Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 13

Here we are again at week 13, a quarter of the way through the year. Can you believe that! On Sunday the clocks spring forward an hour, and the mornings will be lighter, though we have woken up to bright sun for a couple of days now.

But it hasn't been all sunshaine this week. It has been extremely windy, and still is despite the sun, and we even had one day of rain. It was not enough but still very welcome. I have just read on Facebook that the wind has brought a big tree down on a very busy roundabout in Vera, and we are on yellow alert for high winds and dangerous waves on the coast. Yesterday I came home from my sewing group to find one side of my sheet had lost its pegs and was streaming out over next door's garden like a huge flag. I managed to wrestle it in without dragging it on the ground, and it was at least dry, along with the rest of the washing which was all tangled round the line!

The rain started in the evening and the cats were not a bit impressed, so they all came in and climbed on me. I had little Luna on my lap which is a rare occurance, but she does come in a bit more now we no longer have a dog. Tango sat next me, wondering why there was an interloper on 'his' lap. (He has a black mark on his face because he sat under a car!) Tolly was asleep next to me, quite uninterested in what anyone else was doing, and Leo took his usual spot near the top of his climbing tower, and watched us all with interest. Needless to say I didn't get much crochet nor anything else done that night.

Sunday was Palm Sunday and our little church gathered outside for the Liturgy of the Palms. We were ably led by our locum priest Father Dennis, and my dear friend Margie as his assistant. After the palms were blessed David hurried in to play the organ and we processed back inside while singing "All glory, laud and honour, to Thee Redeemer King". We are only a small gathering but we make a good noise when we sing.

Today there was an Easter Market at the camp site near here, and we went along as I knew the lady I buy clothes from would be there. She had a lot of end of season sale items, so I treated myself to some new tops. The weather is so changeable and I am finding I need some lighter clothes. Usually I go from winter trousers and warm jumpers, straight into summer dresses, but this year I am still in light weight trousers so I needed a few lighter weight tops to go with them. I ended up with a loose knit, short-sleeved blue one, and a very light thin wollen long sleeved blue one, a white thin jumper with gold stars on the front, a cerise thin long sleeved tee-shirt, (I find them so comfortable). And from the new summer stock I bought a very loose, cheese-cloth top that will be great for covering up in the sun, when summer comes. Because of the wind we didn't hang around for long. All the stall keepers were struggling to hold on to their wares, so I think it probably closed early any way.

When I got home I did my traditional Easter bake session to make hot-cross buns. In the end I decided to do something a bit different so I made just two buns for our Friday breakfast, and the rest of the dough made a 'hot-cross bun-loaf'. It will be much easier to toast and that's how we both like it. I also didn't put the ususal sugar glaze on them. It makes them very sticky, and I really don't need any extra sugar. I also made a loaf of bread using white flour with just a little oatmeal and oat bran added.

I am sure you are all aware of the store IKEA so famous for its flat-packed furniture, so I hope you will be amused as I was by this picture I saw earlier in the  week.

And now I wish you all every blessing for Easter time. I hope you all enjoy the weekend with family or friends, or just doing what whatever makes you happy. 

So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles over on her blog.

Friday Smiles 2024# Week 12

It is the end of another lovely week with a feel of a mild summer to it. I would be happy for weather like this all year round. I have even shed some of my winter clothes and am only wearing a tee-shirt over thin trousers this week. (That doesn't leave much to take off when the real summer arrives!!) We have had a few drops of rain this week but are hoping for more next week. The time for rain will soon be gone and everywhere is so dry.

But we took advantage of the sun to go for a walk. I had to miss my sewing group again this week as Chris had a doctor's appointment and I go with him to translate. But we were only there for a few minutes so I suggested we should go for a short drive to the coast for some exercise. We decided to go to Villaricos, a few miles along the coast towards Murcia. We lived near there when we first arrived in Spain and used to like walking along the sea-front there. It has been massively modernised since then, and now has a long brick-paved promenade, with plenty of stone benches for resting and admiring the view. There are a lot of rocks emerging from the water which means there is a gentle background nose of waves breaking around them, which I really love. This is the view as we walked down the steep path from the main road where we parked the car.

It is always quite peaceful there, and yesterday there was hardly a soul about. We stopped at one of the benches to take selfie.

On one side of us was a rocky bay...

...and on the other were the newer built apartments with the mountains as a backdrop.

