Rocking Your World 2021: Week 31

Well I have another week of 'mixed blessings' but I will start with two photos that made me smile. 

This is my second son who was celebrating his 48th birthday at the weekend. He just loves the sea and sand, and hops across to the Welsh coast whenever he can. For his birthday he was joined by his partner of course, plus two of his brothers, his daughter, her husband and his grandsons, plus his own sons and stepsons, and some friends, and as you can see by his face, he thoroughly enjoyed his day. It always makes me smile to see my boys having a good time.

The second photo is again of Tango. On this evening I was sitting out on the porch as usual, with my crochet on hand, and I would not let Tango claim his place on my lap because it was just so hot. I was listening to a shuffled library of music and the blue cylinder beside him is my speaker. What made me smile was that he didn't even flinch when a louder or heavier song came on. At one time he even had his chin resting on the speaker. He must have liked the vibrations.

So during the week, Chris continued with the makeover in the yard. The space in the corner is where the shed was, and now he has removed all the bamboo fencing that covered the long wall. Under it was some very sad peach coloured paint that needed attention. He power washed the really loose flakes off and then we both had scrapers to to try and shift the rest. Yesterday he bought a sander and a good mask to finish preparing the surface ready for repainting. It is a long wall and we are considering doing it plain white with some tiling areas to break it up. But we are not sure yet.

On Tuesday Chris called me out to look at the clouds and they were beautiful. The whole sky was covered with 'cotton wool balls' which are know as Mammatus clouds. 

They usually become heavy with moisture and sure enough, shortly after that we had a wonderful storm. It cleared the air and washed the car! as well as pleasing all the plants. It rained quite heavily for a while and I continued to sit out on the porch, under our big sunshade which fortunately is waterproof, watching the rain bounce off the pool, but I am glad to say we were spared the huge hail stones that hit many places around us.

Chris wanted a lemon for his drink one evening so I went out to pick one off our tree which is just outside the kitchen door. It was this one which I thought was really funny because it is all the wrong way round. The fruit was oval as you would expect, but its place where it was joined to the stem and its point, were at the sides instead of the ends. But it was fine inside.

Now, as you know I am interested in the 'minibeasts' that share our life so here are a couple you may not have met. Everyone is, of course, aware of the dreaded wasp that likes to spoil our picnics and carries a painful and irritating sting. We get a lot of these coming to the pool apparently to collect water to cool their nest. They mostly congregate around the steps and rail, and don't really bother us as long as we don't bother them. If I see a live one thrashing about in the water, I try to retrieve it on a pool noodle and deposit it on the side to dry out and fly away, but quite a few do drown.

But here are couple of different wasps. Firstly this is a female Mammoth wasp. (I know it is female as it has a yellow face but I couldn't get that in the photo). These are considerably larger than a common wasp with a fatter body,  and can grow to 4.5cm long. Happily we don't see them that size here. They are  totally non-agressive and are not known to sting people.

And the second example is this strange creature. It has a black head and thorax, and then a long yellow tube which carries a 'comma' shaped abdomen on the end.  This is a mud dauber wasp, and again, although a female may sting its prey to paralyse it, it is not agressive and doesn't sting people. An interesting fact about this one is that it builds a beautiful little nest out of mud, shaped like a little clay pot, and lays one egg in it. Then she fills it up with tiny spiders and other insects and seals the top. When the egg hatches it feeds on the food store left for it, until it is big enough to emerge. I say it again; isn't nature wonderful?

The moon is almost full this week and I took this photo because looking up at it there was a very clear face on it. It is not so obvious in my photo but if you stand off from it and look and I think you will see it too.

Now here is this week's crocheted square, this time inspired by the thatched huts that are often seen on stilts at the edge of the sea on tropical coasts. I made this one and am halfway though making the other three (doing a round on each so they will all be finished by Sunday night ready for the last square pattern that will be released on Monday.

Here is the designers inspiration for it.

I have written this on Thursday because we have a busy couple of days. Today we took Kim to the vet for three small operations that will all be done while he is under the anaesthetic. I have had two phone calls so far to update us and ask how we want to proceed, so it was a bit more complicated than we had expected, but hopefully he will recover fine. We collect him around 5.00 tonight so I can't settle to do much and thought writing this would give me something to do.

Some other sad news is that last Friday we said 'Good-bye' to our little cat Paco. Some of you will have read about it on Facebook. Paco, along with the rest of his litter, was abandoned in a plastic carrier bag hung on someone's gate, even before his eyes were open. The lady took them in and her dog helped her to care for them, keeping them clean and returning them to her bed whenever they escaped. At six weeks old, he came to live with us and he has been our friend and companion for twelve and a half years.

We really miss him as he never roamed far from home, but although we are sad to lose him, we know he had a good life, and was loved and cared for. He died naturally in his sleep which is a lovely way to go.

So I will end there and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World in the morning. If I have time I will add an update for Kim but we have to go to Almeria in the morning to collect our TIE cards (ID cards), so there may not be time.

Thursday night. Update on Kim. He is home again and seems quite settled. About eighteen months ago we were alerted to an infection in a back toe because he kept chewing it. A course of antibiotics seemed to cure it but it kept reoccurring and no amount of medication would deal with it, so this time the vet decided it needed more drastic attention. So she has now removed the nail bed and bone from the toe. He has about seven stitches in it. She also removed a large, marble size skin tag from his haunch, and a fairly large wart from underneath his eye lid that was beginning to affect his sight. So all in all he has plenty to feel sorry for himself about, but he seems to be in good spirits. He still tries to chew the toe so he  has a huge 'lampshade' collar which he has to wear whenever we are not with him. But for now, one or other of us will sit with him during the day, so he only needs it at night.