Friday Smiles 2025 #Week 22

 As we continue to find our feet in this country that has changed so much since we left it sixteen years ago, we both received our Freedom passes ( free travel passes for pensioners), so we decided to explore a little further. We went as far as Canary wharf and walked through the lovely Jubilee gardens where fountains tumbled over layered rocks between a variety of trees and grassy spaces. It was a little oasis in the middle of a busy area. 

Then we continued to Waterloo and walked from there over the bridge where we looked down on the vibrant restaurant area on the South Bank, and on to the Embankment on the other side . We sat and watched the Eye slowly revolving, and the Uber water taxis and other vessels travelling up and down the river.

We found ourselves some lunch and a much needed drink and made our way back home. Neither Chris nor I are used to so much walking so we needed a rest when we got in 

Tuesday was our first really wet day but we still walked to the far end of the High street to the "big Sainsbury's". There is a much smaller S.express just a few meters from the house, which is extremely convenient, but the big one carries a much wider range of goods. We both discovered that we need some better footwear for wet days, but it was a good walk all the same 

The rest of the week has been dry and mostly sunny so we have spent the afternoons sitting outside, knitting, sewing and chatting. Chris has done some more work in the garden, cutting down two overgrown shrubs, so there is a lot of debris to get rid of .

Most of the garden is grass and shrubs, but there are a few flowers fighting their way out. One is a shrub with long branches that were covered in buds. Since we have been here they have all opened together so the branches are smothered in white blossoms. As far as I can tell it is from the pyracantha family. The flowers won't last for long but the bees are loving it.

And today's flower is a peony. Lovely isn't it.

The bird app I am using has identified robin's near by every day and yesterday we spotted a pair of them. We think they may have a nest in a tree in the corner. They were very busy all afternoon so maybe they have babies to feed. They don't sit still for long but I did catch one on the swing-chair frame. Unfortunately the two cats who live here also have their eyes on it!

This afternoon we are meeting our new doctor and will hopefully get our repeat prescriptions sorted out . So I must close now and get ready. I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning 

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 21

My word, another week has flown by. We continue to work through document changes. Some officials need a lot of convincing that we are who we say we are, and we are living at the new address. However we are making progress. In a few days time I will have a British phone number though I shall hold onto the Spanish account for a while too, until I am certain of what it is linked too. I bought a new smart watch this week and it won't accept my registration on the app without a British phone number. Just another little frustration. But onwards and upwards.

We have had some lovely weather again this week so Chris tackled the front garden with my DIL and I doing what we could to help. It was very long grass with lots of ox-eyed daisies and Canterbury bells in it. It looked so pretty so I rescued a little bunch of daisies before they were all strimmed away. They are now sitting on the windowsill.

  The garden does look a lot tidier for its trim, but it is a lot for a busy family to look after .

But the back garden is a lawn of short grass with lots of little daisies, and one corner was kept as a meadow for the bees and other insects. That has daisies, buttercups and speedwell all over it and I am glad that bit was preserved. We have a large gazebo with lots of seating, and I spend much of my time out there. It is not as warm as Spain but I like to sit and enjoy the flowers and use my new app (Thank you Annie) to identify the birds I can hear. The most regular visitors are a pair of noisy magpies, and a parakeet. Just up the road is Crystal palace gardens, and there the trees have flocks of little green parakeets. I think the folk around here consider them to be as much pests as the pigeons.

One advantage to living here is the excellent public transport and the ease with which you can get into London, and travel around the city. We haven't been yet as we are waiting for our Freedom passes that will give us free travel. But tonight we are all going there to throw theatre to see The Mouse Trap. Despite its long run, I have never seen it. I love live theatre so I am looking forward to it. 

Now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.

 

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 20

Hi all. Sorry I have been missing for the last couple of weeks. We arrived safely a week ago, and now know that all our belongings are safely stowed in our container until we are ready for them.

We seem to have brought some Spanish sunshine with us and have enjoyed some lovely afternoons in the garden. I have already had a hearing test and today I was fitted for hearing aids, so I am looking forward to hearing better in about three weeks time when they are ready. Unfortunately I have already needed a trip to the urgent drop-in center for some antibiotics where the efficiency and help was excellent.

