Friday Smiles 2024# Week 21

Another week has flown by and once again Los Gallardos has been celebrating. Last Sturday was our'secondary' patronal fiesta. (The main one is in July). This was the fiesta od San Isidro, the patron saint of agriculture and fishing. Garrucha also celebrate but they focus on the fishing whereas for us it is agriculture as we are part of 'The Salad Bowl of Spain'. All around here there are fields of lettuce, peppers, beans and melons and acres of netted structures housing tomatoes and cucumbers.

The fiesta starts with the band parading round the village and a special mass up at the church. Then there is a romeria, or countryside walk, with a line of small floats and carriages dressed with flowers, hams, bread etc and families in bright, flowery costumes. The first float holds the statue of San Isidro. At the end come many of the local folk on horseback, and they all end up at the sport and picnic ground just above the village.

Here some families fill long tables with food and light one of the installed barbeques, while others listen to music, join the crowd at the bar by the football ground, or just wait around for the Gran Peaella which is served free to all-comers around 2.00.

We went up for an hour or so. I like to see the floats and the horses,(there was one very cute little girl in a flamenco-style dress, riding a little white pony),  but it was a very hot day and we decided to go back to the cool of our house. As the fiesta is very traditional and changes little from year to year, I have just made a simple collage of some of my photos.

Last week Lisca said her dipladenia (or mandevilla as it is now known) is starting to bud. We are a good bit warmer down here on the coast and I am happy to say that mine has burst into flower. I think this is its third year and seeing it is only in a small pot, I am very pleased with how it is doing. It has actually sent up long tendrils which we trained across the front door in the autumn, and they also have flowers on. We are hoping to bring one strand forward to the front pillar this year.

I go to our little street market most Tuesdays and for the past couple weeks I have been very happy to find one of my favourite fruits for sale. I love fresh apricots, though not many folk seem to agree with me. They are also a good choice for me as they are one of the lowest fruits in sugar but are full of fibre and minerals. They have a very short season, so there may only be one more week of them, and then we start on the cherries. I did treat us to a small bag of them this week but they are still expensive, but hopefully they will come down a bit each week now. Then it will be the peaches, paraguayas and nectarines. There are a few around now but I will wait until they are a little riper, and stick with my apricots while they are still available.

I thought I would share another little project I did with my laser. I am getting to grips with cutting wood, but engraving is proving more tricky. It is a case of lots of trial and error to get the settings right. But a couple of weeks ago it was my nieces birthday. She lives alone with her black labrador Bomber for company, so I took a photo of Bomber from my niece's Facebook page, changed it to black and white, and then converted it to a line drawing. I managed to make a fairly decent engraving from it onto ply wood. I then cut around it to make a little coaster and spray varnished it. I popped it in with her birthday card and she really liked it.

We have had a couple of nice sunsets this week. When I sit down in the sitting room for the evening our window faces easterly and sometimes I see a feint pink refection in the clouds which tells me there is some colour in the sky to the west at the back of the house. One night I decided to try a panoramic picture of it and it didn't turn out too bad. 

I thought I might use as a header for a while but then I took some more pictures. Almost a happy accident was one that shows our purple bougainvillea hedge at the front and a pale setting sun at the back. The clouds above it are like a big white bird swooping over. I liked that one so much more so it will now be my header. I used it on my Facebook too.

Over two nights I watched the sky changing and tooked several photos which I have combined into one collage because I couldn't choose between them!

And that my friends is another week for me. So I will prepare this for Annie's Friday Smilesnull in the morning.

(I have no idea why I cannot link properly to Annie's page this week but the blue word 'null' works, and I cannot aalter it).

Friday Smiles 2024 #Week 20

Another week of ups and downs but I will try to put a post together. I am typing slowly as I have somehow managed to 'sprain' my left thumb and it is very painful and makes the hand useless. I have no idea what I did. It just happened during a very disturbed night. It has eased a little since this morning but the thumb pad is still very swollen. I have just taken the first of some very strong anti-inflamatory pills that the doctor has given me so hopefully it will calm down soon.

