Rocking Your World 2021: Week 22

It has been a quiet week here with rather less sunshine, lots of clouds and some rain. Sunday did its best to be nice, but despite being warm, it was too windy for our usual dinner outside.

Monday was the worst day of the week with steady, quite heavy rainfall all day and most of Sunday and Monday nights. It was still fairly warm but felt colder because of the rain and the animals were not impressed at all. They all looked out of the door and changed their minds. I liked this picture of Tolly looking so fed up, curled up on the telephone seat with his chin propped on a little paw. "I just want to go out and play, but I don't like all that wet stuff!".

But one thing that did like it was the flowers. My hibiscus are all out in flower and these two, one bright orange and one yellow, made a lovely splash of colour despite being covered in raindrops.

Tuesday was better so I managed to do some tidying up outside and potted up the flowers I had bought last week, and also some lovely sturdy geranium cuttings that my friend Chris gave me when we visited last week.

Chris also gave me a rather nice heavy metal climbing tower for roses or similar, so yesterday I suggested we visited another garden centre to look for a climbing rose. I found the one I wanted with lots of tiny red flowers on it, and we also bought a white flowering vine to put on the other side of the tower. I knew this as a Diplodenia, but apparently it is now called a Mandevilla flower. It is a tropical exotic and likes the sun, but it could be a challenge to keep it happy along with the rose. I am not sure how either will do in a large pot rather than in the ground but we will soon find out. It started to rain again just as we got home, so we will get them planted out later today or tomorrow.

A few weeks ago I was happy to see some flower buds forming on my little silk tree. I have watched them daily but they have taken a long time to develop. But today they are just beginning to open, showing a brighter red than I expected as the flowers on the parent tree were lilac, but maybe by next week they will be fully open and I will see their true colour.

I am going to risk showing a little poppet I made this week. No need to guess who it is for if you are a regular follower. It hasn't been posted yet but I am pretty sure neither of the parents see this blog. I wonder who recognises it. It is of course, Miffy, a cute little rabbit immortalised in children's books by Dick Brauna. He is Dutch so I know Lisca will have recognised him straight away. 

The books have a very simple text on each page and they were a favourite with my own children when they first started to read, and also with my little ones at nursery. I will have a couple of the books sent directly to their home once the parcel has arrived, so hopefully Miffy will be enjoyed by another generation of 'our tribe'.

The clouds parted around tea-time on Wednesday and when I went out to take my rubbish to the bin, I noticed an almost full moon rising through the still-blue sky. So I fetched my phone and took the opportunity to try out my new tripod and I was quite pleased with this picture that I took.

The garden centre that we went to yesterday is right on Mojacar Playa. Once again it was windy but not very sunny, but still quite warm. I had another go at taking video of the lovely lively sea, and this time I did a bit better, so I will try to add it on here. You can hear the wind whistling around the phone.

I find these sort of seas quite mesmerising and I could stand and watch them for ages. Chris had other ideas, so when I suggested a quick drink at one of our favourite cafés just across the road, he said we might as well stop and have lunch there which saved me cooking so it seemed like a good idea! I like this café because if I ask for 'té ingles' I get a pretty teapot of hot water, a jug of cold milk (that is a bonus as they often bring hot milk!), a pot of tea-bags including, black, red, and green teas, Early Grey, and their own choice of mint or chamomile, but I also get my own pot of PG tips! There is usually enough to get two cups of tea out of it, and we also get a small glass of fresh orange-juice, Chris gets a glass of water with his coffee, and a plate with two mini savoury cheese and ham rolls, two sweet dough balls, and a little bowl of nuts and seeds. That is standard with anything you order so it is always a good place to stop.

For lunch Chris had his usual of Tortilla francesca in a big baguette with salad and chips, and I had a 'Sandwich Mojacar' which turned out to be a triple layer of toast filled with ham, tuna, lettuce and tomato, and a fried egg, plus chips. All of that was fresh-cooked and cost a total of 10€ and we were well filled so it was a bargain.

