Rocking Your World 2021; Week 34

We have had a quiet week and I am glad of that as it has been too hot to do much anyway. I feel sorry for the animals. Their fur may offer some protection from the sun, but all the same it can't be easy being forced to wear a fur coat all the time! It makes them very sleepy. I often wonder what Tolly does all night because he sleeps for most of the day. As soon as he has eaten breakfast he stretches right out across the siting room floor and just stays there, while we have to step over him. Sometimes he has enough of the hard floor and jumps onto the settee only to sleep again. But I guess it is warmer there than the on the stone tiles and he rolls around and twists into all sorts of positions. I think here he is trying to get the ceiling fan to cool down his belly!

I am happy to say that Kim is well on the way to his normal self. I still clean his toe twice a day but it has just about healed right over now. His eye still bothers him a bit but I am going to buy more antibiotic drops (the vet left me with a prescription so I could get more from the farmacia), and keep treating it. I have a feeling it is as good as it is going to get, but we'll see. We have not supervised him quite so closely for the past few days and tonight we will allow him to sleep without the collar on and I am sure that will please him.

I put my back out at the beginning of the week, no idea how, so sitting down all day wasn't doing me any good, and I joined the locals in taking an afternoon siesta. Lying flat for a while has helped and I am a lot better now, but I do try to get up and move around regularly. In the evenings it has been mostly too hot to have a blanket on my knees so I have done a lot of reading on my Kindle, and magic puzzles on my tablet.  I only do 280 piece puzzles because the pieces are too small on the screen if I do more, but I am working through a series of puzzles (one released every day but I don't do them all!), where you don't see the picture first so you have no idea what you are trying to make. It can be quite challenging sometimes, and keeps me busy. 

But I have done a little bit of crochet and last night I finished joining my squares together. Now I am working on the border so maybe I will have a finished piece to show next week.

One evening our quiet street was disturbed by a sound and I suddenly realised it was the families from the top of the village exercising their horses. They used to ride them down the street quite often, but we haven't seen them for a couple of years. I took a quick photo from our front porch. I love to see them. They think the world their horses and keep them well groomed, and they ride very erect and proud.

The sun has brought some flowers out again. Hibiscus is one plant that enjoys the hot weather as long as they have plenty of water, so I hose them every couple of days. And this week we had all four varieties in flower. Top left is the most common red one. All of them would be happier planted in the ground but even in a pot they put on a good show. The top right one is deep pink. I have had it for about five years but this is only the second time it has flowered. The petals are slightly frilly and it is very pretty when it does show its face.

Bottom right is the orange one I bought last year I think. It is very vivid and makes a lovely show when there are several blooms out on it. And the yellow one, bottom left, I have had for years now. I pruned it back hard last year so it is a better shape now. The flowers are lovely with their deep red centre and pretty stamen, but when it rains hard the yellow and red run together and the whole flower is pale orange!

In a mad moment I decided to bake a cake . I put the oven on as little as possible these days but it is nice to have something different for tea. This recipe is for Zucchini Chocolate bread. Zucchinis are cougettes for my UK friends, and they are called callabacin out here. They are the main ingredient of the cake and are supposed to make it very moist. It looks and smells good, but it warns you not to try to cut it until it is really cold so I haven't tried it yet. I will give my thoughts on it next week if I remember.

Today it is a little bit cooler and Chris managed to get out in the yard and chip away the very last of the old yellow paint from the long wall. So the next job will be to paint it, but they may have to wait for a couple of weeks as the paint dries almost to fast when it is this hot.

They weren't wrong about the heatwave they said was coming and we had a few days when even in the shade, the thermometers registered 40º. The ones on the street signs are often a bit misleading as their sensors are sometimes in full sun, but a  friend posted a picture of one in Granada showing 50º. That is quite near where our blog-friend Lisca lives so she may have had some hotter days than us. But I can vouch for this one as it is on our porch, on a wall that gets no direct sun. It only goes down a few degrees at night so we have used one of the floor fans out there some evenings. Unfortunately, as the temperature drops a few degrees the humidity rises, and it was 95% the other day.That makes it more unpleasant than the heat alone, but at least we can jump in the pool once the sun has moved off it a bit, though this week even the pool water was 30º. I shan't be sorry when September comes around, with hopefully a bit more comfortable days.

But it is all good really. It may be too hot to do much, but we are in the enviable position of not needing to do much, so how lucky are we! I hope you are all getting some summer weather and the chance to relax and enjoy it. Now I am off to link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

I had a few problems publishing my comments again last week, so I sent a couple via Messenger. I am using my PC as I am useless with smaller devices for doing anything more than reading things and browsing Facebook etc., but it is getting a bit out of date. Chris has promised me a new one very soon. It may be a hassle to get all my favourite programmes transferred, but I am hoping it will iron out some of the problems I have had recently. Anyway I will visit you all, and do my best to post a comment.