Rocking Your World 2020; Week 17

Hi everyone. I am starting my post today with another photo of my mauve daisy plant which as you can see is now well covered in flowers. There is still room for more, but it needs more sunshine for that.

For part of last week the pot looked like this. Paco decided it was a perfect place to curl up and nap, and he flattened the centre so I grabbed a nearby stand and put it there to give the plant a chance to pop up again!

Another pinky mauve flower that we have seen a lot of this week are these trumpets blooms, similar to the UK bindweed, but nothing like so invasive. It is a wild flower, some would say a weed, but it is so pretty. I am happy to see it flourishing on the bank down to the green zone, just beyond our back railings. For a brief while early this morning, the sun did show its face, and these flowers were humming with the sound of all the bees busy harvesting nectar and pollen from them.

Back in the garden, this made me really happy. Our elephant foot palm has not one, but two flower spikes on it this year. These shoot up quite suddenly. The flowers themselves are fairly insignificant, but it shows the plant is healthy. I inherited it from a friend when she moved back to UK, about four years ago, and it was a tiny thing in a small pot then. We potted it on and it hasn't stopped growing since.

This photo appeared as a memory on my Facebook this morning, because I posted it last year on our ruby wedding anniversary. Our 41st anniversary was on Monday this week. 

We didn't have a lot of money to spend back then so a friend offered to do my hair for me, and insisted on taking this photo before the 'main event'. I don't think I will ever achieve this look again. My hair is now much thinner and very grey, and no length of lock-down will allow it to grow this long again!

Here is the wedding day photo along with a more recent one (but one taken before lock-down). At least we are still smiling! our opportunity for celebration was limited, but we did have a drink together that evening, as we sat watching TV, and reminiscing about what we have done in those 41 years. It has been a good life so far! 

We were pleased to see the council workers back, disinfecting our streets again this week. The sweeper led the way, clearing up any loose rubbish, followed by a man with a powerful hose. He was very thorough, making sure to give every gateway a good spray, and he even went under and over any parked cars. Our lock down has been extended until 9th May, but we do feel we are being looked after very well.

We have had some problems with Paco this week and I ended up playing vet. We do have a veterinary clinic a drive away, which is open for emergencies, but as we have not so far left the village, I decided to try to deal with it myself. You don't bring up five lively boys and still feel too squeamish, so when we realised that Paco had confronted another stray cat, of which there are several around here, and the bite he sustained was infected, I knew the abscess needed to be lanced. It is a pretty horrendous thing to do, but it has happened to him before so I was prepared for it. I have an animal grooming kit so I shaved the hair away from the site, and eventually had the wound as clean as possible. It seemed to be healing fairly well, but the outer layer of skin where the swelling had been, was dying and one day he managed to lick it off leaving a very large open area, which needed to be covered. He is an old boy now -eleven years last Christmas - and a patient soul. It is not easy to bandage up a cat's shoulder, but he sat still and let me try. I used some gauze with a generous dollop of Sudocrem. (my go-to antiseptic cream since they stopped making the wonderful magic pink cream, AKA Germolene, which healed many an injury on the boys), and bound it up as best I could. My first two attempts were not tight enough and he got out of them within an hour. But in the end I got the knack, and all week he has allowed me to change the dressing each morning and night, and the site is healing well. Today I have left it uncovered for the first time. He can't really reach to lick it much, and I couldn't put a small 'cone' on him as the injury was right where the cone would rub. But I am hoping it will soon be quite better. However, this morning Tango came in with a similar wound, which I cleaned immediately and so far it is not infected, so I will be keeping an eye on him now. 

The stray tom cats are such a menace, but there is little we can do about it. Many are not actually strays but it is not in the Spanish culture to neuter their animals, so in the Spring they all prowl around all day, and the green zone behind us is an ideal hunting ground for them.

Paco hasn't strayed far from home this week. I guess he is wary of going too far, so he has been sleeping on the settee or out in the sun. He gets on OK with the dogs. They at least have a mutual respect, but he rarely chooses to actually sit with them, but one lunch time we found him sleeping on the edge of Kim's bed, and Kim let him!

Not exactly a cuddle-fest, but at least he didn't push him off.

On a happier note, I finished my last block for my blanket on Tuesday, so here they are, all 53 of them.

My first task was to sort them into colour groups and match them to their patterns. Each design has a number which I needed in order to follow the pattern for joining them.

And here they are as they will be in the blanket. Apologies for the bright orange background. The bed-settee was the only space big enough to lay it on, and even with that, the final row was falling off the edge!

I am joining them with a crochet stitch called the 'in-line zipper join'. It makes nice neat, flat seams, but as the blocks are all different sizes there are very few long straight joins, so I am joining small groups together first, and just hoping they will all join up in the end. I am about half way so far. As the groups get bigger, it gets more difficult to hold, but I am sure I will get there in the end. Then I will just have a border to do. Because the pattern is already busy, I will only be adding a few plain rounds of border to help it keep its shape. i'll show you again when it is finished.

And that is about it for this week. I thought you might like a quick look at this picture which I spotted this morning. It is of course a black bird... or is it? If you thought it was a bird, take a closer look. You might be surprised.

And with that, I am off to join the other 'smilers' at Annie's Friday Smiles, and Virginia at Celtic House. Keep busy and keep smiling everyone.