Friday Smiles 2023# Week 39

Unfortunately I didn't get this prepared yesterday like I normally do. I managed to take a tumble in the garden and ended up with some very bruised and sore knuckles on my right hand so I couldn't use my computer mouse, and a very painful left knee. So I spent the rest of the day in my recliner chair letting everything settle down. On the bright side, the damage is all fairly superficial, and at least I managed to keep my face off the ground. It is already a bit easier today so I am sure a couple more days will see me back to my usual clumsy self!

Now it is a little cooler in the evenings we have started to take short walks around the village, usually ending with a drink at one of the local bars, before going home for a late tea. Here is a photo
I took last week. It had been a sunny day and the evening stayed bright. This is the view as you approach the main road that passes the front of the village.

Compare it with the one we took this week. Admittedly we were alomost an hour later, but the whole atmosphere had changed and there was a feel of Autumn in the air. 

As we walked up the slip road we noticed the jacarandas were again in flower. Early in the year the flowers come on bare branches, and when they die, the pretty leaves appear. This flowers are now the big brown seed-pods you can see in this picture. But we don't often get the flowers out at the same time as the leaves. They are so pretty and I just love their colour.

Some people have an olive tree in their gardens and we saw that the olives look plentiful and are a good size. By the end of October the olive presses will open, and folk will take their olives to be pressed into oil. There is a minimum weight of olives that the press will take, so village folk with only one or two trees will join their harvests together and share the oil that is made.

At the top of the village there is a lovely open view of the Cabrera mountains across the campo, and again, last week, the light was just perfect to get a good picture. Sometimes they are so hazy that they almost disappear, but occasionally, as on this day, they are as clear as a bell.

Leo seems to be making some progress in that he is eating well and has gained a very small amount of weight. But he is still well under what he should be, and we are struggling to find out why. However our vet has done some research and has found a genetic problem that occasionally affects Maine Coons, and can cause anemia and weight loss. So yesterday we took him back for further blood tests. One sample will go to the usual lab to check whether the anemia is any better after the vitimen and mineral tablets I have been giving him every day, and the other will go to a different lab for genetic screening. We won't get the results from that until around a month's time, but it would be good to have a reason and know a bit more about the condition, thought there is not an obvious treatment for it. But as you can see here, he is doing Okay. His fur is good and he is not quite so 'boney', and he does seem to be a bit more alert and playful, so here's hoping.

My memories on Facebook keep popping up with lovely sunset photos but it is a long time since we had a really besutiful sky. Last night I did see there was some colour outside, but when I went to look, it was almost a uniform orange because there were no clouds to break it up. Sunrises have been better as there has been some cloud most days until it burns off, but we do not have a good place to photograph the sunrise from our yard, and I am not up early enough to go somewhere for a better view, so here is last night's sunset.

And with that I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles. I hope to see you there shortly.

Friday Smiles 2023# Week 38

First of all I apologise for misnaming last week's post as week 38. Goodness the year is rushing past fast enough without me adding on a week. I did correct it but Blogger is not usually willing to save changes to the title.

However here we are in week 38 now and it got off to a good start for me with our Harvest festival at church. This is one of my favourite services of the year and although it is not quite the same now, as we are not allowed to contribute any fresh fruit and vegetables, so the lovely harvest smell is missing, nevertheless, our little church was decorated with generous donations of canned and packaged food which will be passed on the needy folk in Zurgena.

(There are a couple of baskets of fresh food on display but these were either sold off after the service or taken back home. We used to donate the fruit to the children at Zurgena school, but Health and Saftey regulations no longer make this possible!)

When our son Tom visited us in July he asked me for a new jar of my Hot Chilli and Ginger Jam, but I was so surprised to find I had none left. Tom is visiting us briefly again in October so this week I made a new batch of the jam. We both like it as well so it is good to have a new supply. I had a pungent kitchen for a day or two, but it is worth it.

As you know, I now do a lot of my paper crafting using my Silhouette cameo machine, and I have had a project waiting on my 'to do' list for some time. As I am well ahead with my Christmas cards this year I decided I could give it a try and here it is. I love owls, and they do lend themselves to crafting. This one is made from twenty-seven pieces of card - some full size and some small pieces, and it was quite a tricky procedure to assemble them in the right order and right position, but I am very  pleased with the result. As it would likely get dusty quite quickly, I have made a backing paper from a printed pad with added silver sticky stars, and placed it behind glass in a shadow box frame. Fortunately I decided to risk bringing back two frames from Hobbycraft when I visited UK last month, this one, 30cm square, and a smaller 20cm square one, as they are hard to get out here.

