Rocking Your World 2021; Week 24.

My highlights of the week: those moments I am grateful for and that have made me smile. I had so many plans for this week, so many things I hoped to achieve, but there have been a series of sidelines that have altered my course, so I am not sure I achieved very much at all.

We have had a couple of technical hitches but they are all sorted now, and we are happy with our new fibre internet. Chris decided to keep his current provider for his mobile so I wanted to change to the same one as him, as my signal is very hit and miss around the house and our village, whereas his is very good. But this needed a visit to their shop and the first time it was closed. The next time we filled in everything but one small detail was missing so the transfer was refused. We went back today and the sign on the shop door said "Closed today for bank Holiday", but no-one else seemed to know about it! So tomorrow we will return and hopefully it will be fourth time lucky.

When we left the shop on Tuesday we decided to stop for a coffee, and a tostada (typical Spanish snack of a half baguette toasted and spread with chopped tomato and olive oil, then topped with tuna or cheese etc). It was nice to sit somewhere different from our usual haunts. We were  on a pleasant shaded patio and looking out at this rather splendid palm tree with a misty mountain behind it.

Today, when we again found the shop closed we decided it would do us good to walk for a while so we drove just around the corner and down to Vera Laguna. They have re-layed the board-walk around the laguna so we walked around there. I didn't take many pictures because I have taken a lot there before. But I did spy a big bird across the lake from us, that seemed to stay apart from the other ducks, geese and moorhens, and sea-gulls of course. He looked very aloof and I thought it was probably a cormorant, so I put my phone camera on full zoom and took this picture, and now I can see I was right.

From the laguna we carried on down the beach and walked right along with our feet just in the water. It was hard work as the sand and gravel were soft and we kept sinking into them. I stood for ages trying to catch a wave as it broke over my feet. They kept rolling in and stopping just short of where I was, but eventually one broke just far enough in and I got the picture I wanted. I turned away to speak to Chris and of course a big wave came straight in so I then had a wet dress for the rest of my walk. But fortunately the sun was warm and I soon dried.

It was funny looking along the beach as it is a wide stretch of sand with some rough grass and scrubby plants growing near the top, and then there is quite a slope down to the sea and most people choose to sit along the ridge. So all we could see was a row of colourful umbrellas stretching into the distance. There were more people sitting there than we have seen before but it was still a long way from being crowded!

When we reached the far end there was another board-walk up to the promenade. They are a great help as already the sand is too hot to walk on with bare feet. We went up to the top, washed the sand off our feet and walked back along a quiet, well paved prom and stopped at the end for the nicest tinto verano I have had this year, and of course, another tostada!

One thing I did manage this week was to clear out a lot of kitchen equipment that never gets used. I am well known in the family for my love of kitchen gadgets. I think I inherited that from my mum, though now there are a lot more to choose from! I had accumulated quite a selection but my hands are just not strong enough to use many of them, so I went through all my cupboards and the garage storage and Chris and I took a huge collection down to the Lions Club charity shop. I am happy to support them as they do so much good for both the Spanish and English families in our area. Now I just have some electrical machines that between them do everything I am likely to need, so I must refrain from buying any more!

I also planned to shorten two dresses this week. The ones I buy online are always either way too short or nearly down to my ankles. I am not very motivated to do sewing but they needed to be done. I have managed to get as far as cutting them down and turning up and tacking hems, but so far the machine hasn't made it out onto the table. I am busy now until at least next Wednesday but maybe then...

I did also mange to finish a small crochet project but I won't show that until I know they have arrived at their destination.

I went shopping for some basics such as bread and milk, and just slipped into the garden centre as I passed! I wanted a couple of small annuals to brighten up the window boxes but they mostly had much bigger plants. Then just as I was leaving I saw some pots of mixed plants so I bought two of those. It turned out there were six plants in each pot, but they were very root bound and I had trouble separating them. But I managed in the end and I put some round in a trough that hangs from the back railings just outside by craft-room window, and some in the window boxes outside Chris' room. They looked a bit sad for a few days,  I must have damaged them a bit breaking them apart, but I have watered them regularly and now they look fine.  They had some very pretty little flowers in them that at first I couldn't identify, but with a bit of help from google I found they are Surfinias. I should have remembered that as I used to have them in the garden in UK. They are a type of petunia with many small flowers. I have not seen the double variety before though. Each pot had at least three surfinias as well as a small verbena and one or two large petunias, so they were actually a very good buy. Here is an untidy collage of them.

There were two very dark purplish petunias that can get a bit lost I think, so I planted them with the bright yellow surfinia and they look lovely together.

And just in the corner of the front yard we have a succulent shrub - well almost a tree now. It was there when we moved in and we have paid little attention to it. It has grown a little over the years. It was planted in an old half barrel, and last year the ring around it broke and the barrel split open, but the roots of the plant stayed as they were. I just went on watering it like that for a while, but a few months ago we finally got around to moving it into a new, slightly larger pot, and it has just rewarded us with a mass of tiny pink flowers. I have only seen flowers on it once before in the twelve years we have been here. The bees absolutely love it, there were at least a dozen buzzing round when I took these pictures though I don't seem to have caught any of them on camera.

I have written this on Thursday evening as tomorrow we will be off to try the phone shop again, then to Mojacar to post my parcel to UK and the photo shop to have passport-style photos taken for our TIE cards. They are a new ID card to replace our old residencia papers, and we will need them to show we live here if we ever travel out of Spain. We have appointments in Ameria to complete our applications next week. On Saturday I have to go to Huercal Overa for a Covid test. I got a message about it this afternoon. I have no idea why, but can only assume it is because I have an appointment with the ENT specialist at the hospital on Monday. So I will be back there again on Monday to see the doctor and this time I have decided to take a translator with me. I am fairly confident speaking to the doctors in Spanish, and can tell them anything I need to, but I still cannot understand when they speak to me. So when it is something medical I think it is important to understand everything properly so I have a lady coming with me. I have not used her services before but she has been with Chris a couple of times during lockdown when I have not been allowed to go with him.