In the meantime I have had a busy week with trips to the dentist and hospital, which is just far enough away to make it nearly a day's outing. I have a repaired denture which is good but have been warned it is not as strong and may break again any time, but at the end of the month I am having my last two teeth (fangs!) removed and implants fitted in my lower jaw. When that has all settled down, in 3-4 months time, I will be having a new top and bottom plate. Happy days!

To approve the dentistry work I needed a special X-ray that meant a trip to their bigger surgey in Garrucha. Afterwards we strolled along the front, enjoying the stiff breeze and sunshine. The gulls were gathered in large groups along the shoreline, perhaps hoping the incoming tide would bring them some titbits. Across the water we could also watch all the activity over at the port with the lorries constantly unloading and loading, and what looks like little toy lorries from a distance, keeping all the gravel piles tidy and prepared.

On Tuesday I had my appointment at Torrecadenas Hospital in Almeria city. We took out interpreter along and I am glad we did as she is more used to the layout of the hospital, and I would have struggled to follow all the information I was given. You have probably guessed by now that the biopsy I had done on my hand showed some shallow carcegenic cells so it was agreed that these would be cut away. The site is quite spread out so I will need a skin graft but it will all be done in the day surgery. Now I have to wait for a an apointment from the anaesthetist who will do blood and ECG tests and check I am well enough, and soon after that I should get a date for the operation. So it is all progress.

Parking at the hospital is a nightmare with long queues of cars waiting to get a space. But recently they opened a new innitiative where you can park for free at a new shopping mall and catch a shuttle bus, also free, up to the hospital. Because our interpreter was familiar with all this we were able to do it and it saved a lot of time and frayed tempers. The car park was full to the brim even though we had the almost the first appointment of the day in our department. There was also a long row of parked motorbikes and I guessed that was how the medical staff managed to get to work on time. The hospital is set high on a hill, (Strange choice for a hospital site I feel!), and from up there you can look out over the whole of the city, and in the distance you can see the sea. Almeria is the capital city of our province.

While the painters were in last week, a cupboard they moved off the wall they were painting, accidently fell against the end pole of my washing line and forced it off the wall it was fixed to. So Chris has fixed it again and it is much stornger now, and we went to the ferreteria to buy new line. It has four ten foot lines so it is quite a task to restring it, but it is all down now and I am very happy, and grateful to Chris for his work.

While we were out we popped into the garden centre just opposite the shop, because for ages I have wanted a yellow rose. I bought one once from Lidls and it turned out to be a dark red rose with a thin yellow streak on its inner petals! In the end we found one. It is a small floribunda rather than the tea rose we were looking for, but it is lovely all the same. 

While we were there I also chose this very pretty orange one. It turns to a pale apricot colour as it open out, and it has been planted in one of the big boxes at the corner of the side yard.

I sometimes wonder what Tolly gets up to at night because he is always in the kitchen waiting for his breakfast when I get up, and then he takes up this pose on our settee and doen't move a muscle until lunch time. Even my cleaner can hoover around him without him stirring.

But I know what someone got up to on Sunday night. I don't know which one it was but have my suspicions it was Leo. It is natural for them to hunt but I wish they didn't feel compelled to give me their catch as a gift. However when I got up on Monday, this little fellow was on the kitchen floor. He was dead which was a blessing really, as had he been alive, as soon as I tried to move him he would have shot under the fridge, and I would have spent all day trying to find him. He is a very juvenile horshoe whip snake. They are not venemous and don't bother me at all. In fact I think he is rather beautful, but I know many of you would freak out at such a 'gift'. 

One day this week I ran out of bread for our tea so I decided to make a batch of drop scones. They are a simple batter very similar to ordinary pancakes but with one or two additions. I usually cook them on my old griddle, but I thought they must work just as well on a flat-bottomed frying pan. Wrong! They would not cook and before long I gave up and fetched out my griddle. They cook perfectly on there but you have to be quick. The secret is to turn them over before the bubbles on the surface break, which is why I only have five or six on the go at the time. They made a nice change and we thoroughly enjoyed them. They always bring back memories of my mum. She lived with us for her last ten years aged 80-90, and she loved it when I made these little soft bites for our Sunday tea.

I have spent a lot of time this week chatting to one or other of my boys. They are very good and keep calling to see if there is any progress in my various problems, and now at last I can tell them there is.

So now I will close and prepare to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.