We have applied to a doctors center but the process is slow. Also we hope to have a travel pass soon. We were hampered at first because we couldn't prove we live here, but the pension office has now sent us a letter which should get everything moving.

It was a huge help having our son Tom to fly with us and help with the cases etc. Before we left our house he took this photo of us by our roses.

There is also one of a very full van. Everything was so heavy, I felt sorry for the men! 

Just for fun Tom took this one on our last day to compare with the next one taken on our first day there in 2008.

Then we were off to the airport with one stop for a last look at the sea 

On our first day here in England, we went for a lovely family meal.

And to end with, I decided to go for a new look to start the next stage of our journey, so yesterday I went with my daughter-in-law to the hairdresser's and had my hair cut. It feels a bit strange but hopefully it will be easy to look after.

Icing on the cake-- our son in Manchester has sold his house and is moving down to Oswestry nearer the family, and there is a new baby on the way in November. How exciting is that.

I have to say I am much more at home writing this on my PC, but for the next few months I will be using my tablet so there may be mistakes and unedited photos. But I will, of course get better at it  in the meantime I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and publish this in the morning 

   

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 18

 Hi everyone. Sorry there is no blog today. There is just too much going on. But I am thinking of you all and hope you all have something to keep you smiling. I will try to visit you all later.

Linking up with Annie's Friday Smiles.Annie's Friday Smiles

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 17

Once again I have been getting to grips with a kitchen that has very few ingredients in its cupboards and none of my 'gadgets' to help me out. We do not normally have desserts now (apart from Chris' icecream which he loves), as it is me who enjoys them the most and they are not good for me. But this weekend, as it was Easter Sunday and also our 46th wedding anniversary, I thought I would treat us to a lemon meingue pie. I found a small ball of pastry in the bottom of the freezer, but with no rolling pin, I used an almost empty rum bottle! For the pan I used a salvaged tin foil dish. Then I peeled the lemons picked straight from our tree, with a potato peeler and added the zest plus the fruit inside the pith to my blender which fortunately hadn't quite reached a packing box. I strained it into the pan and the next challenge was to make the meringue. My hands and wrists are not really strong enough for whisking but, slowly but surely I did get something that just about stood up in peaks. I had no caster sugar so I tried grinding some granulated in the blender and it ended up more like icing sugar, but I used it anyway. I am pleased to say that although the meringue did sink rather after cooking, it all tasted fine and we enjoyed it. You don't realise how much you have come to rely on the machines until you no longer have them!

On Tuesday we had to rise early for an appointment with our solicitor. We were to visit the Notary to sign papers giving our solicitor power of attorney to tidy up any loose ends after we have moved. The original appointment was for 10.30 but she rang and asked whether we could be there for 8.55. So we were, and together with another couple, we walked around to the notary office and then sat outside for an hour until she was ready to see us! Fortunately it was a sunny day and her office was on the upper floor of a building so we had a lovely view out over Mojacar playa. 

When I got up that morning the sun was just rising and I got this photo over our garden wall. 

Looking behind me the sky was already blue and dotted with little fluffy clouds. Our little statue of a bull sits on top of the pump house and he stands out well against the blue sky.

On the drive down to Mojacar the sun broke through the clouds and I managed to take this through the windscreen of a moving car. I love it when you an see the sun rays pouring through the clouds onto the hills and villages below.

Meanwhile, back at home, my desert daisy has broken into flower. I bought one tiny pot of this a few years ago, and the man at the centre told me it would cover a square meter in a year, and so it did. And it has continued to spread, and flourishes wherever I break off a little piece and replant it. This pot is covered in flowers, and a small piece I put into one of my boxes hanging from the railings, has grown so long and now touches the floor, and it too is covered in flowers.

In the next pot along my bright pink succulent is flowering. This covers banks and creeps across paths every where it takes root. It makes a lovely splash of colour. 

And in the end pot a red hibiscus has bent over to kiss the gerbera. Two vivid colours but they don't clash at all. I think they look lovely together.

I went to my penultimate sewing group on Wednesday and they gave me a lovely card, signed by everyone there, all wishing me well in our new home. That was really nice.

And on that note I will get ready to link this with Annie's Friday Smiles when I publish it tomorrow.

