Rocking Your World 2019; Week 6

My smile today comes from these two little lads who are dear to my heart. They are my great-grandsons, and last weekend seven year old Isaac went to Liverpool Academy with his football team, Oswestry Dragons, and he scored a hat-trick. I don't know what the final score was, but proud mummy sent me this photo. He is getting a congratulatory hug from little brother Alfie, who although he is only four, is already in an under-fives training group, and is pretty good at kicking the ball himself.

Silly blogger wouldn't let me put these side by side, but we'll see what happens when I publish it!

This is another photo of them out walking through the woods with a friend, (and parents of course). It is so lovely to see little ones enjoying themselves. Of course they have their share of technology time, but they still choose to go out and play whatever the weather.



And so on to my week, which again has been a quiet but busy one, by which I mean I have not been to any special events etc, but my days have been filled with cooking, crochet, card making and sorting out my very extensive craft stash.
Cooking: more orange, and grapefruit marmalade made, and I have enough fruit to make one more lot of my usual orange, and one batch of a darker marmalade with thicker pieces of peel. Today I also bought the vegetables to make some more piccalilli as I have run out and folks keep asking for it.
Crochet: I continue to work on the wide border of my blanket. I am excited to see the pattern taking shape and can't wait to finish it so I can show it on here and Facebook. Hopefully the yarn for the next one will be on its way to me next week.
Card making: I am sure I am not the only one who looks at the cards they receive at Christmas, and thinks "I could use that image to make a new card". Every year, before I put my cards in the recycling bin, I collect all the pictures, frames, sentiments etc that I think I might use, but of course I hardly ever do. So this year I was much more selective about what I kept, and then I set about using them straight away, and I made a dozen cards for next year, that bear no resemblance to the originals, and with added stamping, die-cutting etc, I feel they are genuinely my handiwork, and I am pleased with them. I won't show them on here, as I shall be using them for the Christmas card challenge I enter at the end of each month.
Sorting my Stash: Now that is a different matter altogether. A long time ago, when a local 'todo' shop closed down, (todo means 'everything' here, so todo shops are a bit like UK pound shops), I had the opportunity to buy mirri-card in a wide range of colours, for silly money - and I mean really silly money. It meant buying whole packs of each colour, and each pack had ten enormous sheets in it. They have been in an equally huge carrier bag, stuffed into the gap between two cupboards, and they are always falling down, and getting dog-eared corners etc. So this week I set about cutting each sheet into more manageable pieces. Each sheet made two 12"x12" sheets, two a little larger than A4 and two narrow strips. It took me two afternoons and evenings to finish it, but it is now stored in a box, and will be easy when I need to search for a specific piece.
My next job was to take about twenty half-used pads of Lidl's card, tear out all the pages, and organise them into colours. I then did the same with the paper pads, and again it is much easier for me to use now. Hopefully when my new cupboards arrive, there will be boxes to take them.
I am now sorting through my A4 card and then the filing cupboard will be empty, and can be moved down to Chris' office, and I can start on the next cupboard which also needs some extensive organisation.
Meanwhile the sun has continued to shine, and the wind has become a gentle breeze. It is a lovely time of year, and it feels like an early spring day, but I am not taking it for granted as February and March can be quite unpleasant, even here in Spain. But the garden is loving it, especially after I got the hose out and watered all my pots, so let's take a walk around. Starting at the back, the bright pink bougainvillea is waking up, and lots of new buds are opening. It is such a lovely splash of colour in a darkish corner.

Also, a couple of weeks ago I showed a few blossoms on an old almond tree that I thought was more or less dead. But this week it is covered in blossom, so there is life in the old tree yet!

Round in the front of the house I had a lovely surprise when I found a tiny daffodil and a blue hyacinth in flower. I always give my bulbs a second chance, but I don't really expect them to flower a second year, as this is not their natural habitat at all. So it was lovely to see these two trying their best.

There is a tiny pink hyacinth coming up in the pot too.
Next to them the baby kalenchoe are still flowering. They are a great, hardy plant that provides colour for most of the year.

Moving around to the corner bed, where we can actually plant a few things in the ground instead of in pots, the jasmine is again ready to open. It forms a dense 'hedge' against the wall dividing the front and side yards, and just look at the way the buds fill every available space. It will be beautiful again in a week or two's time, and the whole house will be filled with its fragrance.

I am ashamed to say that the corner plot is very overgrown right now, and needs some serious attention, but despite that the roses planted around the edge continue to thrive. Most are fairly low shrubs, but one always shoots up a lot taller than me, which actually means its flowers are right outside the sitting room window. This year it has been taken over by rampant strands of the jasmine which have twined around its stems, and also by a 'weed' that fascinates me so we have let it grow for now. It has small leaves like a columbine but the flowers are a deep red-purple pitcher. (Not a very good photo because I took it into the sun).

When the flower dies, the seeds form in a large pod and they are hanging from the rose branches. I expect I should gather them before they ripen and pop, or I could find myself with more of them than I bargained for.

And pushing out of the top of them are these lovely pink freckled roses.

And before we leave the garden I must show you the front porch where one of our Christmas poinsettias is still blooming, and making me smile each time I leave the house. They did well this year. The big yellow one and the other red one died very suddenly last week, so they have all given us a good few weeks of joy.

So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World. Then it is off to our last choir practice before our concert next week. It will be nice to have a good sing.