I am currently making another owl in a completely different medium and when that is finished I shall hang them together if I can find a space on my wall.

When I bought a new office chair a year or so ago, I kept the old one in my room for the rare occasion when I have a visitor in here, but often it has a cat asleep on it. They like to be near me when I am working and don't seem to mind the noise of my cutting machine, nor the fan. This is Leo who has almost turned himself inside out. I can't see how it can possibly be comfortable, but he didn't stir for ages. In case you can't work him out, the top part is his tummy and his head is mostly under the front paw with just an ear sticking out. Leo is a bit better now. He is eating well, but is still only gaining weight very slowly. He has a few more days of tablets to take and then I will take him to the vet for a further check up.

You may have heard of a movement that is gaining in popularity known as RAOCK, which stand for Random Act of Crochet Kindness. The idea was to make very small pieces of crochet, a flower, heart etc, and leave them in random places for people to find, in the hope it would make them smile. (A bit like the painted stones that are sometimes left around). It has got a bit over the top now with some people making much bigger items, but there are loads of patterns available for small items and I made a few before my holiday. I didn't make mine with the intention of leaving them randomly, but rather most were made with a specific member of my family in mind. So here is my little collection. I made a baby Yoda for my daughter-in-law and of course Flamin'Duck for her husband, and you met him last week. There was a white chicken for Mike because the last of his rescued hens, (a white lady called Karen), sadly died very recently. Ben and Ant got a heart each, but I had posted a pocket hug to Ben just before my visit. There is a frog for Mike's nature loving partner, a cat for my grand-daughter and lots of butterflies that I left in various houses to be found later.

Although Mike and Lucy had already had their chicken and frog, when I left I put an orange butterfly on some sunflowers they had been given and a little pocket hug by Mike's pillow. 

Now almost fifty years ago, on Mike's first Christmas, we gave him a little fluffy white rabbit and they immediately became inseparable. Bunny had many adventures, and had to be rescued from a library shelf where he had fallen asleep during story time, and I even had to buy him back from a lady who had bought him from the RAF thrift store when Mike had put him down to look at something! But in most of the photos I have of Mike as a very young boy, bunny is tucked under his arm, and his thumb is in his mouth. The photo of them asleep on the sofa is one of my favourites. The top one shows what he was like when he arrived on Christmas morning.

Of course he didn't stay white and fluffy for long. First he lost his ribbon from round his neck (Mike used to call it his Loving), then the little blue dress faded and fell apart. But he was still loved as much as ever. Mike would never part with him, and it is the only one of his things that his own children were not allowed to play with.

The next photo shows bunny at around 40 years old, looking as though a trip to The Repair Shop is needed, but I am not sure Mike would want him restored to his former glory. He still loves him just as he is. 

The last photo is one Mike sent me just a few weeks ago. It is his bag packed ready to go to hospital for his spinal surgery, so Yes, bunny went to hospital with him too. Now aged fifty, he is hiding in a rucksack with only his ears sticking out, and in between those ears is the little pocket hug I left by Mike's pillow after my visit. Mike surgery was a success but he has a long road to recovery but at least bunny will be there to keep him company.

I hope this little story has made you smile, and maybe brought back special memories of your time as a parent. However old your children get they are always your boys, or girls, and moments of shared love are so special.

Now I am off to feed my cats, and this is ready to link up to Annie's Friday Smiles, and publish in the morning.

 

Friday Smiles2023 #Week 37

Thank you all for patiently ploughing through my post last week. Today I am covering the rest of my holiday (partly for your entertanment and partly as a reminder for me so that I can scrapbook it later), but to keep it a reasonable length I have made several collages of my photos. I hope you can click on each one to see the individual pictures.

I mentioned last week that the Saturday after we arrived was a special family day held at our son's vicarage. The weather was not at its best but we had two marqueés to sit under, plenty of warm wraps, and to the side the barbeque was lit so we had warm food to keep us going. It was wonderful to have all five of our sons together as well as most of their partners and children. The array of drinks on the table are all soft drinks or 0% alcohol, but there were a few bottle of beer and wine consumed as well. Everyone had a great time catching up with those they hadn't seen for some time. The pink flamingos were evident in the candle glass and inflatable drinks cooler. One grandson couldn't be there but it was lovely to see Skye, Mike's third child, who was just moving to Brighton where they will be starting at university to study medicine. (They achieved superb A level results of three A*s and and an A, so maybe we will have a doctor in the family one day). Mike had celebrated his 50th birthday two weeks before this and in one picture you can see the family all enjoying watching him open the scrapbook I made for him, mostly with the old photos taken when he was young, that he has no didgital copies of. It was a super day and I am so glad we managed it.