The wild flowers are beginning to open everywhere like these pretty pink trumpets, like a small ground-cover convolvulous, (the large white trumpet flower that is the bane of English gardeners life). Soon these will cover wide areas of campo land. 

Then there is the oxalis. Although this is a rather hard, acidic yellow, it grows so profusely, and makes such large areas of vivid colour, that you can't help liking it. And the individual flowers are so pretty.

We also saw this enormous cacti 'tree'. Its top had been full of flowers which were now small baby plants that usually fall and die, though some will stay and make even more branches for next year. They always amaze me as the 'trunk' is often a fairly slender single stem, and you wonder how it can hold when the high winds come.

We eventually turned inland and wandered up through the little village, which again was very quiet with many of the shops closed. This used to be a mining town for tin but the mine buildings are all in ruins now. A few years ago I was told that many of the inhabitants have small, simple dwellings near the agricultural sites where  they work, and only return to Villaricos for the weekends, which may explain why so many shops were closed. It does have a big, street market every Sunday, and is a busy little place during the summer months.

At the top of the village we passed the church which had attractive tile inserts on either side of the door. It was a pleasant walk and I doubled my usual step count for the day, so that was good too.

This is the strawberry season in Spain and there are plenty to be bought in the market. They are around 4.50€ per kilo at the minute which is quite good, and about the same as they were last year. But this week I saw one stall that had a separate tray of them marked at 3.50€ per kilo and 3€ for 2 kilo. I thought they were just trying to get shot of last week's supply but they weren't over-ripe, just fairly small and some were a bit misshapen, so I bought 2 kilos and that afternoon I prepared them all. There was no waste at all.

I removed all the flower tops and weighed the fruit as I went, keeping back a few of the best ones for us to eat. Then I set about making jam with the rest, using lemons picked straight from our tree to help it gel.

Soon I had eight jars of ruby red jam. It set way better than my strawberry jam usually does, and this is more than enough for us to use throughout the year. I no longer make jam to sell, but this is the one that we both like and I do use it regularly. Mainly for Chris of course because of my diabetes, though I do allow myself a little bit occasionally.

Apart from that I have been busy making more Christmas cards, and planning other papercraft project.

I have spent a long time on the internet chatting with Ben. We always find plenty to talk about.

I have also tried several cooking experiments with my new Ninja and I am very pleased with the results so far. I have ordered a recipe book that is supposed to take you step by step through some basic ideas so I have high hopes for that. The book which came with it has several recipes for fancy meals but little information on how to cook the simple every day things, so it has been a bit of trial and error, but there have been no major failures.

So now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and see your happy moments from the past week.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 11

Well here we are again at the end of another week. We have enjoyed some lovely sunny days so I am starting with another photo of the garden flowers. The little winter violas that I planted months ago, are still flowering and looking so sweet, and they have a surprisingly strong perfume. Of course the fresias in the pot next to them also smell lovely so I have a fragrant garden. The jasmine is over on the front wall and these two sit near the front door, so I can enjoy their lovely perfumes  every time I go out, or open the window.

Chris gave each pot a gentle water using a can this morning. They are used to me waving a hose around out there, but we cannot be seen to be so wasteful right now, so we give them just enough to stay alive. We did have a very little bit of rain here this week. Saturday was quite wet, but there was more just up in the hills which has helped to raise the level in the reservoirs a little, and they are hoping that when the snow melts at the top of the mountains, more will flow down to us. But in the meantime, we have to be careful.

I am very lucky to have a new 'toy' to play with in the kitchen. I know I am a sucker for kitchen gadgets. I buy anything that I think will make life easier for me and assist my weak hands, but I found I had far too many appliances taking up space, so I have replaced them with one that should do everything that they do, and some more. So here is my Ninja. 

It has a lot of accessories, but I needed them to be the right size to fit in the pot comfortably. I can now use it as an electric pressure cooker, an airfryer, a steamer, a dehydrater and yoghurt maker. It will prove and bake bread, make cakes and roast a whole chicken, and although the timing for each is much the same as the main oven, (except for the pressure cooker of course), it takes far less power, and does not make my kitchen so hot.

There is a lot to learn before I can realise its full potential, but I have started practising. Yesterday I cooked individual meat pies in it, and today I made a chicken satay for dinner, and then made a batch of cupcakes, and a loaf of bread. My cupcake tray has small, deep holes, so the cakes are a bit oddly shaped, but they will have some lemon curd put in the middle and I am sure they will taste fine. Hopefully the next batch will turn out more even.

