Friday Smiles 2024@ Week 22

Oh dear. I am very late to the party today. I have had a ruck of hospital/health issues that have got in the way, but I will try to put a quick post together now.

It has been hot this week - too hot for late May, so I guess we are in for a long hot summer. This is how Leo keeps cool. Our table is between the open window and open patio doors so sometimes there is a nice breeze blowing through, and he flattenes himself onto the table top. I wish I was as supple as that!

All the wildlife is searching for water, so Chris has got our two little outdoor fountains going. They recycle the water so don't need to be filled too often, and the bees, wasps and birds come to them to drink. This week I spotted a large grasshopper on the edge of the cats' water bowl. Unlike their English cousins, these can grow to 4-6 inches long. They are called European or Egyptian grasshoppers unless they swarm and then they are locusts. They are very hungry and can damage plants quite severely, but live and let live. Tolly wasn't impressed by the visitor when he went for a drink, so I moved it to the green zone out of his way.

We called in at the garden centre this week and bought a few bedding plants. 

They are now in four troughs hanging from our front railings. 

They look a bit bedragled here but they had just been planted. They have settled in now and look a lot better.

I also bought some herbs - Rosmary, lavendar, mint, basil, corriander and parsley, and I have made a little herb garden outside the kitchen door. It is rather a sun trap in the afternoons so I am not sure how well they will do.

Three more little projects I made on my laser engraver. 

One for me ..

 .. and two for my son and his wife who arrive next Thursday for a few days. They are not perfect because the outer frame slipped but they will like them.

.. and one for my grand-daughter

And that is all I have time for today. I am off to the dentist now but will link this to Annie's Friday Smilesnull and catch up with you all as soon as I can.

Friday Smiles 2024# Week 21

Another week has flown by and once again Los Gallardos has been celebrating. Last Sturday was our'secondary' patronal fiesta. (The main one is in July). This was the fiesta od San Isidro, the patron saint of agriculture and fishing. Garrucha also celebrate but they focus on the fishing whereas for us it is agriculture as we are part of 'The Salad Bowl of Spain'. All around here there are fields of lettuce, peppers, beans and melons and acres of netted structures housing tomatoes and cucumbers.

The fiesta starts with the band parading round the village and a special mass up at the church. Then there is a romeria, or countryside walk, with a line of small floats and carriages dressed with flowers, hams, bread etc and families in bright, flowery costumes. The first float holds the statue of San Isidro. At the end come many of the local folk on horseback, and they all end up at the sport and picnic ground just above the village.

Here some families fill long tables with food and light one of the installed barbeques, while others listen to music, join the crowd at the bar by the football ground, or just wait around for the Gran Peaella which is served free to all-comers around 2.00.

We went up for an hour or so. I like to see the floats and the horses,(there was one very cute little girl in a flamenco-style dress, riding a little white pony),  but it was a very hot day and we decided to go back to the cool of our house. As the fiesta is very traditional and changes little from year to year, I have just made a simple collage of some of my photos.

Last week Lisca said her dipladenia (or mandevilla as it is now known) is starting to bud. We are a good bit warmer down here on the coast and I am happy to say that mine has burst into flower. I think this is its third year and seeing it is only in a small pot, I am very pleased with how it is doing. It has actually sent up long tendrils which we trained across the front door in the autumn, and they also have flowers on. We are hoping to bring one strand forward to the front pillar this year.

I go to our little street market most Tuesdays and for the past couple weeks I have been very happy to find one of my favourite fruits for sale. I love fresh apricots, though not many folk seem to agree with me. They are also a good choice for me as they are one of the lowest fruits in sugar but are full of fibre and minerals. They have a very short season, so there may only be one more week of them, and then we start on the cherries. I did treat us to a small bag of them this week but they are still expensive, but hopefully they will come down a bit each week now. Then it will be the peaches, paraguayas and nectarines. There are a few around now but I will wait until they are a little riper, and stick with my apricots while they are still available.

I thought I would share another little project I did with my laser. I am getting to grips with cutting wood, but engraving is proving more tricky. It is a case of lots of trial and error to get the settings right. But a couple of weeks ago it was my nieces birthday. She lives alone with her black labrador Bomber for company, so I took a photo of Bomber from my niece's Facebook page, changed it to black and white, and then converted it to a line drawing. I managed to make a fairly decent engraving from it onto ply wood. I then cut around it to make a little coaster and spray varnished it. I popped it in with her birthday card and she really liked it.

