Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 24

 Hello again. It has been a mixed week of sunshine and showers, but fortunately the sun shone for much of the day on Sunday and it was the day of the Community Games in the park. When we woke up the men were already setting up maruqees and sound systems, and soon we heard music across the park as they tested it out. All day there were demonstrations from all the local sports groups from badmington to gymnastics, to martial arts and kayaking. They had each perfected a routine and the loudspeaker was calling out how to contact their leaders if they fancied having a go. I went to church as usual in the morning, but after lunch I wandered over and watched the gymnasts. Two of my boys were in the first group of children to become members of the club when it first started back around 1992. There were a lot of stalls around the central arena selling sports wear and equipment, or raffle tickets to raise funds for their club. I came away with a clump of mature michaelmas daisies which will hopefully give me some flowers in the autumn, and a couple of tomato plants. Not very sporty but it helped their kitty!

I have made a start on my sewing project. It did prove very difficult to see as I had feared it would, but I bought a large neck mounted magnifier, and with that I am managing quite well.

Chris had another hospital appointment on Monday but as it was only a consultation he didn't need me to go wih him, so I stayed home and made a couple of birthday cards for later this month. But we are both going there again tomorrow for him to have a CAT scan. They are now looking into what they were investigating before when they discovered his aneurysm, which was critical so it took priority. Now that is out of the way he is back on track.

My garden is slowly taking shape. I can only do a little bit at a time but the side border is being helped by the beautiful rose next door. The border is backed by a brick wall and this is topped with a narrow wooden fence. Their rose is a climber that has spread almost the full length of the fence and branches hang down on our side. It is smothered in buds and the first ones opened this week. It was in flower when we arrived here late last August, and went on flowering well into the autumn, so we will be enjoying it for a long time I think.

And that is all my news for this week. Next week is due to be sunny again, so enjoy it everyone.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 23

It has been an odd sort of week. We started of quite busy when our son Jonathan came round  to trim our hedges. He brought his two little girls with him. Aisling brought a big bucket of 'bouncy dough' to play with, and I spent most of the morning making animals with her. She was nice enough to recognise all my amateurish shapes! Then our older son Michael turned up with his stepson who at just 16 is taller than anyone else in the family, so our little sitting room was very full.

On Sunday I went to church as usual and we had a lovely service for Trinity Sunday led by Sarah, Bishop of Shrewsbury, who was a lovely friendly lady and we had a good chat over a cup of tea after the service.

On Tuesday night I babysat with Aisling and Niamh for the first time so that Jonathan could take his wife out to dinner for her birthday. They don't often go out in the evening as Jonathan leaves for work at 5.30 most mornings so he goes to bed early. Aisling was as good as gold and after reading her school book to me she went off to bed. The baby was a bit unsettled when she realised her mum wasn't there, but she settled in the end.

The next two days were taken up with hospital appointments, one for me and one for Chris. Although both were relatively straight forward, the round trip is almost a day out so I didn't get much else done.

Yesterday I went round the shops with a tape measure trying to find boxes the right size to fit in my freezer. I managed to find three. They are all different but that doesn't really matter. My freezer has four open shelves and two small drawers at the bottom. The drawers hold vegetables and chips, but everything else gets pushed in wherever it fits, and because the shelves are too deep for me to reach to the back, some things get lost and forgotten. So This morning I took everything out, sorted it into 'raw meat', 'prepared meat', 'pies, and precooked meals', and 'sundries', such as bakery goods, ice-cream, desserts, and anything else that didn't go anywhere else. I think it will be much more efficient to use now.

While at Ben's I finished the mandala I was crocheting. It is called Autumn leaves. The pattern showed it made in a variegated green yarn but it spoke more of Spring to me than Autumn, so I chose yarn that changed from bright yellow, through orange to purple. Here it is pinned out on my blocking pads. They aren't quite big enough but I needed to get an idea of what size hoop tyo order. It is now on its way to me and I will have the difficult job of crocheting it to the hoop. It will look better when it is properly stretched with a plain wall behind it so I will show it again when it is done.

Now I am enbarking on a new piece of cross stitch and other embroidery. It is a kit I bought and the fabric is pale green, even weave linen. I haven't used anything other than Aida cloth for a long time and it will be quite tiring for my eyes, but I am not in a rush to do it, so little by little. And I find the light during the summer is much better for sewing so I shall have a go. The kit came with some very pretty threads and three tiny vials of very tiny seed beads. (They are going to be fun to sew in to it!). There is also a ten page booklet of the pattern. So wish me luck and don't expect to see much progress for quite a while.

