Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 34

 Picture of the week.

Isn't that just beautiful. It is beautiful on several counts but mainly because it is Mum's Peace rose, and because it was such a relief to wake up and find the garden had been blessed with rainfall at last. I love to see the flowers and leaves with raindrops on them. I liked the colours in this one.

I was out earlier than usual for a doctor's appointment this morning so I cut across the park and down an alley that leads out onto the main shopping area. This broadens into a walkway lined with seats for weary shoppers to catch their breath, and big tubs of plants. Right now they are mostly brown and sad, but they had their share of the rain last night, and it is one of life's miracles that within a few weeks they will be turning green again. (I am hoping some of my perennials will also recover).

We had a nice visit from our son Mike last week and this week we met him over on Red Square for a drink and a chat. He posted this amusing photo on Facebook because he has spent the summer holiday working a mobile shop at various music venues around the country. It is hard work and difficult hours, but he manages to enjoy the sun and some of the performances as well. Basic accommodation means his unruly hair becomes even more unruly and as he put it "Nature has claimed me back to the wild for festival season". He is back home now and tomorrow he is taking his family off to Greece for a well-earned holiday so it was nice to have a catch-up before he goes.

Because I wanted something not very taxing to do yesterday evening, I tried out a wind spinner pattern that  liked. It is really quite pretty. I am going to make it again one day in yellow, brown and green, and add a sunflower top and bottom. (That was the original pattern design).

We have something quite exciting to look forward to in the park at the weekend, and this morning preparations were already underway. I will leave you guessing as to what it will be, but I am sure there will be photos next week (weather permitting of course).

Friday Smiles 2026 # Week 33

Phew! It has been a hot one hasn't it? That in itself says I haven't been up to much more than sitting in the garden with my sewing, or curled up with a book, but I also had a day out on Monday because I had a very virrulent sickness bug Sunday night through Monday. Fortunately it only lasted for twenty-four hours and now I am back to normal except for feeling very sleepy and thirsty. But I have been very good at keeping hydrated all week so no worries there.

Fortunately, before all that kicked off, on Sunday afternoon we had a lovely visit from my daughter-in-law and grandson. We compared notes on crochet projects and caught up on family news, and I was able to give her my wooden, embroidered Christmas decorations for our son's church's Christmas fayre. I remembered, just in time, to grab a quick photo as they were leaving.

I have a soft spot for cosmos flowers. They are so dainty on their fragile stems, swaying in the breeze and come in a lovely range of colours from dark red, through pink and mauve, to white.  So when I saw a kit to grow some in Sainsburys I bought it and planted them straight away. They all started to sprout and I knew I would need to thin them out but unfortunately we were then away in Cheshire with our son, while the bathroom work was being done, so they got very neglected for three weeks or so. When we returned they were amazingly still alive, but very weak and spindly and I thought they were a lost cause. Then I saw tiny flower buds on some of them, so although they were a fraction of the size they should be, I planted the strongest ones out around the garden and left them to 'sink or swim'.  I was surprised to find that I did get a crop of teeny, tiny flowers on some of them, but one or two that went into a tub near the back door, did develope more fully and I now have a few very pretty flowers. So they weren't a complete waste of time after all!

Yesterday I was again sitting outside sewing and I had set my chair next to a coreopsis plant that is enjoying a second round of flowers, and I couldn't help but notice how many little flying creatures came to visit during the afternoon. Apart from a common fly we had sevral common drone hover flies that came back time and time again. I thought these were honey bees but I learned later that the hover fly tries to mimic the honeybee drones, but it only has one pair of wings and the bees have two. (You learn something new every day!). They are still important pollinators and are welcome on my flowers. I also saw the bigger bumble bee again and a very pretty blue holly butterfly. This was tiny with each wing no more than a centimeter across, and it was so fast. It closed its wings everytime it landed, and was much to fast to catch it in flight, but even the underside of its wings were a pale blue.

Of course, last night I had to try to photograph the eclipse. I have safety glasses to use when I am looking at my laser cutter in action, so I used them to protect my eyes. Because of the buildings behind us, we can only see the sun setting from up in my craft-room, and most of my pictures ended up with a triple image like this one. I realised, too late, that this was because I was taking them through my window which is double glazed. 

However I did manage to get these two, one from the start of the eclipse and one from the end, as the shadow was moving off the other side. Not too bad for an amateur with just a phone camera.

Yesterday we had a brief visit from our son Mike who has spent the last few weeks running the mobile shop at various rock festivals. It is hard work with lots of lifting, long hours and not wonderful accommodation, but it pays well and he has been doing it for several summers. He has one more to go to today and then he is taking his family off for a well-earned break in Greece. He loves the heat and copes well with it. He always visited us in Spain in August! It was good to have a quick catch-up.

And that is another week that was.