who travel to it by bus. It is built adjacent to the main road between Mojacar Playa and pueblo, and on the road side it presents as a very large plain concrete wall. As the work is nearing completion, the Town Council employed an artist called Nicolas Rodriguez, who together with his wife, a photographer called María Angeles "Maki" Fernández, created a huge mural to disguise the wall. They collaborate together under the name Makinico. 

We drove passed to see it today but because the road is very busy it was not possible to park to take photos, so these came from articles about it on the internet. The mural is in setions, the first one depicting  two Mojaquares (or woman of Mojacar) as they would have been many years ago when they fetched water from the town fuente in pitchers which they carried on their heads.

This moves into a stylized picture of the pueblo, famous for all its white buildings, and then a more realistic picture of it. The town council wanted this as they felt the full view of the village was hidden by the mountains for people approaching it from the beach.


Slightly set back from this some more white buidings lead onto a stretch of the beach, and the final piece has the town name in large white letters, with the 'O' carrying the symbol of Mojacar, 'the Indalo Man'.


I hope these show you how they each run into the next one to form a huge display. It is a very impressive piece of work, and a vast improvement on a plain concrete wall.

We have been warned of a sharp drop in temperature from this afternoon, and possibly a little of the much needed rain, but this week has been mainly warm and sunny during the day and my garden is loving it. It is mostly red and pink right now, with the poinsettia continuing to turn colour, a geranium that has had head after head of flowers, a kalenchoe that was almost dead, and is now full of flowers, and my first fresias opening up today.

Over on the wall our jasmin continues to thrive. There are still some buds though it is hard to see where any more flowers can fit in. It has been in danger of collapsing with the high winds we have had, but so far it has survived, and once the flowers die off, we will prune it back hard for next year. Everyone who passes by, comments on its lovely perfume. It is particularly strong in the evenings.

And I am really pleased with this little suculent plant. I bought it last year when the flowering plants were almost over, and it has lasted through the winter and now has its new spring colours. It is as pretty as any flowering plant. It was quite large when I bought it so I split it in half. The other piece is also doing well but is less colourful, and I have just read on the internet that it like full sun as long as it is not hot enough to scortch it, so I think it is too shady where I planted the second half. Its name is Crassula Ovata but is also know as the Jade plant, and sometimes the Money plant. It is a good one for the garden now as it only requires a drop of water when the soil is dried out.

I have been busy in my craft room making a run of Christmas cards. I started by making a stencil of a starry background with mylar film that I cut with my Silhouette Cameo machine,and then I used sections of it to add some colour to the corners of my cards. Next I cut out elements using vinyl and weeded out all the unwanted bits. I am good at losing these when I cut a lot so I have them all safely in a tin until I find the time to get them all assembled. I can't show the finished card yet as it will used for my monthly Christmas card challenge on 25th.

Apart from that, I have spent the evenings crocheting or chatting to one or other of my boys and my sister on the internet, and the week seems to have flow by. So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.