We have had a couple of nice sunsets this week. When I sit down in the sitting room for the evening our window faces easterly and sometimes I see a feint pink refection in the clouds which tells me there is some colour in the sky to the west at the back of the house. One night I decided to try a panoramic picture of it and it didn't turn out too bad. 

I thought I might use as a header for a while but then I took some more pictures. Almost a happy accident was one that shows our purple bougainvillea hedge at the front and a pale setting sun at the back. The clouds above it are like a big white bird swooping over. I liked that one so much more so it will now be my header. I used it on my Facebook too.

Over two nights I watched the sky changing and tooked several photos which I have combined into one collage because I couldn't choose between them!

And that my friends is another week for me. So I will prepare this for Annie's Friday Smilesnull in the morning.

(I have no idea why I cannot link properly to Annie's page this week but the blue word 'null' works, and I cannot aalter it).

Friday Smiles 2024 #Week 20

Another week of ups and downs but I will try to put a post together. I am typing slowly as I have somehow managed to 'sprain' my left thumb and it is very painful and makes the hand useless. I have no idea what I did. It just happened during a very disturbed night. It has eased a little since this morning but the thumb pad is still very swollen. I have just taken the first of some very strong anti-inflamatory pills that the doctor has given me so hopefully it will calm down soon.

In the meantime I have had a busy week with trips to the dentist and hospital, which is just far enough away to make it nearly a day's outing. I have a repaired denture which is good but have been warned it is not as strong and may break again any time, but at the end of the month I am having my last two teeth (fangs!) removed and implants fitted in my lower jaw. When that has all settled down, in 3-4 months time, I will be having a new top and bottom plate. Happy days!

To approve the dentistry work I needed a special X-ray that meant a trip to their bigger surgey in Garrucha. Afterwards we strolled along the front, enjoying the stiff breeze and sunshine. The gulls were gathered in large groups along the shoreline, perhaps hoping the incoming tide would bring them some titbits. Across the water we could also watch all the activity over at the port with the lorries constantly unloading and loading, and what looks like little toy lorries from a distance, keeping all the gravel piles tidy and prepared.

On Tuesday I had my appointment at Torrecadenas Hospital in Almeria city. We took out interpreter along and I am glad we did as she is more used to the layout of the hospital, and I would have struggled to follow all the information I was given. You have probably guessed by now that the biopsy I had done on my hand showed some shallow carcegenic cells so it was agreed that these would be cut away. The site is quite spread out so I will need a skin graft but it will all be done in the day surgery. Now I have to wait for a an apointment from the anaesthetist who will do blood and ECG tests and check I am well enough, and soon after that I should get a date for the operation. So it is all progress.

Parking at the hospital is a nightmare with long queues of cars waiting to get a space. But recently they opened a new innitiative where you can park for free at a new shopping mall and catch a shuttle bus, also free, up to the hospital. Because our interpreter was familiar with all this we were able to do it and it saved a lot of time and frayed tempers. The car park was full to the brim even though we had the almost the first appointment of the day in our department. There was also a long row of parked motorbikes and I guessed that was how the medical staff managed to get to work on time. The hospital is set high on a hill, (Strange choice for a hospital site I feel!), and from up there you can look out over the whole of the city, and in the distance you can see the sea. Almeria is the capital city of our province.

While the painters were in last week, a cupboard they moved off the wall they were painting, accidently fell against the end pole of my washing line and forced it off the wall it was fixed to. So Chris has fixed it again and it is much stornger now, and we went to the ferreteria to buy new line. It has four ten foot lines so it is quite a task to restring it, but it is all down now and I am very happy, and grateful to Chris for his work.

While we were out we popped into the garden centre just opposite the shop, because for ages I have wanted a yellow rose. I bought one once from Lidls and it turned out to be a dark red rose with a thin yellow streak on its inner petals! In the end we found one. It is a small floribunda rather than the tea rose we were looking for, but it is lovely all the same. 

While we were there I also chose this very pretty orange one. It turns to a pale apricot colour as it open out, and it has been planted in one of the big boxes at the corner of the side yard.

I sometimes wonder what Tolly gets up to at night because he is always in the kitchen waiting for his breakfast when I get up, and then he takes up this pose on our settee and doen't move a muscle until lunch time. Even my cleaner can hoover around him without him stirring.

