Rocking Your World 2020: Week 22

Well today I am trying out the new Blogger interface to see if there are any improvements. If not I shall return to the Classic version.

Here we are at Friday again. We have been in phase 2 of the relaxing of lock-down this week, but I can't say it has made much difference to us.  Apart from a trip to the road at the front of the village to pick up some dog food, we haven't left home.

It has been quite hot most days and I have had my first dip in the pool, which was lovely.

I was happy to get several loads of washing dry and put away, including the blankets we wrap up in on chilly evening through the winter. They won't be wanted again for a while so I like to put them away clean so they are ready for next autumn.

I only have a few photos this week. I had to show my lovely yellow hibiscus. It is getting a bit thin and straggly as they really don't like being confined to a pot, even if it is a large one, but it still gave me a lovely show of flowers this week.

This one fascinates me because when it rains, the red centre mixes with the yellow petals, and the whole flower turns orange! But this is how it should look. I love that long stamen, and the bees love it too.

For a couple of years I have had some lavender growing in a pot by the back railings. Again being in a pot limits its life and as they had gone past their best. I pulled them out intending to replace them this spring, but of course that hasn't happened; not yet anyway. Yesterday I noticed that a weed seedling had appeared in the pot and was growing fast. I thought I'd leave it to see what it was, but today most of it had been eaten away. I lifted the leaves to look for the culprit and this wee fellow jumped out. Isn't he cute. Even for those who don't like spiders, you must admit that a vivid yellow miniature one is something special. This is from the family of crab spiders, and they turn up in a variety of colours. It was only about half a centimetre across, but I managed to get a picture, just because it was such an amazing colour.

It was nice to have the local herd of goats back visiting in the green zone this morning. I heard their bells and went to look for them. They were over the other side but I could see they had quite a few young kids with them.

I made a cake today. The Spanish folk rarely use Self-Raising flour, which those of us who are British bakers, are used to.  They mainly have what we call plain flour and they just call flour! (All purpose flour to my American friends I think). I tend to still buy SR at the English shop, but I haven't been able to find any at all locally until this week. I found a small bag of flour that I translated as being for making cakes. It said you do not need to add levadura (generally meaning baking powder here though they tend to use the same word for yeast which can be a bit confusing), and when I read the ingredients it said with 'gasification' which I would expect to mean bicarb soda. Are you still with me? Well on the side of the packet there was a recipe for a plain cake and I decided I could understand it enough to have a go. It needed a pot of natural yoghurt, and then used the yoghurt pot to measure everything else! It told you what heat to set the oven to, but not the time - "Leave in the oven until golden. It is important not to open the oven door until it is cooked completely". All a bit vague to me, but I still had a go and to my surprise it turned out really well, even and golden brown. I had to have a little taste from the end, and it is very nice. I shall add a bit of buttercream or something before we eat it I expect.

It has been a bit windy for sitting outside in the afternoons, so I have spent some time down in my craft room and was pleased to finish a set of sixteen Christmas cards, in time to enter them in a card challenge on line that I try to take part in each month. They are all very similar but with small difference in the embellishments. You can find out more about them on my craft blog HERE.

I have also been continuing to crochet of course. I though I would show you the yarn I am using. It is an interesting colour combination. I bought it for another project but when it arrived I felt it wasn't suitable, but it was too expensive to waste, so now I have put it to good use. I will show what I have made when it is finished in a few weeks I hope. 

On Wednesday, a minute's silence marked the start of an official ten days of mourning throughout Spain, for the thousands who have lost their lives during the Corona virus pandemic. Flags will remain at half mast for the ten days. I haven't managed to get a photo of the ones on our own Town Hall yet, but this is a typical picture from the internet.

I have reverted to Classic Blogger because the new one wouldn't let me add photos. (It is supposed to be easier for those using smart phones). I think I need to do something about syncing with Google docs. I will get my techie man on to it later. He is busy sunbathing right now!

And so it is time to link with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and I will leave you with this which made me chuckle.

It has been a bit like that for all of us these passed few weeks, but hopefully we will soon all be back on track.

Rocking Your World 2020; Week 21

Well here we are at Friday again already, and time to look back over the week and focus on the happy moments. I am a bit late writing as I braved the small supermarket in Turre this morning. Chris drove me there and collected me and my shopping at the store front, and we came straight back home, but even so it took up a lot of time, but I'm starting by going back to Sunday morning.

I hadn't slept very well that night so I got up early and decided to go for a walk before too many other folk were about. The first thing I came to was, as usual at this time of a year, the slip road at the front of the village lined with jacaranda trees in full bloom. I know I show then every year, but I just love them.

The flowers come before the leaves so they can be seen in all their glory. Today as we drove past I noticed the floor under each one is covered in a carpet of pale lilac flowers, and already more leaves can be seen on the trees. I am glad I didn't miss them.

I crossed the main road and walked down into the urbanization known as Huerta Nueva (New Orchard). It is a part of Los Gallardos but quite separate from the village, and it has a much larger English population than up by us. 

Now you can follow me on my walk, and as I had so many photos I have grouped them.

Firstly the snails! As soon as the warmer weather comes, they crawl onto anything they can find, from abandoned metal to chain link fences, and anything that grows above ground level. They seal themselves on, often in several layers, and stay there until the first rains of Autumn.

