Friay Smiles# Week 26

I am writing this on Thursday evening as it has been too hot all day to do anything! I am still melting here but the fan is on at full speed so I expect I'll survive.

It was nice to see our Town Hall bedecked in a rainbow flag for Día Internacíonal.

The warmth and recent rain has brought a lot of wild flowers out and when I went outside the kitchen this week, out neighbour's yard look like a field of grass and daisies.

As you can see here, the white was not daisies, but these little white trumpets. They must be related to our common bindweed, but these are a ground cover 'weed' that grows prolifically around here. I think it looks so pretty.

A close relative to this is the slightly larger pink one. We have some just over the back railings and you see patches of it on all the road-sides, campo area and anywhere it can force its way through. Again I think it is very attractive. (They are actually a lot paler pink than this, but these were in the shade when I took the picture).

Growing in amongst the white ones is areas of this plant.

It is Echium Plantaginium. It is mainly this pretty purple-blue colour but some plants have pink and deep red flowers on them too. It has several medicinal purposes but is seen as a bit of a nuisance as well as it can be very invasive. It is not fussy what type of soil it grows in though it does like full sun. I tend to leave it alone as the hairy stems and leaves can irritate the skin and my skin doesn't need much to irritate it! But you don't get that many true blue flowers, and I like to see it growing everywhere it can find a bit of soil.

While I was sitting in a shady patch of the porch the other afternoon I heard the sound of heavy bells and I knew it meant there was a herd of goats nearby. Soon they appeared in the green zone behind our house, foraging for anything to eat. There used to be a lot of goats around, each herd with its own, usually elderly, goat herd and his dog, and he led his animals from one area of campo to another for hours on end. But I haven't seen any out and about probably since covid, so it was nice to see them back. The animals are very well cared for. They are so agile, often climbing half-way up a tree to strip the leaves at the top, and they are very obedient, reacting to the slightest command from the herdsman.

Their bells remind me of the cow bells on the mountain sides when I visited Switzerland many years ago. The back of our house is more shielded by growing almond and olive trees than it used to be, so I could only glimpse the animals through small gaps. 

It was a large herd; fifty or more animals, but it may have been two combined as there were two goatherds chatting together and one had a lovely sandy coloured dog. They came into the clearing behind us, and I managed to exchange a few words with them which I was pleased about. My Spanish must be improving a bit! They were upset by the amount of dead vegetation etc and said it was a danger for wild-fires, which I have to agree with, especially as there are a good few bottles laying around, left by the groups of yongsters who gather there during the summer. But we don't know who owns the land, only that it is a designated green zone so can't be built on, so there is not much we can do about it.

The pink bouganvillea that we planted just outside the back railings on the corner of the house, is looking splendid right now. I think it gets better every year. It is beginning to encroach on our bedroom window so we will prune it back once this lot of flowers have died down. 

Now, while it is at its best, it is lovely to see the true flowers opening. They are the tiny white flowers that form in the centre of each colourful bract, like little stars.  Pretty aren't they?

Tea-time is a bad time for me to go outside as it is when the biting bugs come out, so I have been dipping in the pool for a cool down around 5.00 and then sitting in the porch watching the swifts and house martins ducking and diving around us catching there fill of insects.

I did go out once it was properly dark and I took this photo of the half moon. 

I was also pleased to see our little row of solar lights are still functioning and making their patterns on the end walls. They have sat there untouched all winter. One is not working so well but the rest are looking good.

I was sitting here at my computer having a long video chat with Ben when when I spotted this cloud outside. It was big pile of fluffy white cloud, and one section of it was reflecting the setting sun. I had to make Ben wait while I took a quick photo. It is not perfect because I have netting covering my windows, but I got enough to catch the beauty of it.

Now I am going to prepare this to publish and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning. Tomorrow will not be such a smiley day as we say Good-bye to our lovely Kim at lunch time. But we won't allow ourselves to be too sad as we know he is struggling every day.

And so as not to end on a down note I will add a little meme I spoted this week. It is my cats down to a T and made me smile, so I hope it makes you smile too.

Friday Smiles 2023 #Week 25

Week 25; almost half way through the year! In fact next Monday is our eldest son's 52nd birthday, and a long time ago I worked out that his birthday is the exact middle day between the two Christmas Days!