I had fun one afternoon when I went to put away a little pot of glitter glue. I pulled the drawer just too far and the whole lot spilled all over the floor. I hadn't realised how many glitter glues and pearl drops I had accumulated! So I spent a couple of hours collecting them all up, sorting them into colours, and trying each one out. I threw away any that had dried up and now have a neatly arranged selection that I know are working and a test sheet to show how they look. Now to keep it that way...!

We have had a busy time with hospital appointments this week. On Monday Chris had his first treatment for macula degeneration, which went smoothly and wasn't too traumatic for him.  And yesterday I had a follow-up to my hand biopsy, and they have decided to remove some of the troublesome tissue from around the scar. I have to wait for them to ring me with an appointment now, but it will only be a quick trip to the day surgery unit. It will be good to get it sorted.

Yesterday I walked up to the farmacia to collect my prescription and I saw two swallow-tail butterfies having a great time flitting from flower to flower on a lantana shrub. Needless to say they weren't stopping to pose for me so I grabbed what I could and managed these two. It was like being out on a summer's day in England.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Ben last night, helping make a few tweaks to his webpage, and it is now up and running. He has worked hard on it so I hope it generates some work for him.

And with that, I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and do my best to visit you all.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 10

Today is known in this area as Día de Vieja, or Day of the Old, when families go to somewhere out in the fresh air for a family picnic. Some say this originated from the time when all villagers worked for the monastry and the monks realised that fasting for the whole of Lent meant that they could not work well, so they designated this day (Lent break) when everyone could eat what they wanted and renew their strength to work until Easter. It is also the day when the children make or buy 'puppets' of old women, and occasionally men, built around a wooden cross with tissue paper clothes, and a head like a piñata which contains sweets or small toys. After their picnic, the puppets are stood in the ground and the children throw stones at them or use sticks to beat them until they break and their treasures can be retrieved. Here are some children about to have some fun!

There has been a big building project ongoing in Mojacar for the past year. It includes a new bus station with seating and shaded waiting areas, and also a new medical centre which is much more accessible than the old one, and convenient for those who travel to it by bus. It is built adjacent to the main road between Mojacar Playa and pueblo, and on the road side it presents as a very large plain concrete wall. As the work is nearing completion, the Town Council employed an artist called Nicolas Rodriguez, who together with his wife, a photographer called María Angeles "Maki" Fernández, created a huge mural to disguise the wall. They collaborate together under the name Makinico. 

We drove passed to see it today but because the road is very busy it was not possible to park to take photos, so these came from articles about it on the internet. The mural is in setions, the first one depicting  two Mojaquares (or woman of Mojacar) as they would have been many years ago when they fetched water from the town fuente in pitchers which they carried on their heads.

This moves into a stylized picture of the pueblo, famous for all its white buildings, and then a more realistic picture of it. The town council wanted this as they felt the full view of the village was hidden by the mountains for people approaching it from the beach.

Slightly set back from this some more white buidings lead onto a stretch of the beach, and the final piece has the town name in large white letters, with the 'O' carrying the symbol of Mojacar, 'the Indalo Man'.

I hope these show you how they each run into the next one to form a huge display. It is a very impressive piece of work, and a vast improvement on a plain concrete wall.

We have been warned of a sharp drop in temperature from this afternoon, and possibly a little of the much needed rain, but this week has been mainly warm and sunny during the day and my garden is loving it. It is mostly red and pink right now, with the poinsettia continuing to turn colour, a geranium that has had head after head of flowers, a kalenchoe that was almost dead, and is now full of flowers, and my first fresias opening up today.

Over on the wall our jasmin continues to thrive. There are still some buds though it is hard to see where any more flowers can fit in. It has been in danger of collapsing with the high winds we have had, but so far it has survived, and once the flowers die off, we will prune it back hard for next year. Everyone who passes by, comments on its lovely perfume. It is particularly strong in the evenings.

And I am really pleased with this little suculent plant. I bought it last year when the flowering plants were almost over, and it has lasted through the winter and now has its new spring colours. It is as pretty as any flowering plant. It was quite large when I bought it so I split it in half. The other piece is also doing well but is less colourful, and I have just read on the internet that it like full sun as long as it is not hot enough to scortch it, so I think it is too shady where I planted the second half. Its name is Crassula Ovata but is also know as the Jade plant, and sometimes the Money plant. It is a good one for the garden now as it only requires a drop of water when the soil is dried out.

