Rocking Your World 2016; Week 36

My word; here we are in September already! I actually love the season of Autumn, I just don't like the way time is rushing by so fast.

But here are a couple of family photos that made me smile this week.

The first is my Great- grandson, who, this week, celebrated his fifth birthday, and also won his 10m swimming certificate. As you can see, he is feeling pretty pleased with this achievement.

The second one shows three of my Grandchildren, who this Summer visited the festival Beautiful Days, and then the Shrewsbury Folk festival, both of which had the folk-rock group Levellers at the top of the bill. They are huge fans, and somewhere along the way they managed to get this photo of themselves with Jeremy Cunningham, the bassist from the band. It is rare for them to pose for a photo together, but this was too good an opportunity for them to miss.

And now to my week which has been mostly a lovely relaxing time. Here is how we spend much of our time:

Chris with his lap-top doing whatever it is he does, music from another device on the table, sun cream and the sound of the waterfall in our little water garden behind him.

Me, also in the fly free porch, but I am usually up on the higher level where it is more shady. I have a book to read (several books actually), tea and biscuits, with a hound at my feet in case I happen to drop a crumb or two!, my bag of crochet tucked down beside me, and although you can't see them, my tablet with a game of killer suduko in progress, and another tablet with headphones so I can listen to Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter books. I have the whole series loaded up but I am still just getting to the end of book 4. You can see I like to gather everything together before I get settled and then I don't have to keep getting up. I am a bit of a butterfly and like to keep changing what I am doing.

I also have a second chair in front of me that I use as a foot-rest, because I do need to keep my feet raised as much as possible, but someone else thought it was there for him, so I relented and let him have it for a while. At least he is just far enough away not to play with the wool I am using.

But we haven't been lazy the whole time. During the morning, when it is coolest round by the back door, Chris did start cutting back the bougainvillea. This is an aggressive grower and needs to be cut back hard at least twice a year. This is a problem for us because it creates a huge amount of debris. We are not supposed to throw it over the railings into the green zone as this is public land, and it does take a long time to rot down there. So we only throw the odd branch over there, not the mountain from a pruning session. We are also not supposed to put garden rubbish in the big bins which are there for household rubbish. If we are really in a patient mood we can cut the branches into little pieces and bag them up to throw in the bin, but really there is too much for this. And of course, fires are very restricted here with the constant risk of them spreading, and we have nowhere suitable to have a controlled bonfire anyway. So this week we invested in a shredder. We had a good one that we left in UK as we did not expect to need it out here! But the new one arrived yesterday and Chris has already shredded a big pile. It shreds down into quite a small pile which we can use to mulch around our shrubs, and also spread along the back of our railings, or bag and bin it. So it has made life a lot easier. In this photo he has just cut back the front of the bougainvillea. Another day he will do the top, and then maybe he will climb over the fence and do the back of it. I think the shredder will have earned its keep in one go.

While I went shopping this morning on my usual Friday 'bread and milk' run, Chris did the first lot of shredding, so at lunch time we treated ourselves to lunch out (No cooking for me. Yay!). We tried the bar-cafe at a local camping site. We hadn't been there before but folk had told us they did good, plain cooking. There was nothing special about it but it was a good meal, and we sat in very pleasant surroundings to eat it. The bar was on the site of the camp swimming pool but it was quiet as the holiday season has finished now really. There were a few people eating at the tables behind us, but it was relaxing to sit in the shade of the palm trees and have a leisurely lunch and a glass of wine, with just the sound of some pigeons in the trees, and the pump circulating the water.

I am happy to be able to tell you that I have found a home for little Molly. She is so cute and I have really enjoyed having her, but she will be better off in a family where there are fewer animals vying for attention. She is going to a couple who live way out in the campo, so there won't be much traffic to endanger her, and they have a little girl who will love playing with her. She has been very entertaining, and loves all her toys.

Like most cats, she also likes boxes. She found this little tray that she only just fitted into, and spent ages chasing her own tail in it.

Even our other animals are getting used to her, and I will miss having her under my feet all the time! I hope she settles in her new home. I am taking her over there on Sunday, so we have one more day to enjoy having her.

With having a fair amount of free time this week, I have had my crochet out again, and I made one of the two bigger squares from the set. It is a good size but I rather like it.

I decided to introduce one more colour into my mix, because I thought they needed a darker shade to make the other colours 'pop'. I chose a blue called Lobelia, which is really almost royal blue, though it looks more like navy in the photo. It is definitely an improvement, so I have used it for one round in some of the smaller square too. I have also done the parchment border on all my squares now, and I was pleased to find that the big square is exactly the size of two smaller ones, so they will all fit together nicely when it comes to joining them.

Another thing that pleased me this week is that we have managed to sell our very large, very heavy, glass-topped dining table with six big, wide chairs. They were a beautiful set, but much bigger than we need now and too heavy for us to move around. In their place we have two smaller wooden tables with four chairs each, which are not as stylish, but they take up much less space in our room, and are light and easy for us to move.

And that just leaves me with a couple of sky photos. I was sitting out on the porch having tea the other day, when I noticed a little pink in the sky. The sun sets around the other side of the house, so I rushed round with my camera but I was too late. The sun had gone. All that was left was a pretty pink reflection in the clouds.

But the next day was hot and humid, and there was a storm threatening. It didn't come, though our friends a little higher up the mountain had some rain. But at dusk the clouds parted and let the sun out making this rather odd face looking down on us.

Today was clearer and sunny, but there were a few clouds gathering by evening so I thought there might be a nice sunset and this time I was ready for it.

There were some pretty colours in it and almost a rainbow in the top, right hand cloud.

So that is about it for this week. Now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and see what everyone else has found to smile about this week.