Rocking Your World; Week 22

Well, if this picture doesn't start you off with a smile, nothing will!

I saw it on Facebook and I really laughed. From my own experience with them, I can say that with Persian cats, there is not a lot of cat under all the fur, and of course, Arwen is half the size just after one of her shaves.

Tango was sitting on my lap this afternoon and I showed it to him. I don't think he was amused!

Perhaps he thought I was going to bath him!

Well cats and water don't usually mix very well, but Arwen is a bit odd this Spring/Summer. She has lived in my craft room ever since I rescued her in 2010, when she looked like this.

She had had a dreadful life, and by choice she has not really left my room since then, although the door is almost always open. She lays by the open window and watches the rest of the animals but that is all. But this Spring she has stared coming down the passageway to sit in Chris's office or the kitchen, and even followed me outside once, but she hisses at the other cats and runs back in when she sees them.

She is a bit of a grazer so I leave her food always available, and next to it there is a bowl of water, which is constantly renewed because she has a urinary tract condition and it is important that she drinks enough. But this week her water bowl remained untouched, and instead she has been sitting in the bath, appealing with her big green eyes for us to turn the tap on. We let it run gently and she stands lapping it for several minutes at a time. And then she goes back to her space on my work desk and licks her feet until they are dry! She's an odd one! I tried to get a picture of her last night but the light was not good, and her little pink tongue moves so fast you can hardly see it.

I will have to be careful what I leave on my desk if she is going to be jumping on it with wet feet too often.

This has actually been another quiet week because I found I needed more time to rest quietly to shake off this virus.

I have been starting my morning by taking my cup of tea, and sometimes my breakfast, round to the back of the house, which is partially shaded, and pleasantly cool early on.

I sit and enjoy watching the little birds diving around over the green zone, and the occasional cat, stalking through the long grass. (Sorry. It is almost the same as last week's photo but it was taken on a different day).

Across the road from the front of our house, the people are having a new swimming pool built so there has been a constant flow of diggers, and lorries of sand or gravel up and down, and on top of that, there is the major road work being done on the main road at the bottom of the village, but out at the back, none of that can be heard. There are no people moving around across the green zone, and hardly ever a voice that reaches me. If I turn slightly to the right I can see the pretty double oleander in bloom, and beyond that a few houses which are empty for most of the year, and in the distance are the Cabrera mountains with their ever changing colours. And it struck me how very blessed I am to have this little oasis of calm and tranquility to go to, to recharge my batteries when I need to.

Just beyond the back railings there is a small strip of land which is part of our ground, but it is not usable as it slopes steeply down to rocks and piles of dead wood. We throw plants over there that we no longer want in the garden, but don't like to throw away, and sometimes they take root, sometimes they die. The most successful of these is the cacti that had to be moved from near the front gate, because it caught on our skin and clothes, as well as the dogs fur. Since being there, it has produced lots of new growth, and every years it has very pretty yellow flowers along each 'ear'. They are out at the minute, and the bright pink bougainvillea that we are encouraging to grow along the railings, had dropped one branch out across the cacti. The yellow and pink together look really pretty.

From where I was standing, behind the railings, I thought each flower had a bright beetle in it, so I zoomed in on one to take a picture and it turned out to be a green centre to the flowers!

Apart from some essential food-shopping yesterday, I have not left the house much all week, but I did drive down to Mojacar late on Monday afternoon, to run a small errand for a lovely friend of mine, who is moving back to UK to be with her son. She is elderly and is finding the heat this week makes it difficult for her to do the things that need to be done. Fortunately her son has come over to help for a few days, but I felt the drive was something I could manage. 

When I got down there the sea was lively enough to be interesting and the sand was smooth and very Empty! Holiday season is July and August out here, but this was half term holiday in UK so I expected there to be more tourists around. Again I was struck by our good fortune, to have such a lovely area to live in, with a beautiful beach nearby, and just enough people to make it feel like a lively community, but none of the crowds that can spoil a sea-side location.

If you can enlarge this you may just see a handful of folk on the spit of sand in the distance, but that is all.

I have to admit that when I got back home, I felt as though I had done a lot more than a twenty minute drive, and I ended up sleeping on the settee for an hour before tea, which made me realise that I wasn't quite ready to  get back into my usual busy life.

My only regret from a restful week, is that I missed an event last weekend that I would have liked to attend. Our church is one of a 'family of three' all very small but all part of the same Chaplaincy. The original one is outside Mojacar, and a second one is at Aljambra, way out in the campo beyond Albox. Our is the newest one, being only three years old. The one at Aljambra is the smallest with a congregation of between half a dozen and twenty people, but this was their tenth anniversary, and they celebrated with a flower festival. It was well supported by businesses in Albox as well as individuals who all donated flower arrangements, and from the photos I have seen, it looks as though it was lovely. People from all the Chaplaincy churches supported them.

Cut flowers are quite a luxury out here, and of course, most have a fairly short life, but these really do look beautiful. I was sorry not to get to see them, but I am glad it was a success. One of my friends had led the preparations, and I know how much work she had put in to it.

The upside of being at home more is that I have had plenty of craft time so I have managed to finish the favour boxes for my son's wedding and make the cover for their guest book. There is just a post box to make now. (I have ordered 4kg of jelly beans from Amazon which should arrive early next week. Then I will have to make the fillings for my little boxes so they are ready to fold together when I get to UK). I also had time to make a couple of cards, one for one of my sisters who will be 89 later this month, and one for a challenge that I am guest designer for in July. I will be writing posts about them both on my craft blog very soon.

I had a crafty surprise this week too. I don't expect mail very often. Apart from the odd craft stamp or die, very little arrives in an envelope for me, so when Chris checked our box yesterday and handed me an envelope, I was very surprised. And I was even more surprised when I saw what was inside. Not one, but two lovely ATCs; one from our dear friend Annie, and one from her sister Jo. It is a long time since I had a new ATC and I am thrilled to bits with them. What clever friends I have made in blogland!

It gave me a lovely lift at the end of a rather dull week!

As I am finally beginning to feel that I am back on track, I went down to Turre market this morning. There are lovely cherries around now, and the first of the peaches and nectarines. Something we could not buy here at all when we first came out, are raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, but they are now available in Lidls and occasionally some of the other supermarkets, so I came home with a mixture of them all and this afternoon I made ten jars of mixed summer fruits jam. It is not something I have made before, and I am not likely to again, as the berries come in very small punnets and are too expensive to use for jam very often, but it has set well, and it should have a good flavour. I put one jar in the fridge so it would cool enough to try at tea time! (Update - It tasted very good. Even Hubby approved!)

I like the way the bottom of the jars are picking up the sun from the window. The pink in the background is the more common mauve bougainvillea that still grows abundantly along the side fence, despite us cutting it almost to the ground last autumn.

So that's another week gone. Four more and we are half way through the year.

I will finish with two more little smiley faces. Not my photos of course, but their mummy keeps me up to date with regular photos. They are of course, my two great-grandsons who I last saw almost two years ago, when Alfie was still a baby. I love this photo of him among the daisies.

And here is his brother who looks more like his daddy in every photo I get. They are such happy little fellows and always have a smile for the camera.

They are coming out to visit us in August, and I am really looking forward to the opportunity to get to know them properly.

Right so now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World. I hope to see you there.