This will be short and sweet as I really have nothing to write about. It has been a difficult week for Kim who is feeling every bit of his ten years now. His hips have collapsed and last Saturday it took us ages to get him on his feet. (You can see in the photo that all the muscles in his rear end have wasted away). We have put our winter rug back down to give him something to grip on as he slips on all our tiled floors. Once up on his feet he can walk around fine, but he cannot sit, only lay down, so his life is not very exciting. He spends most of his day laying in the fly free area or in the sitting room, with meal times still being the highlight of his days. 

Chris spent some time making a shallow ramp for him as he sometimes refuses to come up the two little steps in the porch. He can do it, but tends to stand at the bottom and just bark until we entice him up with treats. I bought an extra long rubber backed mat to go on the ramp so it wasn't slippery for him, but we have yet to see him use it voluntarily. I have brought him up on a lead a few times, but we need him to feel comfortable doing it on his own.

Anyway, I was also becoming concerned that he has a skin condition which is worsening so this morning we took him to the vet. She felt he had lost a lot of weight since she saw him last and has taken some blood for testing as she thinks there may be a more serious problem. So we are getting our heads around the fact that we will probably not have him for much longer. His quality of life is not good now and I don't want to reach the point where we are keeping him alive more for our sake than for his. But tomorrow we will go back for the results of the blood tests and we'll take it from there.

That aside it has been a pleasant week. I have achieved a lot in my craft room and will soon have finished all the things I wanted to do before my summer break. I haven't done much more of my crochet as it stays warm all evening now (and all night!) so I just don't want to handle it much.

I have had long video chats with three of our boys this week which is always good.

And I will close with another lovely photo of my youngest great-grandson, that his mum sent me this week. It was taken on his '11 month' anniversary. Isn't he gorgeous? I am so looking forward to meeting him in August.

So now it is over to Annie's blog to link up for tomorrow.

Friday Smiles 2023: Week 24

I am writing on Thursday again as I have a hospital appointment tomorrow morning. Thursdays do come around fast and looking back there is nothing of great significance to report this week, but no disasters either so I guess that is worth a smile on its own. It has, in fact been a very pleasant week. Despite a few thunder grumblings, and some very short showers, it does feel as though summer has finally arrived. Some afternoons the thermometer has been showing as high as 35º, but there is just enough breeze to keep it comfortable, and as I am trying to finish several papercraft projects before I go to UK in August, I am spending most afternoons down here with my fan in use from the far corner. If I have it too close, it blows my bits of paper around, but over in the corner it is just right for now.

Yesterday I was aware of the wind getting up by tea-time and when I went outside I found it had broken up the clouds into little powder puffs. So pretty against the blue don't you think?

Each week at church, people donate items of food for our  gifts to needy folk in Zurgena. I am hopeless at remembering to take food with me, but I do donate any money I make from selling jams and pickles at my sewing group, and they use this with any other donations, to buy tinned meat and fish to help balance each bag. There was sufficient on the shelves to make up some bags this week, so Keith and Peter, with the help of Hazel, a member of our church, spread everything out on tables and divided it into useful selections for a family. 

Then Keith and Peter shopped for the items needed to make balanced meals and on Tuesday they took 20 bags of food and four more of toiletries etc, up to Zurgena Town Hall. It was our first delivery since the administration changed there following the recent local elections, but they were still gratefully received and I am sure they were soon distributed to those in need.

Immediately opposite our house is the big white house with the cacti mural, which is used as an Abnb, and next to that is another large house which has stood empty ever since we moved here nearly fifteen years ago. I think it is an attractive building with lovely arches around large upstairs and downstairs patios. Many of the big, older houses in the village are owned by a family, and if not everyone is in agreement as to how they should be used, unfortunately they just stand empty, which can't do them any good in the long run. Anyway, there has been some activity over there in the last few weeks, with sounds of hammering and workmen seen going in and out. This week the painters have been there and yesterday they tackled the outside of the house. What a difference it has made. The houses with no 'overhang' of their roof, were badly stained when we had that dreadful orange rain early last year, and this house was still striped with black. (You can see one small area of the highest tower at the back, that still needed to be painted when I took this photo). It is nearly finished now, so we are hoping we may get some nice neighbours soon.

