Rocking Your World 2021: Week 39

The best word I can use to describe this week is "Wet"! I know that is nothing unusual for most of you, but for us it is very different.  The worst day was Tuesday when we were woken up in the early hours by the sound of thunder, and torrentail rain pouring from the spouts at each corner of our roof. That is the downside of having no gutters, but we need them so rarely and at least we don't need to go up ladders to clean them out all the time. If I know the rain is coming I try to move my pots so that the spouts don't hit them, but I misjudged that for one this time, so my Easter Lily was well and truly washed out. 

Fortunately it likes water, so I will put new compost around it soon and I am sure it will recover. Thunder and lightening don't bother Kim much, but Foxy hates any loud noises, and although they stay dry where they sleep on the porch, it wasn't very pleasant for them, so we got up early and let them in. Shortly after, two very 'soggy moggies' came wandering in. They have a cat flap in the back door so they could have got in at any time, but once it started they obviously thought it was better to stay put for a while. But as daylight dawned, they took the risk and ran through it to get home. I rubbed each of them with a towel and then they quickly found a spot each to have a thorough clean.

But that is not all doom and gloom. We really needed a good downpour. The reservoirs are low, and the plants are all looking very fed up with the hot, dry weather. Every year the Council work to improve the drainage system around the village, so most of the water soon ran away. The flat areas are baked hard and it took a little longer to soak in there. This is next door's garden again. So that will be covered in little green seedling again soon. But it will be good to see some green instead of brown everywhere.

Despite the rain it has stayed warm. The temperature has dropped several degrees but I am still in summer clothes and using the fan most days. But there is defintely a feel of Autumn in the air.

My grand-daughter sent another lovely photo of her two boys. Isaac has just had a birthday and is now ten, and Alfie is six and a half, and both are crazy about football. They were both awarded 'Man of the match' for their respective age groups at the weekend; hence the big smiles all round.

The rest of the week has been mostly grey clouds with a few lighter showers, and still periods of sunshine and blue skies in between, so we are very lucky really to be able to enjoy it.

On Tuesday I drove up to my friend's house and we spent the afternoon putting the world to rights. She is 80 now and has just had a knee replacement, but I am ashamed to say, she is probably more active than I am. She must be better motivated than me, because she actually looked quite frail. But it was nice to see her again and exchange our news. I didn't take any photos of us as she is quite a private person, but she does have a superb view of the Cabreras from her front gate so I took this photo.

Her village is higher up the mountain at the back of ours, and from the end of her road she can look out over the sea.

Then on Wednesday I had a video call from my friend in UK so we had a lovely chat too. I have also had a long catch up with my eldest son who is a vicar. It was good to hear that his church is getting 'back to normal'. He moved to London just before the pandemic started so he didn't really have the opportunity to get to know all his new parishioners, but he is making up for lost time now.

The evenings have not been so inviting to sit out on the porch and we have spent more time in the sitting room. On Wednesday night Tolly was restless and kept moving from one seat to another, but in the end he settled on the sofa and went fast asleep. But just look at the position he chose. How can that ever be comfortable? I only wish I was half as bendy as he is.

Yesterday I decided to do a bit of baking. I have been meaning to make a cake in the mini-oven just to try it out with something different, but we don't actually eat very much cake these days. So I just made half a Victoria sponge cake mix, and I have to say, it rose well and cooked evenly, which is more than it did in my main oven which always had a 'hot corner'. It is quite nice as it is but I will probably cut it in half, spread it with jam, and stack it as a semi-circle. That way we should manage to eat it all.

Then I decided to make drop scones for tea. I can't remember the last time I made those. (Some of you may know them as Scotch pancakes). They are so easy to make and cook in seconds on the gridle. The trick is to flip them before the bubbles burst so you really have to watch them and keep the spatular ready. Chris had his with lemon and sugar and I had a little butter and maple syrup and they were light and delicious. You only use a tablespoonful of mixture for each one so it does make quite a lot, but they can be warmed up for breakfast tomorrow, and I think I have frozen them before, but they are very soft so you have to be careful not to squash them.

And that looks like a good place to close, so I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World. Do come and join us if you have some happy moments to share.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 38

It has been another quiet week as once again I pulled a muscle in my back (The previous injury from a month ago was almost repaired!) so I have spent much of this week laying down flat, or sitting for far too long in my recliner chair or out on the porch. It is actually reasonably OK while I am sitting but trying to stand up is a different matter. However, it has been a nice quiet week, and Chris helps me when I need it.