As I said earlier, it was raining once we got home so I was busy in my craft room when I heard the doorbell. It was a surprise parcel, a large brown box that I soon found held my new mixer, which I wasn't expecting until next Monday - Wednesday. I have owned a Bamix, stick food mixer for many years and it was finally showing its age. The latest model is very similar to the original, except that it is red, not white like my old one, but the stand is much more compact and will take up less space on my table. It is an excellent mixer for many things, and very easy for me to use, but the best bit for me is the Slicy, an attachment that slices, chops and grates far more efficiently than anything else I have tried. It also handles small quantities which is usually what I want , and I find my larger food processor does not. It is a high end of the market appliance but if it works for me as well as the old one has done over the years, it will be money well spent.

And that is about it for me today so I will link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, before I ramble on any more.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 21

Well I wonder what has made you smile this week. For me, what better way to start my post than with a beautiful baby; my Grand-daughter Aisling sleeping peacefully on her daddy's hairy knees!

And this little monkey is really a baby still too. Tolly is now one year old. I have read that ragdolls are not fully grown until 18mths -two years, so he still has some growing to do. He is already bigger and much heavier than my other cats but he is very light on his feet and very flexible, as you can see in this picture of him enjoying an afternoon siesta.

It doesn't look very comfortable to me, but he didn't move for hours.

At the weekend Chris and I did a short shopping trip to a local house and garden shop and then a garden centre. We went to look for something to make our front wall a little bit higher and chose some green panels, really designed for edging flower beds, but they were the most suitable thing they had. So during the next couple of days, Chris fixed them to existing metal rods and wires that used to hold a band of plastic netting. He only had to cut one panel for the end piece, to accommodate the slightly higher stone post. It took more than we had estimated so he had to pop back and buy another pack of panels! 

But it now looks fine from both our garden side, and out on the road and it gives us more privacy when we use the pool and then shower. Before, a tall person could see over the wall, but now even they would have to stand on tip-toes and make a point of looking in.

It was finished on the hottest day we have had so far, so we both decided to jump in the pool. The water was on the chilly side to get into but it was fine once we got used to it. We each took a photo of the other and then I photo-shopped them together to make this one!

                                        

After shopping for the fencing we went on to the garden centre so that I could look for some geraniums to go in our three-pot stand on the front porch. I did find three lovely ones, all a bit different from each other, and we also chose a blue hydrangea, and a very pretty pink alstromeria. They sat in a box on our porch for a day but then I did get them potted up, and they are looking lovely.

Last week I shared a little yellow daisy that had beaten all odds and bloomed on an arid piece of paved path. Well, while I was gardening I found another little surprise. Its little face was looking up at me and I just had to smile. I guess it was again 'planted' by a bird, or just fell from the rubbish when we cleared away the winter pansies and violas. How sweet is that?

I hadn't really been paying much attention to this plant which is one of the more exotic ones in the garden, but I suddenly noticed it had three flowers opening. It is strelizia nicolai, a member of the bird of paradise flower family. Though not as beautiful perhaps as the more common orange and purple bird of paradise flower, it is non the less very striking. The flowers are large with a black/purple lower petal, white inside petals and a pretty pale blue tongue. They are distantly related to the banana tree and the leaves are very similar to that.

On Wednesday we had a lovely day. We visited some very good friends, Chris and Phil. We haven't been able to see them for nearly a year. They made us a lovely lunch and we were able to sit outside to eat it. I took over a lemon meringue pie made with lemons from our tree. After lunch Chris and Phil did their usual disappearing act off to the bar for a few beers, leaving Chris and I to chat to our hearts content, and generally put the world to right! We were so busy chatting that I forgot to taken even one photo. Sadly they are hoping to return to UK by the end of the year, as Chris has major health problems and need to see consultants that speak the same language as her!

I shall really miss them when they go.