I have been busy in my craft room making a run of Christmas cards. I started by making a stencil of a starry background with mylar film that I cut with my Silhouette Cameo machine,and then I used sections of it to add some colour to the corners of my cards. Next I cut out elements using vinyl and weeded out all the unwanted bits. I am good at losing these when I cut a lot so I have them all safely in a tin until I find the time to get them all assembled. I can't show the finished card yet as it will used for my monthly Christmas card challenge on 25th.

Apart from that, I have spent the evenings crocheting or chatting to one or other of my boys and my sister on the internet, and the week seems to have flow by. So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 9

Well the forecasters were right and we did have a significant drop in temperature this week, but in sheltered areas the sun still meant it was often warmer outside than in the house.  But the main downside has been the wind, so fierce that some days it was safer to stay indoors. The garden is full of dead bracts from the bougainvillea, even though Chris has been out several times to sweep them up, and the covers blew off the barbeque and cane furniture. But there has been no major damage for us.

We had to go down to Garruchs on Tuesday. It was a lovely sunny morning but only a few folk had ventured out. I took these photos looking across the main road at the barge moored at the port for loading, while I waited for Chris to come along to collect me, but looking at these tranquil scenes you would never know that it was blowing so hard I could hardly stay on my feet. Only the swaying palm trees give any indication of how rough it was.

On Tuesday night I put the sheets in the washing machine over night so I could peg them out on the line before I went to sewing group. I put several extra pegs in each piece and they did hold, but the sheets were billowing out like giant sails. Of course they dried well and by lunch time I was able to take them in again. I have nowhere indoors to dry washing exctept on an airer by the fire in the evening, so I am always happy to get it dry outside.

The wierd weather has given us some stormy skies but the dark clouds brought little rainfall that had no impact on the water shortage here. This was the sky at teatime on Tuesday.

Wednesday was Día de Andalucía which is a very important celebration for the local folk.  It does involve sitting in a marquee listening to several long speeches by the mayor and other officials, so we decided to give it a miss this year. It is followed by a communal lunch of cold meats, cheeses, bread and raw broad beans! Then there is music and dancing that continues through the evening until midnight. 

I went to my usual sewing group in the morning but when I heard the music in the afternoon I decided to walk across to the marquee to stretch my legs. Sadly most of the green and white bunting had blown down and was tangled around lamp posts etc. 

But they did manage to raise the Andalucian flag on the plazza and that was fluttering somewhat madly. 

The marquee was full of people chatting and enjoying the music, and out on the car park they managed to secure a large bouncy castle securely as well as having several 'fair-ground' style stalls selling sweets and toys for the children. It was too windy to make walking around very pleasant, so I soon returned home.

Our little tree is dripping with lemons and the new blossom is starting to appear on it, so I thought I should use some of them. So on Saturday I had a baking session making a lemon meringue pie, some little lemon shortbread bites, and two jars of lemon curd.

Today I had another session in the kitchen and was quite pleased with my multi-tasking. By lunch time I had cooked chicken thighs in the instant pot, made puff pastry chicken slices with half of it, and frozen the rest for another day. I also made a loaf of bread, a lemon curd and raisin slice, a lemon drizzle cake, (it is dark because my recipe uses dark brown sugar), and several jars of lemon marmalade.

I did promise to show the project I was working on with the laser cutter my friend has loaned me, so here it is. I have said in a previous post that my son Ben has started his own business and has organised a new studio at home for playing and recording his music, so I made him this wall plaque. His new biusiness is called 'Totally sound', and this is the font he has used on his information cards etc.

For the photo I used one he had sent me a few weeks ago which I made into a black and white sketch in gimp, and then engraved onto the base wood. If you are interested is knowing more about how it was done, there is a detailed write up on my craft blog which you can find HERE. (Apologies to those who have already seen this on Facebook). 

I only posted this to Ben last Friday so I was really surprised to hear it had arrive on Tuesday! Of course Ben loves it as I knew he would.

We are supposed to only take rubbish out to the big bins on the street after 7.00 but last night I went just before that as the sun was setting. The light was catching some of the mountain peaks at the bottom of the village making lovely light and shadow patterns. So I hurried back to grab my phone but by the time I got out again it had faded, but I still managed to take this shot. 

Back at home, out the other side of the house this rather dramatic sky was rapidly fading too.

So now it is time to link up with Annie at her blog, here.