I have another little nature picture to show you, though maybe not quite such a nice one as last week's hummingbird moth. This is an Egyptian grasshopper. They are quite common here and can grow to around 4-6 cms long. They can give you a scare if you disturb one and it flies off, but otherwise they are not agressive at all. 

Normally we only see them one at a time. This one did have a mate a few stems away, but he/she was silhouetted against the sky so the photo is not good. Occasionally they come as a small swarm and then they are known as locusts, and they can strip all the foliage off a plant very quickly. 

We do get the little grasshoppers here too, like the ones we used to see in UK, but these are much more impressive.

I am fascinated by the back garden next door. The house owner spends most of her time with her sons in Murcia but this visit she has stayed for much longer. The house is on the market, though I think she is asking too much for it to attract many viewers, but she obviously wants to keep an eye on it for a while. There is a large area of open land behind the house which is mostly planted with orange and some other fruit trees. A couple of men come in periodically to spray the trees, redig the irriogation ditches around each one, etc. But as soon as the rain comes, little seedlings appear all over the ground around them. Then the men come in and rotavate them and it is back to bare mud again. As soon as Angela (the owner) came this time, she called the men in and the ground was cleared. Then we had a few showers, and sure enough, it is again covered in grass and weeds. What amuses me is that every time it is cleared, something different pops up. One year it was a mass of acid yellow oxalis. Last year it was tall, strong grass with sticky flowers thet get glued into the cats fur and are an aweful nuisance. This week we have had a few showers and yesterday morning, while waiting for the dogs to finish their breakfast, I noticed that much of the ground is covered with rather pretty grey hairy, fern-like leaves, and tiny yellow flowers were dotted among them. They were so small they would almost go unnoticed, but I took a few `photos through the wire fence. They seem to flourish on any fairly arid land and just spread over any rocks and dead grass that lay in its path. I put a photo into an App I have, and it identified the plant as Tribulus Terrestris, a grand name for a little flower, but of course it has other common names including, Devil's eyelashes, Cat's head, Caltrop, Bindii, Tackweed, and as it is known in this region, Puncture Vine.

This name comes from the fact that after the flower, it forms seedheads that carry deadly thorns, strong enough to puncture a cycle tyre or  the rubber sole of a shoe. The seed heads fall apart into five pieces and their shape gives it its other common name Goat's head. Apparently it is very invasive and is considered to be a nuisance by gardeners. (Seed head photo from Google). So I had a little nature lesson yesterday and I hope you don't mind me sharing it with you.

We had a rather sad Good-bye in the village this week, as the lovely priest from the little catholic church here in Los Gallardos, has been promoted by the Bishop, and has now gone to a much larger parish along the coast. Everyone loved him, even those who never entered the church. As well as our village, he also served Mojacar, Alfaix and Bedar, so there are a lot of communities who will miss him. When we first met Don Miguel, he only spoke a very little English, but he worked hard to improve on it, and he always spoke to us if we saw him around, and made us feel welcome when we went up to one of the special masses at the church. There was a mass to say good-bye to him on Sunday. I haven't met the new man yet, but I am sure we will get to know him soon.

I have had some nice video calls this week, firstly with our son Tom who lives in Denmark. We don't link up as often as we should, so it was good to have a proper catch-up. I also spent one afternoon chatting to my sister. We both have husbands who like to watch sport on TV, so we pick a time when they are both occupied, and have a good old natter. And lastly I spent a good couple of hours talking to my lovely friend Chris who recently returned to UK. She has been in hospital for a very serious operation, which was the main reason for her returning home, but she is making a good recovery, and if all has gone to plan, she is now back at the home of her husband's sister, for what could be a long recuperation. It was lovely to have a really good chat with her and it did us both good.

And now I actually have a few sky photos for you. I noticed on Wednesday that there were lots of little clouds late afternoon, so I was hoping for a good sunset. 

But gradually they joined forces to make one black cloud which failed to pick up the rays of the sinking sun.

When I kooked behind me, I found the wind blowing down from the Cabreras had whipped the clouds into different shpes and these picked up a little colour. They made me think of a school of dolphins diving through the waves.

