Rocking Your World 2020; Week 17

Hi everyone. I am starting my post today with another photo of my mauve daisy plant which as you can see is now well covered in flowers. There is still room for more, but it needs more sunshine for that.

For part of last week the pot looked like this. Paco decided it was a perfect place to curl up and nap, and he flattened the centre so I grabbed a nearby stand and put it there to give the plant a chance to pop up again!

Another pinky mauve flower that we have seen a lot of this week are these trumpets blooms, similar to the UK bindweed, but nothing like so invasive. It is a wild flower, some would say a weed, but it is so pretty. I am happy to see it flourishing on the bank down to the green zone, just beyond our back railings. For a brief while early this morning, the sun did show its face, and these flowers were humming with the sound of all the bees busy harvesting nectar and pollen from them.

Back in the garden, this made me really happy. Our elephant foot palm has not one, but two flower spikes on it this year. These shoot up quite suddenly. The flowers themselves are fairly insignificant, but it shows the plant is healthy. I inherited it from a friend when she moved back to UK, about four years ago, and it was a tiny thing in a small pot then. We potted it on and it hasn't stopped growing since.

This photo appeared as a memory on my Facebook this morning, because I posted it last year on our ruby wedding anniversary. Our 41st anniversary was on Monday this week. 

We didn't have a lot of money to spend back then so a friend offered to do my hair for me, and insisted on taking this photo before the 'main event'. I don't think I will ever achieve this look again. My hair is now much thinner and very grey, and no length of lock-down will allow it to grow this long again!

Here is the wedding day photo along with a more recent one (but one taken before lock-down). At least we are still smiling! our opportunity for celebration was limited, but we did have a drink together that evening, as we sat watching TV, and reminiscing about what we have done in those 41 years. It has been a good life so far! 

We were pleased to see the council workers back, disinfecting our streets again this week. The sweeper led the way, clearing up any loose rubbish, followed by a man with a powerful hose. He was very thorough, making sure to give every gateway a good spray, and he even went under and over any parked cars. Our lock down has been extended until 9th May, but we do feel we are being looked after very well.

We have had some problems with Paco this week and I ended up playing vet. We do have a veterinary clinic a drive away, which is open for emergencies, but as we have not so far left the village, I decided to try to deal with it myself. You don't bring up five lively boys and still feel too squeamish, so when we realised that Paco had confronted another stray cat, of which there are several around here, and the bite he sustained was infected, I knew the abscess needed to be lanced. It is a pretty horrendous thing to do, but it has happened to him before so I was prepared for it. I have an animal grooming kit so I shaved the hair away from the site, and eventually had the wound as clean as possible. It seemed to be healing fairly well, but the outer layer of skin where the swelling had been, was dying and one day he managed to lick it off leaving a very large open area, which needed to be covered. He is an old boy now -eleven years last Christmas - and a patient soul. It is not easy to bandage up a cat's shoulder, but he sat still and let me try. I used some gauze with a generous dollop of Sudocrem. (my go-to antiseptic cream since they stopped making the wonderful magic pink cream, AKA Germolene, which healed many an injury on the boys), and bound it up as best I could. My first two attempts were not tight enough and he got out of them within an hour. But in the end I got the knack, and all week he has allowed me to change the dressing each morning and night, and the site is healing well. Today I have left it uncovered for the first time. He can't really reach to lick it much, and I couldn't put a small 'cone' on him as the injury was right where the cone would rub. But I am hoping it will soon be quite better. However, this morning Tango came in with a similar wound, which I cleaned immediately and so far it is not infected, so I will be keeping an eye on him now. 

The stray tom cats are such a menace, but there is little we can do about it. Many are not actually strays but it is not in the Spanish culture to neuter their animals, so in the Spring they all prowl around all day, and the green zone behind us is an ideal hunting ground for them.

Paco hasn't strayed far from home this week. I guess he is wary of going too far, so he has been sleeping on the settee or out in the sun. He gets on OK with the dogs. They at least have a mutual respect, but he rarely chooses to actually sit with them, but one lunch time we found him sleeping on the edge of Kim's bed, and Kim let him!

Not exactly a cuddle-fest, but at least he didn't push him off.

On a happier note, I finished my last block for my blanket on Tuesday, so here they are, all 53 of them.

My first task was to sort them into colour groups and match them to their patterns. Each design has a number which I needed in order to follow the pattern for joining them.

And here they are as they will be in the blanket. Apologies for the bright orange background. The bed-settee was the only space big enough to lay it on, and even with that, the final row was falling off the edge!