But I know what someone got up to on Sunday night. I don't know which one it was but have my suspicions it was Leo. It is natural for them to hunt but I wish they didn't feel compelled to give me their catch as a gift. However when I got up on Monday, this little fellow was on the kitchen floor. He was dead which was a blessing really, as had he been alive, as soon as I tried to move him he would have shot under the fridge, and I would have spent all day trying to find him. He is a very juvenile horshoe whip snake. They are not venemous and don't bother me at all. In fact I think he is rather beautful, but I know many of you would freak out at such a 'gift'. 

One day this week I ran out of bread for our tea so I decided to make a batch of drop scones. They are a simple batter very similar to ordinary pancakes but with one or two additions. I usually cook them on my old griddle, but I thought they must work just as well on a flat-bottomed frying pan. Wrong! They would not cook and before long I gave up and fetched out my griddle. They cook perfectly on there but you have to be quick. The secret is to turn them over before the bubbles on the surface break, which is why I only have five or six on the go at the time. They made a nice change and we thoroughly enjoyed them. They always bring back memories of my mum. She lived with us for her last ten years aged 80-90, and she loved it when I made these little soft bites for our Sunday tea.

I have spent a lot of time this week chatting to one or other of my boys. They are very good and keep calling to see if there is any progress in my various problems, and now at last I can tell them there is.

So now I will close and prepare to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 19

It has been a week of ups and downs but as this post is called Friday Smiles we will mostly concentrate on the ups. Knowing how much I love watching the sky, you won't be surprised when  I start with two photos I took on  Monday evening. For a short a while the sky was full of 'flying saucers' that caught the rays of the setting sun. They didn't stay around for long but at least I managed to catch these two on camera and even made one of them my Facebook header. I might manage to put one on here later too.

It hasn't been a very peaceful week as we have had three men here all week, stripping down the old paintwork and then painting the outside all the way around the house. It may not look very different in this photo, but it is all a bright shining white, and even all the railings on the fence and windows now have a new coat of glossy black paint. One man was sitting in the full sun painstakingly painting all the curls on our double gates and I said to him "You drew the short straw when you got that job". He grinned and said "I know, but it is better than sitting around at home". They have done a really good job and have even brought in a high power blower to clear all the dust and debris from behind our cupboards, and the paint dust where they sanded all the flakey paint off the walls. It is lovely to see the house looking so good again.

Today they came inside to paint the recesses around the windows and the insides of all the railings, so Chris went round first and took down all the roller blinds. These are just suspended from two hooks and they were due to come down anyway as they get very dusty over the winter. We always start the year by hanging them over the railings and hosing them all. Some will need to be restrung as well. But I knew that the one in my craft room often has a gecko hiding in it and sure enough as Chris started to move it, the little fellow darted out onto the window recess. I think he was bewildered when he couldn't find his home and he kept running up and down the wall. I took a quick photo of him through the fly screen netting but as I tried to get another one he suddenly slipped round the corner and all I got was his receeding tail.  I hope he found a new shelter for a while.

The cats are also a bit disturbed when there are strangers in 'their house'. So they tended to stay inside with us. Maybe they didn't like the smell of the paint (The black gloss was a bit pungent), as even in the evening when the men had gone home, they stayed in with us. So Tolly was happily curled up on a chair when he spotted that I had kicked my shoes off. He loves shoes and he pounced on one of mine and held on tight, eventually falling asleep while cuddling it. When I tried to retrieve it he got quite frantic and wouldn't let go, at least not until I rattled his food dish  in the kitchen and he had to come and investigate that!

I thought I'd show you my first completed project on my new laser cutter. I made a set of three double-layer coasters. Each one has two layers of different wood, glued together and sprayed lightly with a waterproof varnish. They are not perfect and I can't say whether the slightly unequal cutouts are due to a poor file, which I bought from an etsy store, or from the way I set it up, but I am still quite pleased with the result.

I had a phone call from the hospital in Almeria on Wednesday to say I have a consultation with the dermatology surgeon next Tuesday, to decide what they will do to my hand. I did get a call to go to the day surgery in the more local Huercal-Over hospital a couple of weeks ago and I was hoping they would remove the bad tissue from around the ulcer, but when the surgeon saw it he said he couldn't do it because they only do small cuts under local anaesthetic there, and this was too big. So he said I needed to go to Almeria hospital for a general anaesthetic and they would probably do a skin graft to cover it. Now I have to see whether the man in Almeria agrees so after Tuesday I will at least know what to expect next.