Very quickly it became dark, and just the last rays of the sun shone up from the hills, and then it was gone. Maybe next time...

But that is all there is for this time, so I will link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 37

I don't have a lot to write about this week, not because it hasn't been a good week, it has just been an 'ordinary week', with its ordinary ups and downs, but one thing I am really happy about is that I can now show you my Sophie's Dream afghan (designer Dedri Ulys). I completed the border on Wednesday night, doing just a little bit each night. It is all a cotton-acrylic mix, and is surprisingly heavy, and I was just too hot with it on my lap for long at a time. But I got there in the end. Because I spent the time blocking each square as it was done, it all went together really well and the finished blanket lays flat and square (well rectangular really). I love the way the colours changed with each yarn cake, and as predicted they all went together perfectly at the end.

I am not sure what I will be working on next just yet. I have a green cardigan that I started at the same time as Sophie's Dream and now might be a good time to pick it up again, and I have a few fun items I may have a go at. For now, I am happy spending my evenings reading and doing online jigsaw puzzles, so I am in no hurry to pick up a hook again, but I am sure I will soon be working on something.

It has been a week of good and bad news. Several of my friends here, and in UK, have developed worrying health issues. One has lost his mother this week. But another who received rather devastating news after an operation, has now been given some much more encouraging news. She is back in UK now and the health service seems to be under a lot of pressure, so we don't know how long she will have to wait for more treatment, but at least now she has hope, and something to look forward to. So this week I managed to sit in my hot craft room for long enough to make her a card. All four of my September birthday cards will be opened during this week, so maybe I will get round to writing a blog about them soon.

I have been really spoilt too because on Monday we needed a little shopping and we stopped by a Ferrateria so Chris could replace his office fan which had packed up on him a good month before he could manage without it. I wandered around browsing the kitchen equipment while he chose the one he wanted, and then he found me looking at air-fryers and bought one for me. I had one a good few years ago but found it too big  and difficult to clean and it seemed quite limited in what it could do. They are much improved now. This one is smaller but taller, so fits up next to the new mini oven. It is a dream to clean and so far I have liked what I have cooked in it. Although it can do many of the things that the mini oven does, they each have their own unique uses, and both are quick, save on energy, and save me putting on the main oven, so it is win win all round.

Yesterday I did a bit of 'batch baking' sort of. Because I am a bit of a messy cooker, I like to do all my baking in one go, making several meals at a time, and then clean it all up, hence my term batch/baking.

At the market on Tuesday I was pleased to see some Autumn vegetables creeping back in. Carrots are mostly available all year, but other vegetables are often scarce, and look a bit limp and sad in the hottest weather. But this week I bought clabaza, celery and leeks, and I decided to make a beef casserole. We quite enjoy eating a hot dinner some days in the summer. It is the long time cooking them that makes the whole kitchen like an oven, that puts us off. But today the kitchen was relatively comfortable for the preparation so I cut up lots of veggies to go with the beef and filled my Instant Pot. For anyone who doesn't know what this is, it is basically an electric pressure cooker, though there is no steam pouring from it and no continuous hissing, and an integral timer that switches it to 'keep warm' when the cooking is done. And it also has a slow cook facility, cooks rice perfectly every time, sautés meat, and makes yoghurt. I mainly use it as a pressure cooker so my cassrole was done in about an hour. And as the Instant pot (plus my Ramoska, Mini oven and Air fryer) lives in the utility I was hardly aware of it cooking at all. I have had it for a couple of years and have never burnt anything in it, and it has a large stainless steel pot that is super easy to clean. The dinner was delicious and I have boxed up two more meals to go in the freezer, so that's two more days when I won't need to cook!

I started the morning gently poaching some plums I also bought at the market. Occasionally these are ripe enough to eat and I love them, but  usually they are better poached and I make them into crumble.

So again I used a large bowl and made a big crumble mix. There was enough to cover the plums and put two more bags of crumble mix in the freezer. This is super useful when I have fruit to use up and no time to make the crumble. It freezes very well. The plum crumble was yummy. It's one of my favourites. It looks a bit dark because for Autumn fruits I use half white and half dark brown sugar.

