Friday Smiles 2025 Week 5

It may be colder each day and very windy, but Spring has sprung! Our back railings are well covered with the bright pink bougainvillea now, but peering between that the dull green of an old olive tree, you can just glimpse an ancient almond tree, and Yes, it has blossom on it. 

The trees are in the green zone, an area behind our house which is set aside as "not to be built on". It belongs to someone, but no-one seems quite sure who, and certainly no-one ever looks after it. So gradually the trees are dying off and the ground is more and more impacted where children run through it, and occasionally a herd of goats come to crop the remaining plants. But this old almond tree, that looks completely dead all winter, manages to throw out some blossom each spring. Sometimes a street person will wander through searching for a few nuts to chew, but I don't think it produces much fruit now. The land is too dry.

On our side of the railings we have a tiny square of plantable land where our baby grapefruit tree grows, but it is a bit of a wind tunnel and it didn't manage to hold on to any fruit this year. But next to it I planted a cutting that I took from a shrub in a friends garden when she moved house years ago, and that is prospering. It has grown into a tall bushy shrub which we have to prune back quite hard each year, but at this time of year it is covered with flower buds that are just opening. You can see their spears sticking up from the top, as well as down the sides. The flowers are white with a pale pink stripe and they remind me of antirrhrinum flowers or snapdragons. But after years of searching on line and asking various gardening groups, no-one has been able to tell me its name. I'd love to know, but I enjoy it anyway.

I hope no-one had serious damage with the storms this week. Once again we seem to be right on the edge of it, and the rain passed us by except for a few random drops, but the wind has been ferocious! I was foolish enough to think I could dry my sheets on the line on Tuesday, so I double pegged everything and checked every now and then to see it was still there. But sadly, the sheet was still pegged to the line but the main post of the line broke and my sheets were blowing back and forth on the ground. Chris spent yesterday afternoon trying to fix it, but his drill bits were not suitable. So he had some more delivered today and the line is half fixed. It took a lot of power to drill so now we are waiting for his drill to recharge. It is not a major job but all these things get harder as we get older so they take longer, but thank goodness for power tools to help us. (The sheets have been re-washed and now waiting for a line so I can hang them outside again - if it is calmer tomorrow)

It is much colder this week and I have been curled up in my chair with a book most afternoons. I make good use of my Kindle subscription at this time of year.

In the evening I still turn to crochet while I am watching TV. We enjoyed the Traitors, and I love 'Call the Midwife' on a Sunday evening. I think Tuesday was the end of this set of Silent Witness so I don't know what we will be watching now. But I did manage to finish one of the blankets I showed last week. I went with the 5 x 5 squares in the end and I am peased with  it now it is done. So just the pink one to put together now, and I have reduced a big bag of left over yarn, down to few small balls so that is a good job done. What next? I have no idea.

I am still trying to rehome my lovely cats. I am a bit surprised it has taken so long. I wanted an up-to-date photo of Leo to show, and he obligingly posed for me. Isn't he splendid!

And with that I am going to prepare this for publishing tomorrow to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.

Friday Smiles # Week 4

Well here we are again. It seems to have been a short week, and looking back I can't think of much to write about. But as promised last week, I did make some picallili and on Wednesday, well over half of it was sold, with people saying they would have another jar next week too. As it is quite expesive to make, I have reclaimed my costs but all the profit will go to the food bank the sewing group supports, and when it is all sold, it will have raised 30€ for them, so that is good.

I have also been busy each evening with my crocheted squares, and now I have used up much of the yarn I decided to count up and see how many I had made. I found I had enough to make one 4 x 5 squares blanket,  and one 4 x 6 squares, though I may change that to a 5 x 5. I did a quick layout and chose the pink squares to make the first blanket with a few pale turquoise to add interest.

The rest were mainly blues, greens and a few in cream, and I laid them out like this for now.

Now I have the job of joining them all together and making some kind of an edge. These are a good size for the little buggies most mums seem to have now, and the bigger one would serve in a cot too. They will again go to the food bank for new mums to use.

I am writing this early as we have to go to the hospital this afternoon for an eye test for Chris, to see whether his injections have had the desired effect.

That's about it for this week so here are a couple of sunset skies to close with.

So now I am ready to post this tomorrow and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles here.