So next week is going to be a fun week too, but hopefully I will be make it out the other end and have several things to be grateful for. In the meantime I will link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week23

Another week has flown by so what were the bright moments this week. I have spent a few happy hours pottering in the garden. I do this in the morning before it gets too hot. First of all we worked together to pot up the climbing rose and Mandevilla flower that I showed last week. They are both happily attaching themselves to the climbing tower my friend gave me, and within minutes of us finishing it, a Spanish neighbour walked passed and commented on how good it was. (They don't miss a thing!). They do like their plants and not many houses in the village have gardens as colourful as ours.

Another happy follow-on from last week is our silk tree which has now had several flowers on it. I think they are really pretty, but sadly they only last for a few days, but there are plenty more coming to take their place.

The bees like them too!

I also planted up two lavender plants for round by the back railings. We like to sit there in the early morning for our first cup of tea. It is the coolest place for a short while, and lavender is sold to ward off flies and mosquitoes, so it is a good place for them. It is actually too hot to sit there from lunch time onwards, and is the last area to lose the sun, so the plants dry out very quickly and I have to be very vigilant about watering them.

On Tuesday we woke up to black skies, thunder and lightening and then heavy rain, so the animals were not very happy again. It lasted until just after lunch and then the sun came out and it was one of our hottest afternoons so far this year. You really can't guess what each day is going to be like.

As it happened I used the last of our bread on Monday, intending to go to the bakers on Tuesday morning after the market. But the weather being such as it was, the market was of course cancelled and I forgot about the baker. So at tea-time we had a treat - I made pancakes, with fresh juice from lemons just picked off our tree, and they went down very nicely!

It has been grey most mornings but not always raining, and even on those days it remains quite warm. Often the sun has returned for the afternoon and I have spent every afternoon this week sitting on the porch working on a small piece of counted cross-stitch. It is making a nice change. I have several big cross-stitch pictures on my walls, worked many years ago, but I wasn't sure my hands or eyes would be up to doing it now. However I am getting on with it quite well. There have been a few dropped needles, and some frustration with threading them, and a few times when some stitches have had to be undone because I realise I have 'missed the hole' in the aida fabric. But I am enjoying doing something different. I'll show a picture when it is done.

To help my hands, and use different muscles, I change back to crocheting in the evenings, and most nights I have sat out on the porch working on it until midnight. The sun goes by around 9.30, but we have fairly good lighting outside, so here is my usual late night set-up. Crochet on my knee of course, and on the table, a brandy for a night-cap, my bottle of water to wash the brandy down!, a citronella candle to keep the flies away, a fly swat for the ones who have got used to the citronella,  scissors and another hook because I need to change size halfway through, and usually a cat , (Tango or Tolly).

And this week I have another addition, this pretty bottle. It is an old lemon-cello bottle that one of my visitors bought a good few years back. The contents were way too sweet for us to drink and eventually I tipped it away but I kept the bottle because I liked the shape. I came across it again this week when I was having a clear out, so I gave it a really good clean and bought a couple of sets of these 'bottle lights'. They are USB rechargeable with the battery and on-off switch built into the cork. The lights are quite bright and look really pretty after dark.Now I must look out for two more interesting bottles for the other two sets of lights. (They came in a pack of three.)

Wednesday was another very hot day but Thursday through Saturday are forecast as being grey and possibly wet again, so I took the opportunity to get two loads of washing out on the line. All was dry and folded and put away by tea-time. But it was no surprise to see little puffy clouds forming on the horizon by sun-down. But instead of joining together for more storm clouds, they blew in still as little puffs. Although it wasn't a dramatic sky, it was still very pretty.

As I watched they started to get a touch of pink on them, so I was hoping for a bright sunset, but actually it never came. The light just faded and the clouds merged into the dark sky.

I like this one because you can see a few of the little birds hurrying home to their roosts for the night. The sky is full of birds right now, particularly sparrows constantly feeding their young under the eaves of the house next door, and swifts, swallows and house martins swooping about and calling to one another in a last feeding frenzy of all the little bugs that rise from the green zone at dusk. Then suddenly they all head for the trees or their nests and all is quiet again. They put on quite a show.

And finally, another photo of Tolly. (He seems to be getting more than his share of photo shots just now). He just amuses me so much. Now he is allowed the freedom to come and go at night like all the other cats, I think he does a fair bit of playing and roaming around because he seems to sleep nearly all day (when he isn't eating that is!). There are several cat beds around the house, as well as dog beds out on the porch, and every chair in the house is available for him to sleep on, but where does he chose? This tiny square of mud outside the back door. Admittedly it is shaded by an old discarded garden chair, but it is rough and filled with a dead tree stump, scratchy dead leaves, weeds, rocks and mud, and can't be the most comfortable spot, but that is where I can usually find him. There is no accounting for taste!

And that is just about it for this week. I had a video chat with my sister for some advice about the cross-stitch, a little chat with my son in Denmark, and my usual weekly chat with youngest son, Ben, which lasted for over two hours. Thank goodness for Messenger and WhatsApp. 

This week the new shop opened just a few doors up from us, promoting the new fibre internet, so Chris went in and signed up for it. We saw the men laying the cables all through the village, ready for it, a month or so ago, so we were pleased their shop is now open. The men came and installed the new router on Wednesday. There have been a few teething problems, but Chris is quite 'tech-savvy' and I think it is all sorted now. If it proves successful, and an improvement on what we have now, we will probably change our mobiles over to them soon too.

So I am off now to link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.