Then I weighed out half a kilo of dried fruit and some sugar and left it to steep in a mug of cold, strong tea over night. This morning I made it into an Irish tea loaf, (or Barra Brith, Barm Brack etc depending which part of the UK you are from), which was my dad's favourite. With that amount of fruit it does, of course, make a large loaf, so as soon as it is cold, half of it will be tightly wrapped and stowed in the freezer for another time. And lastly I weighted out half a kilo of flour to make my large batch of scones. The egg and milk would be stirred in later so we could have fresh baked scones for tea. These are much better the day they are made. When mum was still living with us, and I had my herd of hungry boys to feed, we had no trouble finishing the whole batch for tea, but now there are only two of us, it again makes sense to do them up in bags of four and freeze them. I won't need to bake again for a while will I?

They all passed quality control, so half have been eaten or stored for this week, and half are in the freezer. I ended up cooking the loaf yesterday evening. It cooks on a low heat for almost two hours, but half way through I moved it to the main oven because I thought It was cooking too fast in the mini one. Next time I will adjust the settings better, but last night I wanted to leave to just cook while I was in the other room so I took the safer option and moved it.

I had a nice encounter with 'nature' on Wednesday when I spotted one of these. (photo from Google).

It is a hummingbird moth, and there was no way I was going to get a photo of it using my phone. It needed a special high speed camera to take that.They move so fast with their wings constantly flapping and flit from flower to flower just as an actual humming bird does. But I had no doubt about what it was and I stood watching it, fascinated by its movement, for ages, but it never settled anywhere. It was the first time I have seen one although I knew they were native to these parts, so I was happy that I spotted it.

On Wednesday we put in a big order to Amazon.es. Half of it was for cat food. I am trying out some different makes on them. They are quite fussy eaters so I thought a change might be good for them. But I also bought some headphones - really as a birthday present for hubby next month, but when they came we just had to try them out. They are called bone-conduction headphones and they are so small and light. The sound is excellent and they are so much more comfortable than either little 'in-ear' pods, or big 'over-ear' ones. We are reeally impressed. I may have to invest in some for myself soon too.

Here they are but I should have added something for size comparison. There are no wires as they are of course bluetooth, they only weigh 25 g, and the receiver sits on your face, on the bone in front of your ear, not on or in it, which is why they are so comfortable.

I also bought a couple of cooking pans. Having tried the local shops I was unable to find a smaller flan tin. We really enjoyed the sponge base flan the other week, but I don't want want to make one that size again unless I have visitors. But I managed to find a smaller pan on Amazon so I ordered that and also a set of six (two of each colour) smaller ones to make individual flans.

Because Chris has Amazon Prime, he does the ordering, and the headphones, flan tins and half the cat food came the next day. The last items will be here on Saturday. It really is a good service, and one we rely on more and more as import duties are making buying anything from outside of Spain, so expensive.

While out watering the pots at the front last night, I noticed the clouds were tinged with pink so I thought there was probably a pretty sunset out at the back, but by the time I got there I was too late. It had faded away. But a short while later I did catch this moment which I labelled "Venus peeping from behind a cloud to smile on the waning moon". Some you lose, some you win!

For a quiet week, I seem to have found plenty to ramble on about, so I had better stop here and link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 36

So now we are in September. How did we get so far so soon?! It is a strange thing that here in Spain, at the start of September, we instantly feel a change in the air, and know that Autumn is on the way. True to form, we have had cooler days this week, (not cool enough to manage without the fans yet though), and have even had some rain. I am glad to say that we haven't had any storms like poor Lisca had, but some parts of northern Spain have had severe flooding. I read at lunch time yesterday, that the rambla at Aguilas had burst and the town was cut off from both ends, and that is only about a 40 minute drive along the coast. So we are very grateful that we just had enough to lay the dust and give the plants a little drink. It is a good start to the Autumn.

As promised last week, I did go to Lidls to buy a whole chicken and I cooked it on the rotisserie bar in my new mini-oven.  Here, they rarely truss a chicken which I found strange when I first moved out but I am used to it now. So I had to tie it up myself before putting it on the skewer. I didn't do a very neat job but it held up for the cooking time.

I had no idea how long it would take so I kept testing it with my meat thermometer until I was sure it was cooked through. It looked good and tasted good, and has fed us well for several days. (Roasted, cold with salad, in a casserole, and then a stir fry). Back many years ago, just after my divorce, when I was bringing up two boys on benefits, I learned to get every drop of goodness out of a chicken, and I still tend to do that now. I have an Instant pot, like Lisca often mentions, and cooking up a chicken carcass with water, onion and a carrot, makes lovely stock to start a casserole, soup or gravy.