Last week I said I had managed to solve the rubik's cube in five minutes. I haven't tried again since then but today I did it in just over 4 minutes! I have an app on my tablet to use with it. The red below is a screen shot. The row of tiny letters under the time is a set of moves to follow to get an authentic random shuffle. (They change every attempt). So you shuffle it, tap the screen to start solving it and tap it again when you have done it. My eldest son Jim had the first cube I had seen back when he was just into secondary school, and he held the school record for the fastest to solve it, but I never mastered it back then. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands now!

And finally, I have been playing with the camera on my new phone and one afternoon I took this shot of a spider's web, gently swaying in the breeze on the outside of my craft room window. I used full zoom and I love how it turned out, it is like a set of fairy lights.

And that is another week flown by. 

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 22

Well folks you may be wondering where I have disappeared to these past few weeks. The fact is that the work to renovate our bathroom, which we expected to take a week or so, turned out taking four weeks, and while at my son's I only had my tablet, (normally only used for puzzles), and I did not feel up to writing and editing a blog post on it. Also I had a lovely relaxing break up in Cheshire with Ben, and spent most of my time, reading, crocheting and doing afore-mentioned puzzles.

And more surprisingly I learnt to solve that old fun game, a Rubik's cube. From a random shuffle, I can now solve it in just under five minutes. I might add that Ben can solve it in under 40 seconds! but I don't have his dexterity. My hands struggle to get the right grip and I cannot flick two rounds at a time like he can. I was just quite pleased to have mastered it.

It was also a time of rest and recouperation for Chris who a month after his operation, is now much stronger and well on the mend. There is still a way to go, but we are pleased with the progress he has made.

It will be our last visit to Cheshire as Ben will be moving before the end of the summer, to live in Hereford, at the old railway station he and his partner bought last year. Their renovations are almost done and they hope to be there by August.

His current house has a lovely 'garden room', and that is where I spent most of my time. Sitting on a very comfortable recliner chair I could look through the open door onto their lovely garden. 

On warm days the whole front wall concertinered open and zooming out I could see this to the right.....

..... and this to the left.

His partner Ant is a keen gardener and he loves bearded iris. During the first week these all opened and were quite beautiful. By the time we left, blue, purple and white ones were open too.

I don't have any of these in my own garden but when we popped back mid-way in our stay for a hospital appointment, I found my flag iris were all in flower.

One day at Ben's we went for a walk round a very pleasant park and he took this photo with his mini-drone. 

It hovered in front of us and he controlled it with his phone. I found it a bit unnearving but it took a good photo.

I have been contemplating replacing my phone for a while, and I thought it might be a good idea to buy a new one while I was with Ben as he was able to easily transfer all my files and show me some of the finer settings that I would have missed. It is an Oppo Find 9 pro and has a super camera which I was keen to try out. One night I used full zoom to take this picture of the moon and I was very impressed at how it came out.

We have now been home for almost a week and we are very pleased with our bathroom so it was worth the wait. We have a big walk in 'rainfall' shower, an almost silent flushing toilet, and a modern wash basin with drawers under it. The morror above lights up if you wave your hand under it! There is now a nice wooden floor instead of the aweful carpet that was there. The builder is on holiday this week but he is coming back on Monday to build a tall slim cupboard in the small alcove beside the basin, and then it will just need a bit of decorating.

I think in my last post I showed the ground cover companular just coming into bud. Well when we came home it was a mass of purple bell flowers, all over the walls, steps and borders. It has spread to the neighbour's gardens too. 

The whole of the front garden is looking very colourful with a big patch of yellow rock roses, a red berberis bush, and geranium and petunias in my three tubs at the top.

And today the first of the new roses we put in in the autumn, is in flower and it is a beauty! It is called tequila sunrise.

We also found that the front, decorative part of the park has been planted up with begonias, silver leaf, and african marigolds. It will be a riot of colour again soon, just in time for the Britain in Bloom judges to come to town. There will be somrthing around the standard poles too very soon I am sure.

I must say the council do their best to put on good events for the town's folk and when we walked by on Friday night we saw they were fencing off the central plaza, which is normally a car park surrounded by shops and cafés. By the next morning it was a beach with a thick layer of sand that had buckets and spades across it, and stripey deckchairs all round it. The parents were enjoying sitting in the sun and their children were having a whale of a time in the sand. It was a really fun idea.

I think I have just about caught up now. Next week it will be back to a more normal post.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 17

A little while ago we all enjoyed seeing swathes of little white snowdrops everywhere. Then we had a season of yellow as daffodils burst into flower. Last month we has a spectacuar display of pink cherry blossom on the trees. (This seems to have been an exceptional year for blossom). Now we are greeted by all things blue.