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 16

My oh my, How fast these last few weeks are going. I really have nothing to write about and no photographs except for a few I have taken through the car window as we drive from one appointment to the next. As you know, I have the condition called paradolia which is basically seeing faces in everything. I just can't help it and I am sure poor Chris thinks I am 'losing the plot' when I point out yet another face that he can't see. But this week we really have been busy driving to and fro from one appointment to the next, and I couldn't help noticing that wherever we were, there was almost always a face, or just two eyes looking down on us from the clouds.  Maybe it is just me being fanciful, but I will share a few of them with you. The quality is not good as they were all taken from a moving car. And the ever present over-head cables don't help!

Two weeks today (Thursday), all our belongings will be loaded onto a van and taken away, to eventually land in the container we have booked near Shrewsbury. So it is a good thing our packing is almost done. Just a few days before they are collected I shall pack the final boxes for my Ninja foodi which I use most days, and the vacuum cleaner that is also in frquent use. All the sealed and labelled boxes are in our dining room and it is now so full I can't close the door. This is just some of them. So a few of the bigger boxes are now on shelves in the garage. 

After that we will have our settee and beds, plus three knives, forks and spoon, plates and dishes. (Three because our son Tom arrives on the Friday for the last few days). It is only until the Tuesday morning so I am sure we will manage, and there are plenty of nice restaurants and bars around, so we won't die of hunger!

So now we can enjoy some of the Easter parades over the weekend. Spain does them so well. And then we can have a real sort through our clothes to decide what comes to London with us and what goes into storage, and in the blink of an eye it will all be over.

I will now link up with Annie's Friday Smiles. 

I wish you all a Happy, Peaceful and Blessed Easter.

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 15

This week it is all about the flowers and they really make me smile.

This week, when I had a wander around the garden, these little self-seeded gerbera reminded me of the sunshine. Originally there was one little flower from a seed dropped by a bird. Now I have a whole pot of them.

I have even transplanted a few like these in one of the troughs hanging from the front railings. The little yellow flower on the right is a plant that I can't name but it is from last summer and should have died over the winter, but it is still going anf now it is trying to flower again.

Just looks at the buds on my little red carnation. This plant grew from a cutting I took some while ago and now it is also flourishing.

Round in the back yard, one of my troughs is looking particulary bright and colourful, and I can see this from where I sit on the porch, so that is nice.  The yellow daisies are osteospermum, again one that has lasted the winter, and all the purple ones are the perennial versian that always gives a good show of flowers at this time of year. The flash of red at the end is of course, a geranium and between them is a succulent I put there when it was looking a bit bare, and it turns from dark green in the winter to orange, yellow and a touch of red all summer.

The trough around the corner also has an osteospermum with one little flower on. I thought it had died but I am glad to see it is struggling on. It reminds me of a marigold.

But my biggest surprise was when I spotted this. It is on my very tall cactus, (much taller than me now), which started as a little spike mid-calf height when we arrived. I have watched it growing, swaying a little in the wind, and wandered whether it would live to out grow me, and I always hoped it would eventually produce a flower, but every year I have been disappointed. I half expected one white one right at the top, so you can imaging my surprise when this week I spotted these little red buds bursting out of the higher seams.

I have done some research and now know the cactus goes by the rather splendid name 'Pachycerus pecten-aboriginium', and it is native to Mexico, (commonly know as the Indian comb). Apparently the brown scabs that are all over mine, (I assumed insect activity), are most likely caused by overwatering!, but that is not something I do very often. I am of course hoping that the buds will develop and open before we leave but again, thanks to Google, I find they have to go through this stage...

... before getting to this one. But I live in hope.

They flower by night and die by midday, and are polinated by bats. So I will be checking first thing every morning!

Yesterday I had a dental appointment and when I came out I decided to have a little walk to the top of the village, as I don't walk half enough right now. I stood looking over the top railings and found there was a lot of activity below me. The area that used to be used for social gatherings by the Equadorians from our village and the surrounding communities, is now planted all over with trees. (I hope they have been given an alternative meeting place).  Last week I said how the orange blossom stirred up my hayfever, and this week I found another irritant. Everywhere you look there is a mimosia tree in flower. 

It is so very pretty, but just looking at all the flowers, you can see why they produce so much pollen to torment us all.