I am joining them with a crochet stitch called the 'in-line zipper join'. It makes nice neat, flat seams, but as the blocks are all different sizes there are very few long straight joins, so I am joining small groups together first, and just hoping they will all join up in the end. I am about half way so far. As the groups get bigger, it gets more difficult to hold, but I am sure I will get there in the end. Then I will just have a border to do. Because the pattern is already busy, I will only be adding a few plain rounds of border to help it keep its shape. i'll show you again when it is finished.

And that is about it for this week. I thought you might like a quick look at this picture which I spotted this morning. It is of course a black bird... or is it? If you thought it was a bird, take a closer look. You might be surprised.

And with that, I am off to join the other 'smilers' at Annie's Friday Smiles, and Virginia at Celtic House. Keep busy and keep smiling everyone. 

Rocking Your World 2020: Week 16

Hi again. I am a bit late posting today. Let's just say I am easily distracted. But today I was partly distracted by a video call with my sister so that was a happy distraction.

Anyway I am starting this week with a photo that made me smile.

This is my youngest son Ben. When he lost his partner suddenly in a traffic accident last summer, he found the house very empty and quiet. I suggested he adopt an animal so there was someone to greet him when he got home from work, and as his landlord was not keen on him having a dog, he went to the cat rescue centre and came home with Bobby. He was a sad cat whose elderly owner had died. Ben sometimes says "I don't know which one of us rescued who", and as you can see Ben and Bobby have become best friends and are inseparable whenever Ben is not at work.

I have spent time in the kitchen again this week and again made bread. The big loaf is a half and half loaf. One end is white bread for Chris and the other half is  a wholemeal and oatmeal mix for me. There are also three rolls of each from the spare dough. Then I made muffins, chocolate chip for Chris and sticky date for me. We just can't help liking different things!

There is not a lot of other news this week, but although the days continue to be grey and cloudy with short bursts of sunshine, it has been warm, at least outside, and the garden is embracing all the extra rain. I had a wander round to look at the plants the other day and I found this beautiful rose, with several more buds almost ready to open.

My hydrangeas are all looking very healthy. Of course they are really water plants so they love the rain. On every branch there is a crown of new leaves with little heads of flower buds forming in the centre of each one.

In the middle of May last year, Chris and I visited a cacti garden near Nijar, and one of the plants I bought was a sort of succulent ground cover plant that has small mauve daisy flowers all over it, rather like a common michaelmas daisy. Here is the one I brought home.

The man at the garden told me one pot would be enough and it would cover a square meter in a year. Well I put it in a big pot on our front step and here is it is now.

It has certainly spread, and soon I will be taking some of the trailing parts off to root elsewhere. It is just starting to flower. The flowers are small but I think the plant would prefer a sunnier position so I will have to think about moving it.

In this close up you can see that it is covered in buds, so I am hoping for lots of flowers soon. They are much more mauve than they look in this photo. I have discovered that the flowers 'go to sleep' whenever the sun moves off them, and there haven't been many moments when the sun is on this step for me to take the picture!

I also came across a little visitor in the garden. This handsome caterpillar was heading up the back wall. The markings on it are amazing.

It wasn't really in the best place so I moved it gently onto a plant, well away from my nosey cats. And I took another photo before I set it free again so I had some clear images to help me identify it.

With the help of Google, I now know it is the caterpillar of Spanish Festoon butterfly, which looks like this (google photo).

Isn't it lovely? So I hope it found somewhere safe to make its cocoon.

And here is a lovely piece of crochet work, not done by me, but by my daughter-in-law. She only learned to crochet a couple of years ago, and she made this following charts and videos in the internet. She made it to give to her husband (my eldest son Jim, the vicar), because he was sad that he could not do the traditional Easter services at his new church. She thought it might cheer him up. I think he liked it. It was displayed at the front of his altar set up in their garden for his on-line Easter Sunday service. I think she did really well too.

As it is getting late I will quickly link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and then I must go and feed the animals. I'll be back later to see what has made everyone else smile this week.

Rocking Your World 2020; Week 15

Has your world rocked this week? I wouldn't say mine has rocked but there have been plenty of times when it swayed and made me smile, so here goes. 

What a strange Easter this is. I do miss the Easter services at my own church, and the excitement on the streets as the Spanish celebrate this very important season with processions from the churches around the villages. But there have been plenty of short 'messages' on social network to share. I have watched some from our own vicar and some from my son for his church in London. I think some channels such as Facebook are struggling to cope with the increased use, but so far so good. 

I have also watched live concerts by my friend Shaz who sings on the local circuit here, and also by my youngest son Ben, who does a session some evenings. So I have plenty of entertainment.