When walking through the park I always stop to enjoy the flower bed that runs just inside the railings along the back of the park. This week the first thing I saw was bluebells. They are at their best when they run wild around the trees. There are far more here than my photo suggests. They remind me of childhood days when my older sister Dorothy would take me for walks through the bluebell woods. In those days you were free to pick a few and I remember at the age of seven being so dissapointed when the bunch I proudly presented to my teacher was put on a windowsill at the back of the room. It turned out she suffered badly from hayfever but didn't want to upset me by refusing them!

Dotted amongst the bluebells were some taller spires of star-like flowers, These are Carmassia; not a native to England but seemingly quite happy here.

Next came Alkanet, which many folk see as a weed, but it is the truest blue of all the flowers and deserves a place in the flower bed. Again they triggered a memory. As a child I had a clear 'carrying' voice, which came in useful when I became a teacher. Because of it, and the fact I had a good memory for 'parrot' learning, I was often chosen to learn a poem to recite at the church anniversary service, and one year my poem mentioned Speedwell, which is a very sweet little pale blue, rather insignificant flower. So instead I clutched a bunch of Alkanet picked from the rough ground around the church, while I did my recitation.

And lastly as I walked along the park railings, I came to this amazing clutch of forget-me-nots. And yes, they have a meaning for me too. For most of my life I have loved the Flower Fairy books by Cicely Mary Barker. She wrote botanically correct poems about every common wild flower and cultivated one, as well as some berry and blossom trees. And every poem was illustrated with a fairy whose clothes and wings matched the flowers the poem was about. She took inspiration for the fairy faces from the faces of the children in her sister's nursery. I always loved the sweet pea fairy which shows an older fairy fitting a sweet pea bonnet on her baby sister. But the poem that has always stayed with me is the poem for the Forget-me-not fairy.

"Where do baby fairies lie until they're old enough to fly, 

Here's a likely place I think, 'mid these flowers blue and pink.

Pink for girls and blue for boys, pretty things for baby toys..........

O how glad I am I found you, with forget-me-nots around you,

Blue, the colour of the sky, Fairy baby, Hushaby.

So what a nostalgic walk I had, and how lovely are the blue flowers this week.

I even have some in my garden. There were some little anemone bulbs in a box of mixed spring flowers that  planted back in the Autumn, and now I have a pot of pretty daisies.

And at this house I have inherited a mass of the little ground cover companulas. They grow out of the walls, up the steps, over the paths and anywhere there is a patch of ground. And right now they are smothered in buds with the first few showing their purple-blue colour. 

I have actually had to dig some of them up as I have started to clear the side border in the back garden. I have cut down and dug up the roots of two shrubs so that I can make a flower border. It is rather shady so I have to choose wisely what I plant there. So far I have a cowslip and some lily-of-the-valley (a real favourite of mine), plus an ox-eye daisy and a geum in the first section. Then beyond the pink bergenia there are two foxgloves, a lupin and a helebore. 

I have also moved the pots that have been emptied and replanted, over to the gravel, and as yet untamed area, so that our patio is clear. The builders will be back in next week to start on the new bathroom, and they will need somewhere to put their rubbish until we get another skip. 

I hope you have enjoyed my moment of nostalgia, and that you have flowers that evoke special moments for you too.

Here, to finish, are my two faithful friends who come to see me every day. They watched my digging with eyes like hawks and hopped straight in for anything tasty that they spotted. They both look black here but the one on the right is quite brown, and I am sure they are a mating pair.

I may not post next week as we are going to stay in Cheshire with our son Ben while the bathroom renovation is done, but I will visit you anyway.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 16

Now I will have to be quick writing this as I have spent most of the afternoon chatting with my sister Jean, which was nice.

When I commented on your posts last week I said I was preparing for a busy weekend, and it was just that. It really started on Friday. Late the night before, our eldest son Jim arrived with his family for a short break back on their home turf. They had an airbnb just around the corner from us, which was aptly named "Duck cottage" because they had to duck to get through the doors! They all came to see us on Friday, and then much later, early Saturday morning in fact, son number three arrived. Tom had flown in from Denmark to London and then driven down to us. He slept until mid morning when our youngest, Ben, arrived driving down from Cheshire. The other two boys, Mike, son number two, and number four, Jonathan, both live locally. It is a rare occasion when we have all five boys together so it was a very special day.