I mentioned a while ago how sad I was that the crysamthemums don't grow wild all over the campo like they used to, but just below the railings I saw this patch, all raising their little faces up to the sun, and that made me smile too.

And still, sort of on the flower theme, I have finished my cross-stitch sewing! I love to see the poppies and daisies growing together in the wild, so I am really pleased with this picture. I am packing it carefully as it is, and one day, when I finally unpack all the boxes, I will get it stretched and framed.

I hope some of you really like flowers as I seem to have rambled on a bit today, but now I will stop and get this ready to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and be published in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2025 # Week 14

Yay! We have just this minute booked our flight back to UK for Tuesday May 6th! That's something to smile about, but now back to the beginning of the week.

It has been warm and mostly sunny this week and after all that rain the garden is thriving and all the trees around us are bursting out in orange blossom. There seems to be a lot of it this year.

It is really a very pretty flower, but its perfume can be a bit over-powering. I can smell it as soon as I open the windows each morning, and it is one of my hayfever triggers so I have been coughing and sneezing all week. Many of my friends are in the same state, but it is still lovely to see, and smell really.

We have now had a few very windy days and the petals have been carpeting the ground in white confetti. As we are trying to keep the garden tidy for the new owners, Chris has been out each day sweeping it all up.

It has a slightly later season than the oranges, but our little grapefruit tree has loads of buds too, and there are few coming now on the lemon tree.

We have been busy signing contracts, making lists of things to do, and choosing flights, but I have still managed to pack a couple of boxes each day.

I also did a bit of baking, making our family favourite 'cup of cold tea' cake, (bara brith, fruitloaf, bam brak or whatever you like to call it) . For us it has always been Irish tea loaf, and my dad loved it. This time it was a good way to finish up all the dried fruit in the cupboard as well as most of the flour.

I then made enough of my special muesli, (very nutty but not very fruity this time) to last until we go. I have it for breakfast most days, with milk, and a handful of blueberries, banana or yoghurt on it.

And finally another family favourite 'peanut and lemon slices'. These are a bit of a sugar hit for me so I will have to pace myself eating them. They are basically crushed digestives, mixed with syrup, butter and a lot of crunchy peanut butter, and when it is set hard it is iced with lemon butter icing. Very yummy, but best kept for a treat.

My first husband was in the RAF and we lived in Cyprus for three years. On the day we arrived we were all warned to keep at least three days supply of food in the house; advice which proved its worth when the war broke out and we were confined to our homes until NATO  organised a cease-fire so all the families could be bussed up to the camp. (Scary times but that's another story). But the habit of keeping a well stocked store cupboard has never left me, and I usually have more like three months of food in store, and I can usually find ingredients for anything I want to make. So it is really strange now to find all my cupboards are empty. There are just a few meals worth of meat etc in the freezer, a few tins of beans, and whatever I buy on a weekly basis from the shop or market. I expect I will gradually build up a small store again at home, but now there are only two of us, and our needs are simple, it will certainly be a scaled down version.

On Wednesday Chris suggested we have a break and walk along the sea front for some fresh air, so we drove down to Garrucha. On the way down I said to Chris I liked Garrucha because the cry of the gulls gives it a real 'sea-side' feel. They are there of course because it is a fishing port, and I am sure they are well fed when the boats come in each day. That day they were flying high up, and although there were loads of them wheeling around above the palm trees, they don't stay still while you photograph them, so this was the best I could do. (Click on each photo for a closer look).

Instead of our usual walk around the marina, we strolled along the harbour this time. The men were washing out the auction depot where the fishermen bring their catch each day to be auctioned to local shops and restaurants. The fishing boats were moored along the water front and the men were checking their nets, and mending them where needed, or standing around chatting.The boats are real 'work-horses', but I wouldn't choose to be out on the sea in one in all weathers. 

There was a stiff breeze and the see was navy blue and quite choppy. Beyond it you can see some of the yachts moored in the marina and the huge barges loading and unloading at the port.

There was a chill in the wind so we didn't stay out for long, but it made a nice break.

I had a nice surprise this morning when I opened the front windows and saw that one of the roses that Chris cut back hard just a short while ago, now has our first rose of summer in bloom. And what a beauty. It even smells good too.

And now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and enjoy reading about your weeks.