Sometimes I manage to 'entertain' myself too, but not in an intentional way. Because I have arthritis in my neck, and also have a very short neck, I struggle to find a comfortable pillow, and for the past few weeks I have been using a small horseshoe shaped neck pillow for support. It was looking a bit grubby so I thought I'd put it through a gentle wash in my machine. Bad idea! A seam split and I found micro-beads everywhere. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg! They were in the machine, on the floor, in the towel I washed with it, they are still all over the path outside, and I had to use an old toothbrush to clean them out of the filter in the vacuum cleaner! I had to laugh, or I might have cried! Fortunately, the very next day I had a parcel which contained a new pillow. I had ordered it back in February, and wasn't sure I would get it.

It looks an odd shape but it is very comfortable, and I have had two good night's sleep using it. It is also filled with micro-beads and the label says it is machine washable, but I am not sure whether I shall risk it.....

After three weeks of staying at home, I was finally running out of some basic items so I needed to go shopping, and also needed to collect my monthly prescription from the Farmacia. We have decided to try and only use the shops in the village. The supermarket has a very limited range of stock, so this means keeping our meals fairly simple, but I am not ready to drive to a big supermarket yet. So I donned my facemask, (made by  ladies in the village and distributed by the Town Hall), and off I went. It seemed quite strange to actually be out on the street. We have stricter rules than UK and are not allowed to just go for a walk.

Normally the folk in the village rely mainly on the street market each Tuesday to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, and they have very little in the supermarkets, so I was pleasantly surprised to find crates of them stacked at the end of a counter, presumably supplied by local farmers who cannot sell in the usual way. In fact I got most of the things I wanted.

These two pictures come from the Town Hall site. The first is their counter with a collection of full-face, acrylic masks. They went round the village and handed these out to everyone who has contact with the general public, such as those manning the check outs in the shops. The second is the lovely lady who runs our little supermarket where I went shopping this week.

I have also been quite productive with various crafts  this week. I recently made a little box card of a church, as a Christmas card. I liked it so I cut out three more and they have been sitting in a tray ever since. So one afternoon I decided to put them all together. So I now have four little churches all ready to go in my 'finished Christmas cards' box. These fold flat to go into envelopes for posting, and will help me build up my little stash of cards.

I have also continued to crochet, mostly in the evenings, and I have completed several more blocks for my next blanket. This seems to have been hanging around for a long time, as it was a project to fall back on when my hands couldn't cope with a big blanket. And also I needed to work on small items at my Wednesday sewing group, where we do a lot of chatting and it is easy to make mistakes. I'd rather undo a little row of a block than one right across a blanket! I then ran out of the dark blue wool I am using to edge them all, but last weeks parcel brought me enough to hopefully finish is. I just have a few more blocks to make and then I must start the jigsaw puzzle of fitting them all together. There are 53 blocks in all - a large one in the centre, and two each of 26 designs.

I took a break from making these one day, to make one of these little squares. It is called HOPE. The designer Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldar, wanted to give us something positive and happy to focus on during these difficult days. I made mine with 4ply cotton and it is so sweet. I may make a few more, enough to cover a cushion perhaps.

I have also been busy in the kitchen. The day I went shopping, the queue down the street from our little baker's was so long, Chris didn't want to wait in it, so I decided to make my own. Back in the day, when I was recently divorced and managing on benefits, with two small boys to feed, I made all my bread, but these days the kneading is hard work and the local bread is too good to bother with making it. But I was glad to find I hadn't lost my touch. I managed a lovely loaf which we enjoyed, and I am sure I will be making more in the coming weeks.

And of course, I couldn't let Good Friday pass without some hot cross buns. These I do make most years as they are not something the Spanish have, and although I can get them frozen from an English shop, you can't beat the smell and taste of home made ones. So yesterday afternoon I was back in the kitchen making these.

I have continued to spend a little while each morning (weather permitting), enjoying the silence and watching the birds and insects keeping busy in the green zone at the back of our house. One day this week I sat out there with some bread and when I finished I dusted the crumbs from my lap. Soon I noticed an ant coming to collect a big crumb to take home. It was bigger than him, and he was struggling to move it, but he didn't give up. Then I saw another ant approaching it and thought "Oh good. He is getting some help". I have seen them work together to move larger items before. But when he got close, the original ant fought him off, then picked up his precious meal and ran home with it. He managed to carry it a good 20 meters and then struggled, but eventually managed to pull it through a small crack between two crazy-paving stones. We could learn a lot from ants!

And finally, Thursday was a full moon night. It was described on the internet as a pink moon, but as usual I forgot to look for it as it was rising, and by the time it was right up, it had lost its colour. It was a cloudy sky that night but I tried to get a picture anyway. Now I only use my phone for photos, they are not as good as I used to get with my camera, but here is what I managed.

