Rocking Your World 2021: Week 27

My how the weeks fly by! We don't do more than we have to now it is getting hot, hot, hot, but on Monday Chris did give the porch a good clean with the power washer. Because we do not have gutters, when it rains hard, any debris on the roof, moss, leaves etc, gets washed down and here they collect on the fly screen net. The only way to get rid of the mess is to chase them down with the power washer. It is a messy job and the first thing is to move all the furniture outside, and relocate the dogs! You can't do it without getting soaked so Chris just wears swimming trunks then he can jump in the pool when he needs to cool off. Everything gets cleaned including the actual nets, the window blinds and the water feature. (Paco the cat too if he gets any closer!). 

My job is to clear the wall of all our hanging ceramics etc. We have a collection of plates, plus two owl wind chimes, painted tiles and a clock. I took them all round to the back sink and washed them all, put a new battery in the clock, restrung one of the wind chimes and hung or propped them around the window above the sink and drainer, and hung the last few from the washing line.

When everywhere was clean, and all the furniture back in place, (and the dogs!), I rehung them all and it looks lovely again for a while.

One evening I had the normal hose out to water all the pots in the front of the house. I do this around tea time, when the sun has moved to the back of the house, as the leaves can burn if they are watered in the heat of the day. It is the time when all the bugs seem to come out to play, and they all really like me, (I am told it is because I am blood group O), so I have to spray all over with insect repellent before I step out there.

As well as watering around the roots of everything I sometimes put a light spray on all the leaves to wash some of the dust off, and when I sprayed the silk tree, little drops of water clung to each tiny leaf and sparkled liked jewels. It was so pretty, but I couldn't really catch the effect on camera.

I spotted this little fellow on the ground. I think I must have washed him out of a flower. It is a tiny crab spider. They are small but clever. They don't make a web but they hide on a flower and camouflage themselves to match it, and hide there to catch their prey when flies and bees come to collect nectar. I have seen a bright green one and a yellow one.

One place we haven't needed to water is out the back where the lemon tree is. I am happy to say the leaks are all mended, and the man came back this week and did a good job of relaying the crazy paving he had to dig up. But we did wonder whether all the extra water that has been leaking into the ground is the reason why we have so many lemons on the tree this year. They are hanging like bunches of giant grapes. The branches are not strong enough to hold them all so we will have to put in some supports or remove the smaller fruit soon.

A couple of weeks ago I showed the lovely purple trumpet flowers that grow wild over the railings at the top of the village. Well this week I have a picture of their baby cousins. This tiny white trumpet flower is I think a relative of bindweed, and if left in peace it is a rapid ground cover. A few weeks ago the workmen came into next door's garden and rotavated it all, and now it is covered in these little white flowers, just like the lawn daisies we have in UK. Aren't they cute. No doubt they will also get rotavated in again soon, but they'll be back.

And finally I can now share the project that kept me busy for several weeks earlier this year. My eldest son hit his half century on Saturday. It doesn't seem possible that my first little,baby is now fifty. He is a vicar, which means he has a lot of calls on his time and family life and personal time is very precious, so he keeps his private life as separate as he can, and does not usually allow photos on social media. But he has agreed for me to use this one which was taken by one of his brothers at a "Perry Tribe" gathering in his honour on Saturday night.

My project was to make this Memory book for him.

I used a variety of die cuts, machine cuts, scanner, printer, photo shop and much more, to collect together items from his birth right up to now. 

To enable me to get as many as possible onto the pages, there were lift flaps, 

pockets between pages for tags, 

waterfall pages, 

pull-out concertina pages, 

and this one which I was very pleased with. It was quite complicated to put together using youtube videos to help me, but it opened and closed well, and enabled me to put seventeen photos on one layout!

Where it was practical to do so, I have smudged out faces and names, but some I have left in. He was really pleased with it and he called me for a long video chat to discuss some of the 'memories', before the family arrived and it all got a bit silly. They did video call me again later, once everyone had arrived,  but it was noisy and dark so we couldn't do a lot more than shout hello to each other.

And that is about it for this week, so I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and wait to see what next week has in store for us.

N.B. Blogger is being very unfriendly just  lately. Last week I did visit everyone and leave a comment on each one. Some published just fine but with others I got and Error message  that say an error has occurred. Try again later! My comment had disappeared so I had to write it again.

The same thing has happened again this week. I have commented on two blogs successfully and now it is giving the error message again. I am too hot to fight it right now, but I will try again later or tomorrow. Sorry if you are not getting my comments.