Rocking Your World 2021: Week 8

Hello my friends. I'm a bit late posting today as I needed to finish a card this morning to get to our Post Office at lunch time. It is only open 1.00 - 2.00, so I have to time it right. Mail is taking an age to reach UK right now so I wanted it to start its journey before the weekend.

Once again we have had a mixed week weather wise. On Saturday it was like a Summer Day; really quite hot early afternoon, and the sky was a clear blue all day. On Sunday the Cabrera mountains huddled under a thick mist, making them almost invisible. Here they are on the two days, as seen from the back of our house.

One morning there was a lot of noise coming from across the road, and I spotted this line of starlings all chattering, probably discussing the weather just like us! (Sorry about the wobble. My hands aren't steady enough to take long zoom photos without a tripod!)

The last couple of weeks we have noticed a lot of activity around our purple flowering shrub. (Polygala myrtifolia for those who like to know. Also sometimes called the sweet pea bush). It turned out the carpenter bees were back and busy visiting the flowers. They love this bush and always come to it, though we don't often see them anywhere else in the garden. I love these bees. They are the largest that I know of out here, sometimes as much as 2cm along their body, black with beautiful iridescent blue wings that shine in the sun. They make a lot of noise flying by you, and sometimes crash around a bit, but they are totally non-aggressive. They don't live in hives, but are solitary creatures, boring holes up to an inch in diameter in any wood, to lay their eggs. Hence the name Carpenters. The shrub, or tree as it is now, had loads of them flying in and out of the flowers, but they wouldn't sit still enough for me to get a picture of them this time. In this picture you can just see one hovering out in the space alongside the tree, but there are loads more in the flowers that you can't see.

So I am adding this picture, two images from the internet and two of my own from previous years, so you can see them properly. Aren't they the most beautiful creatures?

Something else that has made me really smile this week is our jasmine starting its annual display of blossom. That is a sure sign that the warmer days are here. By next week you won't be able to put a pin between the flowers and their scent will fill the whole house. You can see all the buds covering it now.

We managed to pot up our palm tree in the new container, and Chris has been busy weeding and pruning, so the garden is looking good now.

I have as usual, been busy in my craft room. I have made a set of Christmas cards from the ones I received last year. I always like to add die-cut frames, fancy papers and sentiments so that each one looks quite different from the original. I won't show them here as I will be using them for my monthly Christmas Challenge next week.

I have also done quite a bit of crochet in the evenings though I sometimes have to wait until Tolly has been put to bed. (He sleeps in our small spare room so that he doesn't run out on the road at night. The others have a cat-flap in the back door and are free to come and go as they please). He loves to play with my yarn and crochet hook so I can't do much when he is around. But I have finished another three squares from a whirl ball called Key lime. It is fun watching the colours gradually change so you end up with three very different squares.

The next set will move through purple and pink to red and orange. That will be a bit different. This whirl is called Red velvet sunrise, though I think it is more like a sunset!

I have also made a good start on my cardigan with the green wool I ordered recently. I quite like how it is working up. I am hoping it doesn't get too heavy for me to hold, which is why I am doing the largest piece first.

And apart from lovely long chats with our boys that is about it for this week. So I will link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles before I come round to visit everyone else.