All the lads went over to Mike's house to share lunch and watch the Arsenal match, and then they drove back to Jonathan's house. Ben stopped off to collect Chris and I on the way. We had intended to all meet in the park but the weather didn't cooperate so Jonathan offered his house as there was room for everyone there. We spent a few happy hours chatting together, playing with our grand-daughter Aisling, and playing "pass the parcel" with baby Niamh around her uncles. She is such a contented little soul and didn't so much as cry at any of the new faces.

Jonathan also has a very laid back 'staffie' who wasn't disturbed by all the extra people in her house, and she just squeezed in beside anyone sitting on her favourite sofa, and watched all that was going on. She doesn't look too impressed but she liked the extra fuss she got.

Just before the sky darkened for another shower, we managed to get outside to take some photos. One of the boys with their dad, and then one of the 'girls'. we are usually outnumbered at family dos, and rarely get our photo taken, so it was nice to get this one, even though, sadly our other grand-daughter and her family were unable to be there.

And of course, we had to take one of all of us together.

Chris needed to go home after this. He is making slow progress but still gets very tired, and he was glad to go home and rest, while I stayed to continue chatting until well into the evening.

Ben drove home that night and Tom flew back to Denmark on Sunday ready for work the next day. Jim's family went home on Monday so now we are back to our usual , but we made some lovely memories to hold on to.

Since then another week has drifted by with plenty of April showers and some nice sunshine too. The park is really coming back to life with leaves sprouting on the trees, and many covered in blossom too.

I have made a start on the garden, cutting back, and then digging out two shrubs so that I have a border to plany some perennials in. Then I will be able to see the flowers from my kitchen window.

And that, I think, is quite enough for this week.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 15

Hi all. Having been absent for a couple of weeks I have some catching up to do. I am very happy to tell you that Chris's operation went well. It took four hours instead of the predicted three, but the surgeon was pleased with the result. He has a 12 inch (30cm) scar so it will be a while before he is jogging round the park, but he can walk around and is managing the stairs quite well. He came home last Thursday which seemed a bit too soon but he has a comfy recliner chair and has spent most of his time in that.

Meanwhile life goes on. I did go into the hospital to see him each day but it is two buses and up to an hour and a half travelling time each way, so even a short visit was almost a day out. Fortunately our son Mike works in a school so the second week he was on the Easter break and he collected me some days, or took me both ways, and he did a big monthly shop with me the day Chris came home, so he has been a great help.

On the Sunday Mike took me to the hospital -- no buses on a Sunday -- and then I went back to have dinner at his place. When our son Ben's situation changed, he could no longer care for his cat Bobby so Mike adopted him as a companion for his other cat Splodge. They are the same sort of colouring and apart from Splodges large size, they could be from the same litter. Bobby is very affectionate and came to me for some fuss.

It was Palm Sunday so I went to church before Mike collected me, and we had a lovely service. The church was decorated with palms and we were each given a palm cross.

The bunch of hyacinths I was given back on Mothering Sunday, lasted for well over a week. One stem split and had two heads of flowers on it. They really surprised me at how well they did.

April the first was my granddaughter's 5th birthday. I was told she was into pink and unicorns and anything fairy. I am not used to making 'girly' cards so I went online for some inspiration and chose a pretty little pink image of a little girl hugging a unicorn. I then used the link that Angela sent me after her picture of steampunk doggies, and with AI I put Aislings face onto the little girl. When she opened her card she look at it and said "That's me", so mission accomplished. I am not a huge fan of AI as I want to belive what I see and it is getting increasingly hard to do, but I can see it does have its uses.

I was asked to buy her a bubble machine which I did and she immediately went outside and had some fun with it. I enjoyed watching her, as I must admit I am a sucker for bubbles too.

My arthritis is getting rather worse since we came back to UK, which was to be expected with a damper climate. But I was really struggling to cut things out, and although I have machines which do it very nicely, I do enjoy 'fussy cutting' sometimes. So last week I bought myself a pair of sharp scissors with much larger finger holes, and they are so much easier to use.

On Good Friday, Mike and his partner Lucy took me to a plant sale at Whittington Castle. The stalls were lined up all around the grass area and I did buy a few perennials as well as a blueberry bush and a tayberry bush. 

The castle is a ruin and I used to take my boys there when they were small to run off some energy and have fun climbing the walls. You can just see the start of the ruins on the edge of my photo. In front of it there is a lake where a pair of swans return faithfully each year to raise a family. It is a lovely setting, and even though the day was grey and damp, we enjoyed it.