So my last port of call was Manchester to visit son number 4, Jonathan, his wife Ella and their daughter, little Aisling. Manchester showed its usual weather, grey and wet! though we did have some sunny intervals and had one lovely afternoon in the garden. We also visited a couple of parks. At Bramhall Park we saw the impressive mansion though we could not go inside on that day, and Aisling had a fine time scattering the pot of oats she had brought to feed the ducks. At their more local park, which is a huge area of green fileds and trees, there is a play area with a high slide that 'Little Miss Independence' was well able to climb up without our help. I liked the mother-and-baby swing and she wore herself out running from one to the other. On the way home we stopped to see the animals. Aisling insisted on climbing the wet and slippery railings, but was adamant I shouldn't hold her, so I stood as close behind her as I could. In this collage you can see their dog Rudi who really is a gently giant and loved climbing up beside me to rest with me. Aisling is also showing off the little dress I took over for her. She is a mini image of her mum in this one.

Much earlier in my holiday, after visiting my sisters in Bournemouth, I went to see our second son, Mike. I only arranged to be with him for a long weekend, mainly because he has been partly wheelchair bound, or else dependent on crutches for some time, and was awaiting the date for his spinal surgery, so it was difficult to make plans. That said we did pack a lot into the few days I was there.

On my first afternoon, his partner Lucy drove us to the Osprey project in Dyfi Valley, N.Wales. Although the birds were a good distance from us, the round look-out tower had several telescopes focussed on their perch and what remained of their nest. I was pleased with the photo I took using my phone camera, through the telescope. 

Of course the centre had a much more powerful camera on them, and we had some close up views on their screens, both of the birds, (there were two, both this years chicks now fully fledged), and of the magpie cleaning up what was left of their nest.

The surroundings were beautiful and peaceful. This lake was home to a family of beavers, hence the basket weave statue of one, but as they were mainly active only at night, we watched a film of their antics taken with a night vision camera. The boardwalk we followed had a black edge, and warmed by the sun it had hundreds of tiny lizards basking on it. I have inserted a small photo of one of the birds we had watched circling in from the hills miles away. I took this with my phone on full zoom so it is a bit wobbly but it does show their huge wingspan.

After the osprey centre we drove on to the coast to Aberdovy, so the boys could have a quick dip in the sea!

On Saturday, Lucy and her boys had other plans so Mike and I took a bus to Welshpool and walked through the deer park to Powys castle. We only wanted to see the grounds which are really stunning. The castle is famous for its trimmed trees, not exactly topiary as they were not trimmed to any shape, but they were mounds and mounds of green that looked like velvet. I saw on the internet this week that it takes a man eight weeks to trim them from a high crane. The flowers were lovely too as were the views of the castle from the gardens below.

We got home in time to have a brief rest and then caught another bus in the opposite direction, this time going to Oswestry. This was my home town and I enjoyed having a look around it, and seeing all the changes that have happened in the fifteen years since I left. However we were there to see the hot air balloon festival. It took place in Cae Glas park. This always has a great display of flowers in the front area and this year was no exception.

Behind the flowers there is a big open space of grass land where the balloons were. Sadly it was just too windy for the balloons to have lift off, but at 9.00pm they did manage to inflate five of them and use their fire blasters to give us a light show in time to the music. You don't realise just how big the balloons are until they inflate right in front of you, and it was a very exciting spectacle. I showed a couple of pictures at the time but here are some more.

Sunday was a special day for Mike and for me because he invited his family to come and have lunch with us, and they don't manage to get together very often. So Mike's daughter Emma, her husband and their three little boys were there, as well as her brother Mikey (the only one who couldn't make it to our family day earlier in the month). Unfortunately his partner had an accident that week and was not able to come. But there was Mike's partner and her two boys and Mike's younger son Fin so we were quite a crowd. Despite needing to lean on the table to balance, Mike was determined to cook his usual Sunday roast and I was only allowed to help with a little bit of the preparation. But he managed it and as you can see, we all enjoyed his hard work.