As I mentioned earlier, I have spent most afternoons down here making things with paper, but my evenings are still spent down with Chris, either in front of the TV, or sitting out on the porch, and as I am not very good at 'just sitting', I have been working on another crochet project. It is a wrap around shawl for the winter, and it is made by a method called entrelac, and this one is in Tunisian crochet. This means it is worked across in little squares of one colour, that are interlaced. Then you start at the beginning with the same or different colour and work across again. Tunisian crochet means you pick up stitches across the row, (in this case just across one square, and then work them off again). I have done entrelac before but not in Tunisian crochet, and the other difference is that the squares are not all the same size, which has an interesting effect, and needs a bit more concentration following the pattern. I will just show you a small section for now, and the whole effect when  it is finished.

The theme of the piece is landscapes and I wanted something in blue and green, so I have incorporated the colour of the sky and sea, the greens of the countryside, sands of the beach, and a little lilac and violet to represent the wild flowers I love. The idea was that this project would use up some of my vast stash of wool, so I didn't have to buy any to make it. This is my colours I chose.

In other news, Leo has finally mastered the cat flap in the kitchen door,so he is now able to get in and out whenever he wants to. He learned to use the big dog flap a while ago but he needs the back door to be open to get to that. The kitchen one is always available for all the cats and he is enjoying running out with them.

And now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, ready to publish in the morning. 

Friday Smiles 2023: Week 23

I am sitting at my computer on a rather grey, damp Thursday, and Tolly is my companion for today. He doesn't like it when  everywhere is too wet to lay down outside, (it did rain quite a bit in the night), so as soon as he saw me come down to my craft room he crept in beside me and made himself comfortable on my desk. (Excuse the mess. When I am having a run of craft projects, I tend to leave the clearing up until I am all done).

Yesterday evening was warm despite the rain, so we didn't close the window or shutters, and I noticed a flashing blue light reflecting on the white shutter. Of course I got up to investigate and there was a lot of activity around the big house across the road from us. The lady who lives there is very private, and her house has high solid walls and gates, so we rarely see her, though she does say 'Good-morning' if we see her leaving to go shopping etc. The blue lights were on a big fire engine, and there were a lot of firemen standing around, talking and going in and out of the house, but there was no sense of urgency about them, so if there was a fire, we presumed it had been put out. But as there were no hoses in evidence we wondered whether they had been needed to move something heavy instead. There was  a small crowd of local folk at the gate, and then the Guadia Civil arrived and they also went into the house and then stood around chatting with the people at the gate.

After a while an ambulance arrived and eventually they wheeled out a stretcher with an elderly lady on it. I think it was the home owner. The medics worked on her for ages inside the ambulance before driving away.

I observed all this, and took the photos, through the window in Chris' office so as not to be intrusive, but I didn't feel I knew the lady well enough to go out and speak to anyone. But this morning I saw a friend who does some gardening work for her, and I asked him, and he simply said  "Caerse (fell down)", and indicated injury to the side of the face and shoulder. So I hope she is OK. Pepe does not speak any English so that is all he told me.

It has been a rather wet week but still very warm. I even had my big floor fan on its lowest setting while I was card-making yesterday. But we have had some lovely spells of sunshine too, and the plants are loving the humidity. My old hydrangea has opened its first heads of flowers.

Also I was delighted to see flowers opening on the silk tree. It didn't flower at all last year, but we pruned it really hard in the Autumn and it seems to have done it good. In the second picture you can see how the branches are lined with buds.

The other plant that is doing really well is the deep pink Mandevilla that we bought to go in the corner of the front porch. It sent out loads of flowers and also some long thin stems that fell over because they didn't know where to go. So this week I put up some fine wires from a hook at the top of the door frame, and in a couple of days it had spiralled round them and almost reached the top. They are beautiful flowers, and as they are fairly sheltered in that corner, they last well.

A few weeks ago I saw the house martins gathering wet mud from the waste ground, to repair their nests. I knew where these are because a house just up the road from us has a row of them under their eves. These birds are protected and you are not allowed to remove their nests, which could be a bit annoying if they chose your house to build on. The damp weather has meant there are a lot of storm flies and other bugs for them to feed on, and they are constantly swooping in with food for their babies. I can here some have hatched now, but although I stood there for ages this morning, I didn't manage to catch one popping its head out, and the parents swoop in and out again so fast, it is almost impossible to get a photo of them.