I do hope you are all keeping well, and finding ways to entertain yourselves during these strange times.

This may not be like any Easter you have experienced before, but I still wish you all joy and blessings, and patience to stay strong until we come out on the other side.

Time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking your World if Virginia does a post today.

Rocking Your World 2020; Week 14

Here I am on day 21 of our lock-down in Spain. I can't believe how quickly the days go by.

I am still feeling very comfortable confined to my house, and so grateful that, as of now, I am still virus free. I hope you all are too.

Our weather continues to be very unseasonably unsettled with a mixture of sunshine, rain, wind and clouds. Knowing that the fresh air is one thing I am missing a bit, I am taking the opportunity to be out in the yard whenever the sun shows it face. Quite often this has been in the morning, with the wind getting up and clouds gathering by mid-day. But first thing in the morning is a lovely time to sit at the back of the house and drink my morning cup of tea while I watch the birds flitting around in the green zone. We have had enough rain for it to still be really green, and it is so still and peaceful. 

There are some birds that I see each morning which are quite a dull brown when seen from a distance, and it is easy to mistake them for sparrows. But when they fly away you see flashes of bright yellow on their chests and under their wing. They are in fact Serins. I have been watching them through Chris' binoculars, but they are too far away for me to take a photo with my phone so here is one from Google images.

They are sometimes know here as Spanish canaries, and they really do sing. Their songs ring out from tree to tree, and it is lovely to hear them.

As I looked around me I started to think what else, beside the birds, made me happy and here are a few of the things I found.

Early morning rain, caught on blades of grass...

A praying mantis nest, still clinging to an oleander stem, despite the wind and rain...

 

Masses of new buds forming on the chumba that tumbles down the slope behind our neighbour's garden...

 

A patch of yellow daisies defiantly blooming through the dead grass and thistles...

 

The abundant blossom on all the orange trees (even though it plays havoc with my hay-fever!)...

Pretty cotton-wool clouds, which we don't see here very often...

 

And it is always a joy when the day starts with a bright blue sky!

Our days pass peacefully until the road sweeper does his daily drive round. Nearly every day he sweeps the streets throughout the village. I sometimes give him a wave and get a friendly salute in return. Here I just managed to lean over our front wall and get a photo of the back of his little vehicle that has big brushes etc on the front.

In our village he is preceded by a man on foot in full 'space-man' type protective gear, who sprays all the roads, walls and pavements with disinfectant and bleach. Our Town hall is doing a wonderful job to keep us as safe as possible, and I am very grateful for that. Earlier this week, when I heard a bit of a commotion outside, I saw a man doing a very thorough job of spraying inside and outside of our big rubbish bins.

In the larger towns they are using a method know as fogging. Here it is being carried out in nearby Vera Town.

I had a nice surprise this morning when a small packet was delivered by a courier. Inside were a few cutting dies.

I ordered these several weeks ago, before all this madness took off, and I knew they were dispatched at the end of February, so it was great that they have now been delivered safely. It is always nice to have some new craft stash to play with.

I have spent quite a lot of time in my craft room, and made good progress with the blanket that has been 'on my hook' for a long time now, but I fancied a change of activity this week so I dug out my old puzzle board. I used to use this a lot, but it hasn't had a puzzle on it for many years now. I mostly do jigsaws on my tablet, but I can only go up to 280 pieces on there, or they become too small for my failing eyes to concentrate on, and I fancied trying one a bit more challenging. I was having a video call with my sister in the week, and her husband showed me a new puzzle that he was starting, and that inspired me to try one. My board is big enough to hold a 1000 piece puzzle, and you can fold it up and put it away at any stage, which is really useful. I didn't have many to choose from but I found a new, still sealed one depicting Mary Cecily Baker's Flower Fairies, which I have always loved. and I knew it would be complete, so that's the one I chose.

I always start by sorting the pieces out, and I have a set of nesting trays designed for this, so as Wednesday was a nice morning I sat out on the porch and did my first sort. The board can be opened out enough to use on my dining table, so I have made a tentative start. I don't know whether I will complete it or not. It is not proving to be very 'interlocking' so it breaks apart if I knock it, and I can see me losing patience with it, but we will see how it goes.

And that is about it for this week. I fear the news will get worse before it gets better. The death toll in Spain is horrific, but we are told that the rate of new infections is slowly coming down, so maybe we are finally turning the corner.

I am more than tired of all the posts about it in social media, so I thought I would end with a few pictures that are non-virus related that have amused me this week. Then I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World. Stay safe everyone, and I'll meet up with you all again next week.

An overworked washing machine...

A creative butcher....

Feeding the ducks...