I didn't take many photos but I did manage to get an update of our four generations - baby Reuben, his mum Emma, her dad Mike, and his mum, me. I also got a quick one of Reuben sitting on my lap but he was much more interested in running round the garden with his brothers. He had only started to walk that week! (The cat on my lap is Bobby who came to live with my son Ben to keep him company when his partner died, but as Ben's life changed it became harder to give Bobby the care he needed so he moved to live with Mike where he has a brother and two dogs for company and he is well settled there now).

On Monday, Ben came to collect me and drove me to his house in Congleton, Cheshire (see last weeks post) and the next week we drove the short way across to Manchester for my stay with Jonathan. On one day both Jonathan and his wife had to work and Aisling was at nursery, so Ben came over again and we went to the nearby town of Altrincham. The market was more 'up-market' than I remember from a previous visit, but there was a nice cobbled street of shops which we enjoyed browsing and a lovely bakery where we bought fresh baked foccacia sandwiches for our lunch. We also went into a Sketchers shoe shop and both bought some expensive but very comfortable shoes! For a relatively small place the multi-storied car park was very full and we had to go up to the top floor. The view from there was amazing and we could see the skyline of Manchester city.

Ben then spent the night (part of it anyway) on Jonathan's sofa and at 4.00 in the morning he got me safely to Manchester airport for my flight home. I am so grateful to him for all the running around he did for me.

This picture shows me watching our flight arrive at Almeria airport for our trip out, and then off to get the return flight home. 

So my adventure is over for this year, but what a lot of lovely memories I made.

This week has been basically routine but I did have a nice outing yesterday. A friend at church organised a 'ladies tea' at her house and it was lovely to be able to relax and chat together as there is never much time for that after church on a Sunday. One of our friends needs a wheelchair so her husband drove her there and then acted as our 'maitre d', dressesd only in a pair of black boxer shorts, a red striped apron and a red bow tie! He kept us well supplied with food and drink throughout the afternoon. You can see him in one of the photos with his wife and our hostess Dawn. She gave us a lovely spread for our tea with fresh finger sandwiches, followed by scones with jam and cream, Then there was a wide choice of cakes - Dawn enjoys baking! - home make truffles, and finally a strawberry trifle. We were very spoiled and very full! She even made a plate of each selection gluten free for our friend.

And now I will close with two photos of the sky. The first was taken at teatime on Aberdovy beach in Wales on 17th August, and the second was sunrise here yesterday morning. Both beautiful in their own way.

So it is time now to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and I promise my posts will be back to much simpler things next week

Friday Smiles 2023 # Week 36

Hi everyone. I am so sorry I was AWOL again last week. I landed back in Spain on Thursday, but on Friday I was so busy unpacking, washing, shopping etc, that I quite forgot what day it was. I warn you this is a very long post, so just enjoy the pictures if it is too much reading!

However I have now sorted out some of the hundreds of photos I took in UK so today I am looking back on two of my visits, firstly to my eldest son in London, and then to my youngest son in Cheshire. Next week I will look more closely at the other places I went to.

We flew into Stansted and caught a train straight to son Jim's house in Sydenham.  This lovely sunset was seen from the train window.

We went to Jim and Jo's first as they live in a very large vicarage right next to St Bartholomew's church where Jim is the vicar. They are the only ones who can comfortably cope with all the 'tribe' decending on them, so on Saturday we had our Family Day. (I think we had 21 bodies sleeping over that night, but I will talk more about that another day).

They had nearly all gone home by Monday so Jim, our son Tom still over from Denmark, and I, set off for The Tate Modern to see the exhibition by Yayoi Kasuma. I mentioned this briefly a couple of posts back but here are two collages I made of the photos.

I wonder how many times you can see us in these pictures, and are you sure which ones are really us, and which are reflections going off into infinity?

In the coloured lights room, we only had a short narrow path, the width of a paving stone to walk on, and yet we seemed to be in a vast area. 

As Jim is a member of the Tate, we were able to go into the member's' lounge for a pot of tea which we took onto the patio outside, where we had a lovely view of the Thames and the magnificent London skyline.

At Christmas someone gave Jim a joke gift of a pink bird somewhere between a duck and a flamingo, which they call Flamin'duck. (I got corrected for calling it 'Flaming duck'!). I made a little amigorumi replica and now both go on all their outings (adventures) and manage to get into many of the photos. Here they are sitting together on our tea table.

We decided to walk along the Thames banks to the dock where we could catch the boat-taxi to Grenwich to eat some street food at the market there.  There is a theme in London this year around the figure of Morph. I am sure most of you remember the plasticine figure that morphed into different shapes and delighted the chidren  with his TV programme many years ago. Well there were statues of Morph all over the place and these two we passed on our walk by the Thames.