Yesterday I went to Turre for some quick shopping. It was a strange day, hot and sunny but quite windy with a chilly bite in the wind. As usual I took what we refer to as 'the back road' to Turre. It is less heavy traffic-wise, and much more scenic than the main road. I noticed that the campo is covered with clouds of yellow, which have replaced the pink and purple flowers that are often seen at this time of year. The yellow is wild broom, and it flourishes in this rather dry soil. Most of this is the common variety with small, not very significant flowers, but there are so many of them that it just looks like a sea of yellow. Occasionally there is a shrub with the larger flowers often seen in gardens back in the UK. I used to have one myself. I stopped to take a few photos because they looked lovely waving gently in the breeze. I don't think the photos do them justice but here are a few.

There was a small plant centre near to where I parked the car in Turre, and I stopped to buy this pretty hanging basket of petunias. Their colours really shone out from a display of mainly pink and purple ones. I have removed the plastic hangers because I find it is mostly too windy for hanging baskets around us. But I like petunias. As long as you dead-head them regularly they will flower for a long time, and these ones were unusual and eye-catching.

And before we leave the garden I was surprised to see a little yellow daisy flower on top of my 'pin-cushion' cactus. This has the fiercest spines on it and I can't touch it even to remove dead leaves that blow onto it. It flowered for the first time last year, but I am sure it was much later than this. It is on a little strip of land between our front yard and the garage forecourt, and we planted the silk tree at the end of it, so it has been watered regularly all year. Maybe that is why it has started flowering.  They are only quite small flowers, which was a bit disappointing as some cacti have very impressive blooms, and they close up as soon as the sun moves off them. But it does look as though there may more to come this week.

I don't often post funnies but these seemed particularly pertinent. The first one because I have known people refer to me as the cat woman!

                                   

And by now you all know I love all the creepy crawlies in the garden, and I think my favourite is the preying mantis. So I am sure at some time I have mentioned that they are very useful in the garden for eating unwanted pests, but they are also cannibalistic, and after mating the female will bite off the head of her mate, and often eat him. Which explains why these two really made me chuckle!

And now I think it is time to link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.  You are welcome to join us and share what has made you feel happy and grateful this week.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 20

Many of you will have seen my post last Friday on Facebook so will know that we did indeed both get our second vaccinations and neither of us had any adverse effects so that is something to be very grateful for.  The system was quite good but we did have a long queue to wait in. It was getting a bit warm and I wished I'd thought to bring a bottle of water with me! I think they were a bit late getting started or else they had given out quite a few appointments before the actual start time, but once we got going we soon moved along. There were six lanes of cars feeding into two treatment posts but the stewards kept things going and made sure each lane had their turn.

The venue had changed from last time and it was much better, as first time around there were long traffic jams which must have made life very difficult for anyone living on those roads, and having to deal with it every day. This time we arrived at the expected park gates and signs clearly pointed us along another road and round into what turned out to be an extension of the same park in the rambla (dry river bed). We had no idea it even existed. It was huge, and well laid out with a big lake that had a water spout in it, playing fields, children's play equipment, seating shaded by trees and much more. When vaccinations have finished I shall try to get back there to have a proper look around. After our vaccination we were told to drive on a little way and wait for 10 minutes before leaving. We were up on the edge of the rambla so we could look down onto the park and I took these photos.

We could also look across the rambla at Vera town and pick out a few places. In the far distance, on the little mound to the left in this picture, we could just make out that it was the hill with the "Sacred Heart of Christ" statue on it. I have walked up to this a few times but it is quite a climb. 

Because I know my phone camera has an excellent zoom feature I tried to take a photo of the statue. However it has to be held very steady when using the zoom, and even when I tried resting it on Chris' shoulder, I still only managed a very blurred photo. I could see it much more clearly than this, so I was frustrated that I couldn't hold the camera. So when I got home I browsed Amazon and have bought a small selfie stick/tripod with a remote trigger, and it arrived today. So hopefully I will be more successful next time; (providing I remember to take it with me of course!).

The weekend passed quickly as usual and this week started off beautifully sunny and warm but very, very windy. Each time we closed a door another one was sucked open, and in the end we had to shut most of the doors and windows. The animals didn't like it, and they all stayed indoors most of the day. Kim knows how to make himself comfortable anyway!