And to add to my fun, as I was eating a soft slice of bread Tuesday tea-time, my bottom denture suddenly snapped in two! I have had it a long time and knew that next time I would probably have to lose my last two teeth and have implants to hold the new plate, but I hadn't planned on doing so just yet. But fate has deemed othewise so now I am starting on a rather long journey of dental treatment, but I guess it will be a good thing when it is done. Urg!

I had intended to prepare this post this afternoon but I ended up chatting to my son Ben for a couple of hours instead. But that was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

And just as I started with two sky photos, so I will close with two as well. I took these tonight. I was sitting here preparing this post for tomorrow and saw the pink glow in the sky. So I grabbed my phone and ran out just in time to see this pretty sky. It rapidly darkened and became more red, and by the time I got back to my computer it had gone. But what  a lovely end to the day.

So now it is time to link up with Annie's Smiles over on her blog. See you there.

 

Friday Smiles 2024# Week 18

I am a bit late to the party this week. I usually prepare my blog on Thursday afternoon, but yesterday we did the monthly food shop in the morning, and after lunch I sat outside where it was hazy but warm, and read my book all afternoon. It was only at bedtime that I realised I should have been writing my blog. But I am ready to go now.

On Saturday it was a damp, slightly chilly morning but Chris went over to the plaza to watch the start of the Vuelta Almeria 2024. This is a big cycle race with lots of teams taking part, and that day the course started and ended in our village. At lunch time we walked over again and were in time to watch the presentations. There were coloured vests for the first man and first woman home, lots of medals, and each winner was also given a plaque and a big box of local vegetables. It was a good atmosphere and they all seemed to have enjoyed it. There were plenty of police to direct traffic while the road was closed, and ambulances standing by but as far as I know there were no accidents. The next leg of the competition was in Albox the next day. I did not get many good photos so I have made a 'dump collage' of some that the Town Hall posted on Facebook. 

That afternoon I was able to share in the funeral of a much loved sister-in-law via a live link.It was good to be involved even though I was unable to travel over to Wales to attend in person.

On Sunday I went to church as usual and when I got home I continued to make our traditional Sunday roast dinner, including some Yorkshire puddings. Chris called me to say they looked done but I said "No. They haven't finished rising yet". A short while later I went to check again and they had taken on a life of their own and looked as though they were trying to escape from the oven.  They tasted good too. (Apologies to those who have already seen this on my facebook page).

While at church a friend brought me a bag of bitter oranges to make marmalade. He had offered them the week before and I said I would have a look at them but it is way to late in the year. Normally I make marmalade in January or February. It turned out they were lovely looking fruit with good clean skin, but they were over-ripe, with the flesh drying away from the pith inside the skin. But as I had not been given any oranges earlier in the year, and my broken arm would have made cutting them up difficult anyway, I had not managed to make any marmalade this year, so I decided to use these and see how it turned out. I pressure cooked the skins as usual making them easy to cut, and I was surprised how much juice was in them. I enjoy stirring this pot of golden loveliness. It smells wonderful. 

Soon I had eighteen jars of marmalade which set well and tastes fine. It hasn't quite got the tang it usually has , and is darker because I had to boil it a bit longer to reach the setting point, but on the whole it was a sucess and, in my opinion at least, it is still tastier than any I can buy in the shops!

On Monday night we had been promised storms and were hoping for some more rain at last. The sky was dark but no storms seemed imminent, but around 9.00 it suddenly started. The lightening flashes were amazing and came every few seconds for almost an hour. But the thunder was distant and the rain, though heavy, didn't last for as long as we had hoped. I tried to take a photo of some of the lightening flashes but I don't have the sophisticated equippment needed for this so again I have made a collage of the photos shown on our local radio station's page. It was quite dramatic. (photo credit to Carli Tolman).

The rest of the week has ticked along rapidly and here we are at another weekend. I had a chat with son Tom in Denmark, but other than that it has been quite quiet.

This is my great-grandson Alfie, now aged 9. He took part in his schools cross-country event which involved four races over the past few months, and he won all four of them! Here he is with his overall winner's medal.

And here he is again with his two brothers Isaac and Reuben. They are a very sporty family, with both boys playing in the local boys club football teams where thier dad is one of the coaches, plus Isaac sometimes playing for Shrewsbury reserves and Alfie training with a Welsh league boys team. Little Reuben will be two in July and he is their biggest fan, watching all their games and shouting from the side line. It won't be long before he is joining a club too. He already has a good kick and loves having a ball to play with. This week Isaac's team won the Charity Cup, so they have both had a good week.

And now I must hurry over to Annie's Friday Smiles to link up with you all and see what has kept you smiling this week.