Anyway, Sunday's chicken was a success that will no doubt be repeated fairly regularly. And I am pleased to say that once the chicken was done, I used the little oven to roast potatoes and did not need to heat up the main oven at all.

I also went mad and made a fresh fruit flan with a sponge base. I rarely make fancy desserts these days because I have to watch my sugar intake, and I am the one who likes the desserts! But it made a nice change. I need to look out for a smaller flan tin. We both like the egg sponge base, but my tin is really too big for two people. However, we didn't waste any!

On Sunday night we made our way over to our village theatre for a music night. It was sceduled to start at 9.30 but we should have known that would probably mean at least 10.00 Spanish time. So when we got there the seats were mostly empty, but the light was perfect for taking this photo.  Folk soon started to arrive and there must have been over 100 there when the first chords were heard. 

The concert was free, and all the artists were from the Almeria area, to raise the profile of local performers. It was titled 'Echa a Volar' which literally means 'Throw away to Fly' but I later learned that it translates as 'Fly Away.'

It was again taking place on the outside stage at the front of the theatre and we sat on socially distanced chairs on the plaza. So we were quite a distance from the stage but they had good, clear amplification and a gantry of lights that swept rows of lit circles back and forth across the stage, changing colours as they went. I would have found that very off-putting if I was singing, but they all managed.

There were three individual girl singers, all very good in their own style, and two men, as well as several muscians. I really enjoyed listening to this man playing what my son tell me is called a keytar. He was playing keys with his right hand and strings with his left which I thought was pretty clever and it made a lovely sound. 

He was a very talented musician, also playing the piano and keyboard and singing, and he accompanied all the other artists as well as having a spot for himself. Here he is playing guitar for the girl to sing. She was my favourite. She looked very young, but she had a powerful voice and obviously put a lot of energy into her singing.  It was a good night out.

One very exciting thing that happened this week was the arrival of my new computer. Chris ordered it, as well as a new laptop for himself, and a company in Valencia worked on it to add all the extras he knew I needed. We got a message to say it was coming on Monday so the first thing was to disconnect the old one. My console was a big black tower which was a dust trap and generated a lot of heat, and it ran Windows 7 which has been out of support for the past year.

So once that was removed, the next job was to clean the space under my desk as well as the desk top. It is surprising what a big space it looked when it was done.

The new console is a small silver box, about eight inches square, and the black box standing up beside it is four Terabytes of memory to accommodate all my didgitl stamps, scrapbook kits and pictures!

It turned out that my current monitor did not have the correct connections so I have been given Chris' lovely monitor. It is bigger and clearer and I have wanted something similar for a while. He has now got a new one himself but I still love this one. I am so grateful to have a techie husband who understands the working of a computer. He did a lot of online searching and has now managed to take all of my files from the old computer and put them onto the new one. He has also reinstalled my Corel Paint shop pro, and also the software to use the Silhouette cutting machine. The two things that couldn't be transferred were Adobe Photoshop and Word/Publisher, and I have taken out a subscription for both of those, as they are what I use the most. Now everything is set up and I am surprised to find that Windows 10 runs very much the same as 7 did, so there is not too much new to learn. Just a few changes in how I navigate the folders. We have sorted out some of the muddle of cables that I had under my desk but there is still some work to be done there. So now I am hoping when I publish this, that there will be fewer Blogger issues, and my comments will publish as they should.

With all these new machines arriving, we were swamped by cardboard, as well as all our usual recycling - I have a trio bin with bags for cardboard and paper, plastics, cans and waxed boxes, and glass. When they are full we drive to the edge of the village where there are recycling bins for each of these. So we really loaded up the car yesterday morning. The first two cardboard bins we went to were over full already, but we actually found an empty one in the end. We also went to the oil bin where we can recycle bottles of used cooking oil, so all in all it was a good excursion.

On the way home I got Chris to stop at the baker's that I mentioned in my 'Noche Blanca' post a couple of weeks ago. So we came home with two hot, soft but crusty  bread sticks, so it was obviously time to get the kettle on and have some elevenses. Who could resist the smell of fresh baked bread.

Now I will link up with Rocking Your World, and Annie's Friday Smiles, and with a bit oif luck I will be able to visit everyone and comment properly this week.