On Tuesday I needed to go to the market so I got ready nice and early so it wasn't too busy. I was pleased to find the first of the fresh apricots were there. They are my absolute favourite of the soft fruit as long as they are ripe enough, so I bought some of them, as well as a kilo of little mandarins. I was surprised to see these as their season usually ends in January or February. But they have obviously bred a later version. The man who served me, in the usual market patter, told me they were beautiful, and the smaller they are the sweeter they taste, and I must say they have a lot of flavour and we are enjoying them.

I love to see all the little birds that visit us for the summer, and right now there are scores of house martins arriving. They return to their old nests and the nests are protected, so you are not allowed to remove them. There is a tall house in our street that has a row of nests under its eaves and I sometimes stand there just watching the birds fly in and out with food for their babies, who you can hear chirping. They never stop. I don't know when they eat for themselves, but it is a constant series of swooping in, and flying off again. It was difficult to get photos because the adults move too fast, and the nests are in the shade, but of course I had a go anyway. Later in the year we will see all the babies lining up on the telegraph wires, practising flying before they all take off for another year. We also have some swallows in the village now and we have seen some of them on the wires across our garden, but I don't know where they nest.

I was in the garden this week and I noticed the flowers on the chumba cactus next door are all opening. They tumble down the side of the green zone so I cannot see them very well, but they are beautiful. They range from creamy yellow to dark red and each one only last for a day, but there are plenty more the next day. The bees love them.

This little one made me smile. The side of our house, outside the kitchen door is really only a path of fairly rough crazy paving, with two small areas cut out for our lemon tree and the bougainvillea. Even on the warmest summer days it can be quite chilly first thing in the morning, and it is also a bit of a wind tunnel, but there in the concrete was this little flower. Its stem and leaves were brown and dry but it still produced a flower to smile at me that morning. As I have said before; isn't nature wonderful!

And finally here are some of the lovely flowers in our garden this week. The roses are beautiful and at their best, and the Bird of Paradise tree is starting to flower. The kalenchoe (bright pink) has been thrown away once because I thought it was dead, but it proved me wrong!

And finally I saw this image this week and it really made me chuckle. It is the front of a tee-shirt, hence the fold shadows. It is the look of innocence on the cats face that caught my eye. "What me?"

So I will now link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles. I hope you all have plenty to smile about too.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 19

Well here we go again. It has been a pleasant week on the whole with plenty of grateful moments. I am writing this on Thursday afternoon as tomorrow could be a busy day.

In the morning we are both going for our second vaccinations. They are two hours apart, which is a bit better than the first ones which were two days apart, but if the queues are anything like last time, we will be lucky to be home again by mid-afternoon! But we are not really complaining. It will be a good thing to have had them.

The week started off a bit shaky with windy days, clouds and some more rain, but it has got steadily better and today it is 'wall-to-wall' sunshine, and temperatures are in the upper twenties, even touching thirty some early afternoons. 

We have got a lot more clearing up done in the garden, (well mostly Chris has), and there is a big pile of broken chairs, old lounger cushions, rusty fencing wire and cracked pots to all go out by the bin tonight. We are fortunate to have two nights every month when we can put any large items out next to the bin, and the next morning the council workers come round with a grabber-lorry to collect them. Quite a bit disappears before they get there, but that's fine. If someone else can use what we have finished with, they are welcome to it.

This week I finished my craft project and needed to send it on its way to UK so I parcelled it up carefully and downloaded a customs form and we decided it was better to send it from the main post office in Mojacar rather than our little village one, so yesterday we drove down there.

Because it was such a lovely morning, and parking at the P.O. is at a premium, we parked on the sea front and walked up to office. On the way back we stopped to take a few photos. The sea was very lively, with waves breaking a long way out with a line of foam, and then rolling in and breaking again. It is so hard to catch this on camera, but here are a couple of shots.

The sea was very noisy. I tried to take a short video but I am useless at videos and ended up with nothing worth sharing.

There have been more signs of life in the garden. I was very pleased to spot this a few days ago.

It doesn't look much yet but it is flower buds coming on my baby silk tree. It will be the first year it has flowered so maybe in a week or two I will have some flowers to show you.