I have just turned around and found I have two more cats with me now. Tango is sleeping on a little cupboard under my desk, and Leo is on my spare office chair, (kept for visitors, but taken over by feline ones!). I guess none of them are tempted to go out side today!

Leo continues to entertain us. He is more settled since his 'operation', and often sleeps for most of the evening, but he still has his 'mad half-hour' before I put him in his room for the night. Last night this included racing round the room and up to the top platform of the tower, and down and round again. He likes the top level, and it is by a mirror so he plays with his reflection, but last night there were some little midges around, so small I couldn't see them, but he could, or he heard them, and he kept leaping up to catch them. Once again I wasn't quick enough to get a picture but you can see he has spotted another one.

But when he was tired of this he did sit and pose for me. I think he knows how handsome he is!

I am hoping he, and all the others, behave them selves tomorrow because we have a lady coming to meet them, who hopefully will be able to look after them for a week when we both go to UK in August.

I seem to have rambled on through a long story about a very 'ordinary' week, but now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and see what has been happening in your worlds.

Friday Smiles 2023: Week 22

Not much happening here this week, except more rain and intermittent bursts of sunshine. We have had more rain in the past couple of weeks than we had all Winter, but its all good and of course the gardens, (and the weeds) are flourishing. It is actually looking a bit greener everywhere now.

On Sunday my friend at church gave me two carrier bags full of little nectarines, that had washed off her tree in the storms. She had made jam, and filled her freezer with prepared ones too, and had no room for any more. She warned me they would need to be picked over before I used them, and she was right. Even by Monday, many of them had got very 'squishy'. But I went ahead and stoned them all and chopped the good fruit up to make jam. As I knew she would want to sell her own jam on our church stall, (I do marmalade and pickles and she does jam), I went for two different recipes. The first was Low Sugar nectarine jam, which only had a third of the sugar normally used in fruit jam - in fact it is the smallest quantity that will allow the jam to set. I added a little lemon juice to help it, and it did set enough to use, and it tates fine. In fact I wouldn't have know it had so little sugar in it. So it is one that I can use in moderation without feeling guilty. The second one I made was nectarine and ginger jam. This was expensive to make as it contained ginger three ways, fresh, crystallised and powdered, and the yield was only small, but as Chris and I both love ginger, I will be keeping most of that one for us.

Last week we had a little cat washed up by the storm. This week Chris came in to say a wee frog had fallen into our pool. As it is usually me who carries out the rescue missions, so out I went, camera in hand to record another visitor. I fished him out but knew immediately that he was  a toad, not a frog.  He was a good swimmer, but he was covered in quite pronounced warts. He was very tiny, no more than three or four centimenters in length.

I looked him up and found he was a European green toad, and as his secretions can be toxic for the animals, I removed him some distance from us in the green zone. It is so damp down there right now, I am sure there were plenty of bugs to eat, and wet leaves to hide under.

And now a few photos of some of the furry family members. When we got Kim as a baby he always held one ear cocked over. We thought he would grow out of this but he never did. Here are two photos taken, first when we got him as a puppy in 2012, and the second taken just last year.

But all of a sudden, this week he has perked up his second ear, and kept it like this every day. We have no idea why. As you can see he has aged a lot this year and now has a grey muzzle and face, but he is still a handsome boy isn't he?.

And here is little Leo who is not so little now. He has a long sleek body and the most magnificent tail. He mostly holds it erect as he runs around, but he wouldn't stand still enough for me to get a good photo!

Kim will chase any stray cat that come into the garden, but he mostly ignors all of ours. But Leo really wants to be his friend. He leaps across his back, and plays with his tail, but Kim just sighs, and takes no notice. But a 'Good-morning ' kiss was allowed this morning, and I did just about catch that on camera.

And that my friends is about it for this week. Hopefully by next week the storms will have moved away. There is still some thunder rumbling around us today, but when it goes it will probably be really hot as we are now into June, and usually I am starting to wish for cooler days again by now! Some folk are never satisfied are they! It has been nice to see that my friends in UK have been enjoying a spell of Summer weather, so I hope it lasts for you all a bit longer too. Now I will link up wth Annie's Friday Smiles.