Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 27

We had another weekend with activity in the park. This week it was for Oswestry Pride. There were a few tents and stalls set up early on Saturday morning and people drifting in from all sides. At around 12.00 they all formed a line and there was a parade through town. It was fairly low key by most town's standards but we are a fairly small town. Anyway there were lots of colourful costumes and people enjoying themselves and that what I like to see.

Another addition to the park is our stone snake. I don't know who started it but I have watched it growing as the days go by and it is quite an impressive length now.

The front area of the park is looking beautiful. I showed it newly planted a few weeks ago, but look at it now. I want to know what magic spell the gardeners uses to make them all bloom at exactly the same time!! The judges for "Towns in bloom" were in the park on the hottest day so far, so I hope they take the temperature into consideration when judges the flowers. Like us, they were wilting a little.

All through July and August there is music in the bandstand every Sunday afternoon. The first week it was a band from Shrewsbury and this week it was the more local Porthywaen band. One of my sons played a trombone with them a good few years ago. Quite a few people come with chairs to sit around and listen, but we can hear them from our house.

Last week I told you about the red-tailed bumble bee. Well this week we had another variety in the garden. He was sitting on my ox-eye daisies, and seemed exhausted. So I found a syringe and gently dripped a few drops of sugar water onto the flower. You can just see it in one of these pictures. He immediately drank it all so I added a few more drops. He became a bit more active after that and eventually flew off. I googled his photo as his big red thorax was very distinctive and not something I had seen before. He also had a white tail not really visible in these photos. Apparently he is a "buff-tailed tree bumble bee", and they have only been seen in UK since 2021. The first siting was in Wiltshire and they have since spread widely. He was very big so just possibly 'he' was a 'she' and was the queen about to form her new colony.

We have had a painter in all week, painting the ceilings and any bare plaster walls in the kitchen, utility and bathroom. He finished today and it all looks so much better. So now I can hang a few things that have been waiting for this, including a pin board, a kitchen cross stitch picture I made many years ago, and various other bits. Also we had a skip to take the rest of the building rubble etc so now we can take a deep breath and rest until the autumn, when we are considering having the sitting room decorated and new carpet put down.

I don't get many sky pictures these days but this one really made me smile. Either the cheeky cloud is putting his tongue out at me and winking, or it is having a smoke and the smoke got in his eye! Either way I hope someone else can see the face. It jumped out at me so clearly, but maybe I just have an odd way of looking at things.