In the green zone behind us there are some splashes of bright orange which I know are flowers on the wild pomegranate tree. It looks as though it is fighting with a wild grape vine this year, that the birds must have planted there.

Plants have a habit of just appearing here and a couple of years ago we noticed a new 'stick' just beyond our back railings. It has grown quite quickly but we didn't know what it was. This year it is a small tree.

It is now covered with tiny clusters of flower buds. From this we realised it is an olive tree, again planted by birds or the goats that occasionally visit here. There are several olive trees down in the green zone but they are not looked after by anyone, so the goats have a feast when they come here. 

When our first two dogs were puppies and we used to walk them on the campo over the road, they used to rush to scavenge under the olive trees and the vet said the oil was good for their skin, and the pips would just pass through them, so I suppose it is the same of the goats.

Last week I posted a picture of what I thought was a type of ladybird, with an extra long body. I also put the picture on Facebook in a group I belong to called Wildlife in S.Spain. It has lots of very knowledgeable members and one soon told me that it is in fact a leaf beetle. So I also posted this picture of another similar critter I found this week, though I wouldn't want to count the spots on him.

That one stumped most people but eventually one member told me it is also a type of leaf beetle found only in S.Spain, Portugal and Morocco. It goes by the fancy name of Lachnaia Variolosa. I love that group. They are all willing to share their knowledge and I have learned so much from them. I am pleased to say I have also been able to help a few folk out too.

I was sent a lovely video by my daughter-in-law today, of our latest grandchild. She is changing so fast. Her features are settling down and she no longer looks 'new-born'. I am so happy they are keeping me updated. It will be lovely when I can come and see her.

These two made me smile today. Being somewhat short in stature, I keep a small plastic stool handy in the kitchen, and Tango likes to curl up under it, with his chin resting on the bar. Today Tolly wanted him to come and play, so he sat close to him, and then started rolling around next to him, just inviting some interaction.

Tango wasn't having any of it so Tolly started patting at him through the side of the stall. When this got no reaction either he jumped in on top of him, and then there was trouble! Tolly just won't learn when the answer is 'No'!

Although there have been plenty of smiles, not everything this week has been plain sailing. They say troubles come in threes. Well our first one was on Tuesday afternoon when I heard water running in the bathroom. I thought Chris had chosen an odd time to have a shower but when I went to check I found water flowing under the door of the second bathroom. (It is not used as much as the main one except when we have visitors). On investigation I found it was hot water and it was rapidly flowing all over the bathroom floor, and down the corridor in both directions. I called Chris to come quick and he located the link to the joint below the hot tap at the sink. So he rushed outside to turn the water off, and I set to with mop and bucket. Four buckets later we could walk without paddling. Fortunately we know a local plumber so Chris went round to speak to him and later that afternoon he called round. We had to pop down to a builder's merchant at the bottom of the village for some spare parts, but he soon had it fixed and we could turn the water back on. So I was very grateful for the plumber's quick and efficient response.

This morning I made a fresh fruit salad for breakfast and when I put all the peelings into the waste disposal I found the air switch no longer works. This is not a major disaster but I love that machine and use it several times every day. So we called up the folk who installed it and they promised to come as soon as they were free. 

Then at lunch time, the tall pull-out cupboard in the kitchen came off its runners so I couldn't shut it. Again Chris came to rescue and we shored it up so it is safe, and I again rang the man who installed it (The same man as above) and let him know I had two problems for him to deal with. Neither are his fault, not the fault of the actual items, so I guess I have to take some of the blame. Though I do get annoyed when something is made for use in a kitchen but can't handle heavy use. I will have to try to rearrange the cupboards to even out the weight in each one, but I don't have a lot of options! Anyway I am sure Dave will pop in on his way home from work tonight or tomorrow.

And we have had our three troubles so hopefully nothing else will go wrong for a while.

I shall link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World tomorrow and then get this published.

P.S. Friday morning and all three of our 'troubles' are now sorted. Grateful sigh!!
Now we are off to face the vaccination queues.