My garden is coming to life a bit more each day. We have an area of lovely little violets now, as well as bright tulips and several pieris shrubs -- the sort that have white flowers and at the same time the new leaves come red at first. They are very attractive.

We also have life of a different sort too. This great tit came to sit on the fence while I was hanging washing out, and every day a pair of blackbirds take it in turns to come to my dish of food I put out each day. They come so often that I am wondering whether they have a young family to feed already.

Our other visited is this little fellow. It is not a good photo, but he moves so fast,I was lucky to catch him on camera at all.

At first I was worried we had rats but he doesn't have a pointed nose and his coat is smooth. Searching online I think he is a vole. Unfortunately they can do a lot of damage in a garden, eating roots which kills plants, and burrowing under grass so that it collapses, so I will have to get a humane trap and relocate him out in the coutryside.

It is many, many months since I posted a sunset. We see the sun rise from the house but there are a lot of buildings at the back which mostly hide the sunset, but from my craft room, up on the third floor, I did manage to get this one last week.

I am sorry this is such a rambling post, but I am caught up now so it won't be so long next time. Thank you if you have stayed with me to the end.

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week12

Well I hope your week has been as good as mine. Here at least, we have enjoyed some beautiful sunny days, making even a mundane trip to the shops a real pleasure.

Of course Sunday was special for many of us as it was Mothering Sunday. As is traditional in many churches, all the ladies who attended this Sunday were given a litle posy of flowers. This was mine, some daffodils and a sprig of forcythia from someone's garden. They have sat on my mantle all week and all have opened beautifully.

I was also given a bunch of hyacinths by one of my boys. I would never have thought of them as cut flowers, but by Monday they were all sitting up straight, and they still are. I know some folk find their scent a bit overpowering but I love it, and it is still filling the whole house.

Our son Michael invited us for dinner at his house, and as usual he cooked enough food to feed a small army. It was all delicious. His partner Lucy also had invited her mum along, and there were Lucy's two brothers, and one of their partners, plus Lucy's two boys, (Mike's son had gone to his mum's). Then with one of the visitor's lovely dog, a chocolate labrador, along with Mike and Lucy's own dog and two cats, we were quite a crowd.

This photo was taken after dinner had been enjoyed by all, and while we were waiting not very patiently for Mike to clear some of it away and serve desserts.

My contribution was a large strawberry and avocado cheese-cake. It is a combination that works well. The cheese part is a pretty shade of green, and the base is half biscuit crumb and half crushed nuts, held together with coconut oil. It is just a little bit different for a special occasion.

Our son Tom was arriving Sunday evening so Mike dropped us home with a plated roast dinner for him, which he also appreciated.

I spoke to my other boys on Sunday and last night we walked over to Jonathan's house so Tom could meet his newest niece, little Niamh. It was passed her bed time but she was happy to be held and bounced on Uncle Tom's knees, and she is such a smiley little soul, it is always good to have a cuddle. And when she wasn't sure about a new face, daddy soon got her smiling again.

Craftwise this week, the blue hot air balloon is now assembled and is a better shape than the red one. I am still at stage one with the green one, so maybe next week they will all be finished.

I also managed to finish off my scrambled square jacket. It took a while to crochet the sleeve ribbings and the edging all the way round, but I had plenty of wool to do it. I got some reasonable buttons from Amazon and I am pleased with the result.

The rest of my smiles are from the garden. The first sunny morning brought open my first tulips down by the front gate. I planted spring bulbs randomly around the garden, but I realise now that the tulips should have been planted in a group for maximum effect. But they look good and hopefully that will increase over time.

The garden is a learning curve as I slowly discover what is there. I knew one 'clump' was a heather. My dad loved heathers and I thought seeing as I have my Peace rose for mum, I should keep the heather for dad, and I am glad I did. It is suddenly in full flower and makes a lovely mound of purple.

There is a bush in the front garden that has stayed deep red with very small leaves all winter. It now has little buds forming all over it and google lens says it is a berberis.

This one made me smile. It is a bit straggley but has held its leaves all winter and they are veriegated green and cream with purple ones at the end of each stem. I now lnow this is a hebe and it has the wonderful name 'rhubarb and custard'. I think it will benefit from being cut right back and left to reform in a bushier shape.

Tom is now packing his bags ready for a train early this evening. He is staying at his older brother Jim's house in London tonight, and tomorrow he is off on a train to Amsterdam for a work conference. Then back home to Denmark next Thursday. He sure does get around.

Chris's operation is now scheduled for next Thursday so I may not get to post next week, or I may need something to keep me busy! But I won't be far away and I will post again as soon as I can.

 Thank you to all who visited me last week.