Rocking Your World 2015: Week 15

We have sparrows nesting all around us and every day now the air is filled with the sound of their chattering, and the babies screaming for food! 

Further up in the village they have hundreds of house martins. You can see their little mud nests in all the porches and under the eaves, and if you walk up early in the morning, the newly fledged babies are all strung out along the wires. Most of the village cables are still strung overhead, so there is no shortage of perching space. A couple of years back I took this photo of them. They look so sweet all lined up.

I was reminded of this picture this week, when I saw this on the internet. It did make me smile, so I hope it does the same for you too.

After such a busy and exciting week last week, it is no surprise that this week has seemed very quiet. But we all need some catch-up time now and then so I am not complaining.

I haven´t done anything particularly new or different this week, but there have still been plenty of happy moments, and lots to be grateful for.

While friends and family in UK have been enjoying some lovely weather, well timed as the children were still off school for their Easter break, we have sunk back into cold and sometimes wet days. Our friends with log burners to warm their houses are all complaining that they have come to the end of their log stacks, and they don´t want to buy more this year, so they are struggling to keep warm. When I went out to see why the dogs were barking yesterday, I found two young folk picking up dead-wood from the green zone behind us. I was quite glad because it looks a lot tidier now, and at least they will have had a fire to sit around last night. And our gas fire has been on a couple of evening this week, so I am thankful that we are able to be comfortably warm too. 

I was very grateful when the sun came back today! It was warm all day and I was able to do three loads of washing and get it all dry on the line outside. I had a lot of extra things to wash, like bed linen and towels, after our visitors, and I have no-where indoors to hang large items, so I had to wait for a fine day to get it all done.

The weather has helped the garden and now it is warmer there are lots of plants starting to grow again. We have a potato tree in a pot in front of the house, and although it is a rather weak looking plant with thin spindley branches, it is again covered in purple flowers. They are only tiny but very pretty.

I also have just one flower on my Easter lily, and it is only one week late too. It has not flowered for a couple of years and I suspect it is becoming pot-bound so maybe I will separate it this year and see if it does better next year. But one flower is better than none at all isn´t it?

You can see, on the steps, just along side of it, my pansies are still looking lovely. They have been flowering for months now. I need a dead- heading session. I remember, when I grew these in my little patch of garden as a child, my dad telling me to take off the dead heads every day and then they would keep producing more flowers, instead of putting all their efforts into making seeds. I got my love of the garden from him I am sure, and he taught me lots about looking after them.

You will know by now that when the council dug up

our road, and all the trees that grew alongside it, they then relaid it with bricks, and put trees in big planters at intervals all the way up through the village. At Christmas they planted poinsettias all around them, but they are very exposed to the cold winds, and they were all dead a while ago. Well this week they have been replaced with small chrysanthemums, and they look very pretty.

They are all linked into a central watering system, so hopefully they will continue to look pretty for quite some time.

I have a fairly steady week now except for Wednesdays when I go out to my sewing group in the morning, straight on to my home group in the afternoon, and then straight on to choir practice in the evenings. This doesn´t give me much opportunity for food, and being a diabetic it is important that I eat something mid-day when I take my medication, so I take a packed lunch with me and stop somewhere on the way to my house group to eat it. This week it was a grey and windy day but I stopped off for a my ten minute break at Palomares beach. And I am so glad I did. The sea was wild with big waves churning up the sand, and crashing on the shore. I only had my phone with me but I wanted to take a photo, and the wind was so strong I needed two hands to open the car door! But I got my photo and I just stood there for a few minutes marveling at the power of nature. Then a flock of little birds swooped past me, staying near the ground, but heading straight into the wind. They are so small, yet so strong. 

One of the questions we considered at our house group was "When do we feel closest to God?". My answer was when I am alone with nature and I am filled with wonder at His creation. On the beach was one such moment.

My friend Eileen has been away on holiday and she came back yesterday, so today I went to visit her and we had a lovely afternoon together, just chatting and enjoying one another´s company. All the time I could hear a noise outside that I couldn´t quite identify so I asked her what it was and she  said, "Come and see". She took me out to her swimming pool which is a bit green and murky right now. (Many folk do not do anything to their pool over the winter, as it is quite expensive and time-consuming to maintain it when it not is use). And there, in her pool, were at least a dozen toads! They were busy doing what all creature tend to do at this time of year, and making a lot of noise and fuss about it too. 

These two were hanging onto the hoover tubing, but others were on the steps, under the water, and everywhere else I looked too. I would have been less surprised had they been frogs, but they were definitely toads - warts and all! There is an agricultural reservoir just outside their grounds and apparently they hop over from there to mate, and then they just disappear again. Because they rent their property, their land-lord will be coming in soon to clean their pool ready for the summer, so Tony is going to go out with a net and fish all the toads out and put them back over the wall before he comes.

This made me smile. It is a photo that my grand-daughter posted of her baby Alfie with his big brother Isaac. She captioned it with "These two really are the best of friends already", It is such a lovely photo of them, and I am really looking forward to meeting them in July.

I am grateful that my sister´s new computer is up and running so we were able to have a long chat on Skype, and catch up on all the family news. We had such a good connection, it was just like we were sitting in a room together.

With a bit more time at home I have managed to do some crafting this week. I was very excited when  a parcel arrived with some new stamps and dies that I had ordered from a sale. They were very real bargains with each set being marked down from 26.69€ to 6.67€. So I had to try them out and I made two birthday cards and then a set of seven Christmas cards. That´s a very productive week for me!

Today I had another parcel with a set of stamps in that I ordered from America. They have been a long time getting here, but now they are, I am eager to try them out, so I am going to have a little play with them now before I go to bed.

But first I will link up with Annie´s Friday Smiles and Rocking your world at Celtic House, and I´ll see you all again next week.