Of course I love all the wild flowers, and there were quite a few still blooming although it is now getting too hot for many of them. The big purple thistles were gorgeous, and I like the yellow daisies. The timid chickory is such a pretty colour.

I walked as far as the small lake in the centre of the urbanization, where there is a small area semi cultivated a while ago by some of the residents. It is a bit overgrown now but there were still some good flowers to see. The one a bit like red-hot-poker is a type of aloe vera, the vivid pink daisy is know locally as claw because it claws its way over stones and gravel and gives an amazing show of colour, and the pink bindweed had become entangled with a darker pink bougainvillea.

Along the path leading to the lake there was a band of these - a member of the mallow family I think. They remind me of hollyhocks though they are much smaller.

The ducks and geese were happily gliding across the water - I love the reflection of the trees - and scratching in the gravel and scrub around the lake. I was disappointed not to see any young ones but maybe I was too late for them.

As I was walking around the lake my left foot started to hurt. I have no idea what I did to it, but literally between one step and the next, it started, and I had trouble putting any weight on it, but I didn't want to phone Chris to come and collect me, so I determinedly set off for home, taking my mind off the pain by looking at all the nice gardens. On the verge outside one I saw this beautiful white cactus in flower. Cacti have such exotic flowers on them, even without the bright colours that some show.

As I was walking up an alley between two houses I stopped to take this photo, because I was struck by the three shades of purple all growing together. The top one is of course, jacaranda. The darker one on the right is a potato bush, and the very pale one front left is plumbago. They looked so lovely together.

And in another house this miniature rose was smothering a gatepost. It had so many flowers on it and I thought it was just beautiful.

Apologies to the squeamish, but just as I was leaving Huerta Nueva to cross the road back to the village I saw this poor creature. It is a horseshoe whipsnake which is not venemous, and it is fairly common over here, though we don't get many near us. Sadly they have got used to the roads being fairly traffic free. He was probably busy chasing a lizard or similar. I know a lot of folk don't like snakes, but they are amazing creatures and belong here out on the campo just as much as we do, if not more.

And further to the saga of my foot, I still have no idea what I did to it. I could barely stand on it on Sunday but through the week it has gradually eased and now just feels like a dull bruise. Slowly a small bruise appeared at the front of my heel, and crept along the inside of my instep up to the ball of my foot, but that too is fading. I must wear tougher shoes next time I get inspired to go walking!

On safer ground, back in my garden, I have enjoyed eating breakfast out at the back of the house where it is still a bit shaded early one, listening to the birds and using my phone app to try to identify them by their song. This week it picked out a green finch, and a few minutes later, there it was, sitting in a little tree not far from me.

When I showed the brown speckled wood butterfly last week, I said that we rarely see butterflies here, so I was surprised when another one turned up on the wall. This time it was a small tortoiseshell, but although I took loads of photos, I didn't catch it with it wings fully spread.

For months I have been watching another praying mantis nest on the oleander, so I was really disappointed when I missed the babies hatching out. I knew they had, because there was a fine silk line coming from the nest with tiny shed skins on it. But yesterday I spotted one of the babies sitting on a coil of wire netting. it had already grown quite a bit but was still very small as you can see in the second picture near my little finger nail.

They are cannibalistic and will eat one another if they don't find enough food quickly, but I am happy to have them in the garden gobbling up aphids, mosquitoes and other less welcome bugs.

Earlier in the week Chris helped me plant out my silk tee near the front gate. It was one of the few places where he could dig a deep enough hole to take it. My friends gave it to me as a tiny 'twig' in a little pot, when they moved back to UK a few years ago. I moved it into a big pot and it has done quite well, but it had started to drop its leaves and was looking a bit sad, so I wanted to plant it where its roots could go down for water. It was probably not the best time of year to move it, but it is surviving so far and I am hopeful it will pick up again now.

Yesterday Chris did some more work outside, again cutting back the bougainvillea that grows along the fence at the side of the house, outside my kitchen window. It only seems like a few weeks since he cut it back hard to just a bare trunk, but it grows at an alarming rate. It takes the light from the kitchen, and it is a big job cutting it back maybe twice a year, so after the last hard pruning we decided to try and cut it regularly in the hope that it will thicken into a nice hedge and be easier to keep control of. It is looking nice and neat again now, and it still has a lot of its flowers.

Just one bit of crochet to show this week. I wanted a fun piece to do after the blanket and shawl, so I made The Bluebird of Happiness. Heidi Bears has designed several animal patterns that all use the motif known as African Flower. You may remember that years ago I made Happypotamus and Fatty Lumpkin, and then two years ago I added Max the Bulldog.

So when I saw she has released the Bluebird of Happiness pattern I just had to give it a go. It turned out bigger than I had expected, but it is still cute and I like it.

And now I had better get linked up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World. And I will leave you with this picture. I think we can all agree that the weather has been unusual to say the least this year. Summer has finally arrived for us and it is at least 30º outside this afternoon, and only dropped to 24º around midnight last night. But just a few kilometers from us, near Almeria city, they had a major storm yesterday and this is just one of the hail stones that came down. The video was quite something to see, but I can't show that on here. It probably didn't last for long, but hail stones like that can do a lot of damage in a very little time! I'm glad it didn't get as far as us!