More animals

Yes, here I am again. I only did the first part of my post last night because Blogger was being unkind. Not only did the text turn out huge, but it refused to allow me to resize my picture before I published it or to place it where I wanted it, and the ability to click on it to get the full size picture when you read it, seems to have diappeared. Now yesterday, I changed from Firefox to Google chrome for my browser. Chris says this shouldn't have made any difference, but I have gone back to Firefox for this post to see what happens.

Firstly here is a picture of a rather lovely horse that lives across the rambla at the side of the village. While I was watching Chris finishing off the painting of the wall, he walked up the street passed us. He does most nights and he is really well trained. He picks up his feet very daintily and sort of flicks them out. The man sits very tall and proud on him. Needless to say, whenever he goes by the house, our dogs bark like mad.

This next photo is again my beautiful Arwen. She has deserted me today and gone to sit in Chris' office which is most unusual. She hardly ever leaves this room. At this time of year, I have my window open all day and she usually spends all afternoon layed out along the windowsill, as I showed you in an earlier post. But when the evening comes I close the window to keep the biting bugs out, so she has to move. This week she has discovered that an equally warm place is wedged in the little space behind my laptop. It is on all day and does get very warm by the evening. She just layed there and kept peeping round the corner at me. (Note, my screen saver is a picture of me riding the elephant Watsabi, meaning Destiny, on our holiday in Thailand).

And finally I have another photo of those beautiful birds, the bee-eaters. I was driving passed the road where I saw them before and couldn't resist the chance for one more quick look. I actually didn't expect to see any as I am sure someone had told me that they move on in June, so I was surprised to find they were still feeding young babies. I didn't want to disturb them, so I stopped the car and turned the engine off, but I didn't get out. I just sat very still, (that's hard for me!), and took a couple of photos through the window and then left them in peace. I doubt whether I shall see them again this year. But I was quite pleased with this picture of one that flew passed as it shows the colours of its feathers. It's at rather an odd angle because it was diving down to its nest in the mud bank at the side of the road.

As you will have noticed, the ability to do all the things I like to with my blog has returned using Firefox, so I think I will have to stick with it just for blogging. Now I am wondering whether you all see it differently, depending on which browser you use....

Casa Verde

Before we lived here, this house was called Casa Cynder (The previous owners were Cynthia and Dereck), but last year we changed this to Casa Krispy, also a combination of both our names. However no-one takes much notice of this. The post lady knows us just as number 11, and everyone in the village refers to us as Casa Verde which means the Green House. The walls of the house are in fact white, but the trim along the top, the garage doors and the front wall used to be green, though it was always a pale green and now is nearer to a faded aqua. Earlier in the year I mentioned that I had drawn up a 'Things to do in 2011' list, and on it was to repair and paint the front wall. This was quite badly marked and the surface had fallen off in places because it gets damp when the agricultural water flows through a gully just behind it to our neighbour's orange grove. Ages ago we bought some special water proofing solution to paint on it, and also set about finding some paint of approximately the same colour as before. A couple of months ago Chris cleaned it up, filled some of the worst holes, and waterproofed it. But somehow the weather, lack of enthusiasm at the time, and just life, got in the way and the task was never finished. So I was very happy to come home from the hairdressers yesterday to find Chris, roller in hand, turning our wall green once more. And it is very green! We knew the paint was a bit brighter than before, but it looks quite different now it is on the wall. Fortunately we both like it, and it will be a good landmark to look out for whenever we are giving anyone directions to our house! And now we really do deserve the name of Casa Verde. (Hopefully one day the garage doors and wall trim will match, but I'm not holding my breathe!)