I am not sure I would like it on a daily basis, but I enjoyed the hustle and bustle all around us. The Hays Galleria was beautifully decorated, and I loved this old pub with its red paint and colourful baskets of flowers.(My son Tom, and one of my grandsons are walking together in this picture)

We also popped into Southwark Cathedral which is Jim's church comes under. On the path around it we found the stone for St Bartholomew.

We also met Hodge, the cathedral cat. (I said he should be called Podge. I think a lot of visitors feed him!) He wanders around the cathdral, including over and under the altar during services. Someone local has immortalised him in books, pictures and soft toys which are sold in the visitor's shop, and help to raise funds for the cathedral so that they can allow people to enjoy visiting it  for free. 

I saw this beautiful piece of embroidery hanging from a side altar  and these contrasting ancient and modern stained glass windows.

The next day was rather more grey but we took a train in the opposite direction to the little town of Rochester, to visit the cathedral there. I touched last time on the sewing exhibition there, but now I have made a collage of all twelve panels. I hope you can click on it to zoom in, so that you can appreciate all the threads and fabrics used.

But the cathedral had much more to offer than just the exhibition. In the centre of the nave was this huge Black Oak table, made for the coronation from one enormous branch of fallen oak that had been preserved in a peat bog for thousands aof years, and was found in perfect condition by archeologists. The table had been deeply polished and the wood just glowed. It was stunning.

I also appreciated these statues with the archway door in the centre...

this tile pattern on a section of floor...

and these beautiful windows.

At the end of the week, Jim and Jo saw me safely onto a train at the busy Waterloo station. Of course the Flamin'ducks came too.

The train took me to Bournemouth where I was met by my sister Jean, and we spent a lovely few days together. We have many common interests including card-making and crochet, so there was plenty to talk about.

We had a nice day out at Hobbycraft and the neighbouring garden centre where we both treated ourselves to new clothes and handbags, plus a big bowl of delicious soup for our lunch.

I went to see the new extension her daughter and son-in-law have added to their bungalow, and I met Jean's grand-daughter and her five little girls plus their cousin! They help to even out the score with all my boys.

We spent a day with our other sister who lives near-by. At eighty-eight she still lives alone and is looking remarkabley well. It was lovely to have time to really chat together.

Soon I was back on the train again, for the long journey up to Manchester where I was met by my son Ben. His partner Ant is a keen gardener and their beds were filled with flowers of all colours and varieties. He did particularly well with his dahlia's, which seem to have done well everywhere this year. Here are just some of the photos I took in his garden.

While staying at Ben's we did some more retail therapy at a huge M&S sale, which I wasn't expecting.

We also had a visit from two of his school friends' wives and their little children. After lunch we took the little ones to fed the animals at the local farm complex. Tilly liked the goats but Lenny just loved the donkeys and Shetland ponies.

We also had a lovely day out at Bridgemere Garden World. I used to take my boys there when they were little because there was a glass tunnel covering a tropical area with exotic plants and big pools of tropical fish. It has been taken over by a different group now and the tropical part has gone but there was lots to see, including formal gardens three of which won medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. We had a lovely walk around and I have made a scrapbook page of some of the photos I took, including the three gardens  --  The Womens'Institute cottage garden, The Forge, and the Old Potting Shed,  --  and a collage of all the beautiful dahlias that were in bloom.

Of course there were also several well know brands of retailers there so we both parted with some more money, but it was well worth the visit.

Then Ant took this picture of Ben and I as were went to the car to travel to my next destination.

Cogratulations to anyone who is still with me after that marathon.Next week I will show the rest of my visit but that is quite enough for one week.

This week has flown by. We had the good news last night that son Mike had had his long-awaited spinal surgery and today he has been up and is expecting to be back home by tomorrow. I had very similar surgery nearly forty years ago and had to stay in hospital at least ten days until I had my stitches out. How times have changed!

We have had an anxious week with little Leo who stopped eating and was losing weight fast. This was extra worrying as he was only gaining very slowly anyway. The vet found he had an infection which is being treated with antibiotics and he is now eating well again but not gaining any weight. A blood test has shown he is very anaemic so he now has more tablets to take every day, and in ten days time they will test him again. I hope he starts to pick up soon.

But for now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and make sure I visit everyone to make up for all the weeks I have mssed.