Rocking in late as usual!

Yes I'm late with my Friday post as usual, but it is still Friday so I'm OK. Plenty of good things to share with you, and if anyone  is wondering why I am so cheerful, pop over to Celtic House and read what it is about.

I'm a bit photo heavy again this week so I'll try to keep the words to a minimum. Sorry other rockettes who drop by to share this post. It is still aimed at family in UK so I like to share as much as I can with them.

We started with a lovely surprise party on Saturday night for our friends, William and Sylvia's golden wedding anniversary. it was a lovely evening and we gathered at the home of another couple where there was a big patio we could sit on, and room inside for a table laden with all the food we contributed. Everyone was well fed. 

Here are the happy couple (outside pair) with our

hosts for the evening (in the centre). They were truly surprised to find us all waiting for them, and they had a wonderful evening.

These are a couple of shots that are both typical of a Spanish garden.

After supper there was a toast and a cake to cut.

Some folks danced while others sat around chatting.

The house is fairly remote so there are views across to the mountains all around, and I slipped round the corner just in time to catch the sun sinking down behind them.

It is not often we are out for two nights on the trot, but on Sunday a friend of ours, with his mate, were providing the live music at the bar down the road - El Naranjo or Orange tree. You can see the tree that gives it that name just by the entrance where Brian and Dave are playing. 

Dave is the musician who accompanies us for our

choir. We have a wonderful pianist who plays for us, but Dave adds in some clarinet and saxophone when the songs are suitable, and we all love it. It was a good night on Sunday and we enjoyed it.

I had a parcel from Lakeland plastics this week and one item was a silicone daisy mould, intended for moulding icing sugar. But I wanted it for craft, and I had to dig out my very ancient fimo clay and make these. Now I just have to think of a card or something to put them on.

Another item in the parcel was an outdoor clock that took my fancy. We spend a lot of time sitting on the porch so it is useful to be able to glance up at a clock. We have temporarily hung it from the rejas (iron bars on the windows) but it will look better when we have it on the plain white wall. As well as the clock face it also has two small dials for humidity and temperature. You can just see the one on the right is registering the temperature as 30º and that is in the evening on a shady porch!

Our stephanotis has decided to bloom for a second time this year. That is very unusual, but it is so pretty and it smells heavenly.

One evening I stayed out on the porch for the evening instead of coming down to my craft room as I usually do, and I happened to see a full moon rising. so of course I reached for the camera!

We ended the week with a lovely morning trip down to Garrucha marina - just 15 minutes drive from here. A friend had told us that there was a replica of Magellan's ship there - the first ship to circumnavigate the world in 1519-22. So we decided to pay it a visit. It was not very big and I am glad I didn't have to live on it for three years!

A group of men actually re-lived the journey in this ship 2004-06 but they used the easier route through the Suez canal and the Panama canal, whereas on the original trip they had to sail around The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn - a much more dangerous

venture. I wouldn't have wanted to be this man, working up in the rigging, even on a calm day like this one. But he was singing all morning so he was quite happy to be up there.

I went up on the top deck...

And looked down on Chris waiting below ....

And for our 'nature lesson' today I am using a small collage I posted on here a few years ago at this time of year. (mainly because the photos I took this morning were not very good!) From a distance, some of the fields around here appear to be filled with rather bare, dead looking shrubs, with a covering of white blossom. But on closer inspection you can see that the blossom is in fact snails. 

These little creatures amaze me. they just appear at the start of the summer. They climb up a chosen branch and seal themselves on to it, often piling up in layers, and there they stay, in the baking sun, without moving, all summer. When the first rain of Autumn comes, they will climb down, do what snails have to do, and we won't see them again until next summer!

Well that's all for this week folks. I just have time to go and link up with Virginia's blog and see what the other Rockettes have found to be happy about this week.