Rocking Your World 2021: Week 5

I am feeling quite upbeat today, maybe because the sun is shining. Our outside thermometers are showing 22º in the shade and a whopping 34º in the sun! I have just hung out a long line of washing which I am sure will be dry in an hour or so. Sorry if I am making my UK friends jealous, but this post is about what we are grateful for, and I sure am grateful for warm sunny days in January. Although we moved out here in October  2008, it is now exactly twelve years since we got the keys to our little villa in Los Gallardos, and our first few days here, we had very similar weather.

Sunday was quite bright with a mixture of sun and cloud, so I decided to walk the perimeter of our village, which is as far as we are allowed to go right now. According to my fitbit it took approximately 4,000 steps and was just under 4Km, so that is the extent of our confinement. As I have been a bit of a couch potato while it was so cold and windy, it was far enough for me this time. I was on the lookout for some signs of spring, but everything is only just waking up. The one thing I did see was the acid  yellow flowers of oxalis which grows in profusion over any open ground.

The bees were happy to see it. Several were hovering around this patch and burrowing into the flowers for their nectar.

The winds had settled down a bit which is good as they can be quite cold even when the sun is out, but they were still blowing hard higher up and they brought in this amazing cloud formation over the Cabrera mountains. It looks almost like a big black bird swooping in over up, but I prefer to think of it as angel wings.

On Monday a friend, who has supplied me with bitter oranges from her tree for the last few years, to make my marmalade, rang me to say that they had pruned their tree hard this year so only had about a dozen fruit but I was welcome to them if I wanted them. I still have quite a lot of last year's marmalade on my shelves as most of my sales outlets have dried up, and I have only sold a few jars to friends, but a dozen oranges is just enough to make one batch so I said "Yes please". They dropped them off at our gate on the way to the shops, and I set to and made a dozen jars of marmalade.

It looks so lovely when it is first made, so bright and clear. As it ages it gets much darker and the flavour matures. I actually like it like that, but as a diabetic I have to limit how often I eat it, otherwise it would be on my morning toast every day.

My last visit to the bigger supermarkets was over a fortnight ago, before this hard lock-down was announced. In Lidls I bought myself a little pot of three hyacinth bulbs. They take me back to childhood. My sister and I almost always had a bulb sitting on a glass support full of water so we could watch its roots grow, and I have planted a few most years since then. Here they are not a local plant and Lidls is the only place I have seen them. They do not do well in the garden, but if I do manage to get a pot, I always plant them out after they have flowered in the hope they may come up the next year. When I bought them this year, they were three bulbs in a very small pot, and they were just beginning to show a tight bud from each one. Within days they had stretched their stems and started to open.

I put a small stake in the centre as I thought they would soon become top-heavy, and even so I have trouble keeping them upright. They started off very, very pale pink, almost white, but they have gradually got darker.

This week I found that all three were producing a second head of flowers, hidden deep inside the leaves. I don't think I have ever had that before.

The first heads are fully open now and they are so pretty. I have them in the kitchen as that is where I spend more time, and I don't think they would like having the fire on each evening in the sitting room. When I get up each day, the kitchen is full of their scent. I know they won't last for very long, but when I have to cut them off I will have a second round of flowers to look forward to, so they will have given me pleasure for quite a few weeks.

So the rest of the week has ticked by. Several days we have been able to eat our lunch out on the porch, enjoying this lovely sunshine, and usually ending up snoozing out there before the evening chill creeps in!

I have chatted to some of the boys, read another book and made two more squares for my blanket. As all the squares are the same pattern, just different colours, I thought it would be nice to have a second project running alongside it. So today I have ordered some rather special yarn to make myself a cardigan. Online buying from UK, which has been my usual route, has become too expensive and a bit uncertain until all the new rules about taxes and custom duties is sorted out, so I spent a long time browsing the net until I found a Spanish shop stocking the yarn I wanted. So I am hoping I don't have to wait too long for delivery.

Last night there was a big full moon. I didn't get out with my camera until it was getting quite low in the sky with a few wisps of cloud crossing it, but I took these two photos, one straight after the other, just using slightly different settings on the camera.

And finally I have, of course, a few sky photos to show you. They are all so lovely, so even if they are similar, I have to keep taking pictures of them. The last one was quite different but very beautiful. I may have to make it my header for a while.

Now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and then I must go and finish making our lunch so we can eat it outside before we lose the sun.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 4

Well we have all survived another week, and it has been a very pleasant week here. We have had plenty of sunshine, though the days are short and the evenings chilly, but I have been grateful for the times we have been able to sit out on the porch, even eating our lunch out there on some occasions. The sun isn't guaranteed, and yesterday was grey though the promised rain didn't come. Today it is blowing a gale that nearly swept me off my feet when I went out to feed the dogs. The government have issued warning of coastal danger with 3 metre high waves. I'd love to observe it - from a safe distance of course,(I have great respect for the power of the sea), but we are still confined to the village.

One thing that has made me smile is our furry friends. They seem to play musical chairs - or beds - and keep moving around. The dogs beds are on the patio behind our chairs and when I turned round on Wednesday I found Tolly had taken over Foxy's bed, and Foxy was sitting in the corner, apparently unwilling to claim it back. At least she was sitting in a ray of sunshine.

A few minutes later when I look, Foxy had moved to Kim's big bed, and Kim was laying on the tiles between them, but he would certainly have claimed his back if he wanted to lie on it!

Another thing that makes me smile is our little lemon tree. 90% of our land is tiled so we have few places to grow anything in the ground, but right outside my kitchen door there is a small square where a different tree had once stood, and a few years ago we bought a tiny lemon tree to plant there. It flourished and is now well established. I see it every day as I feed the dogs just under it. Yesterday I noticed there were new buds and the odd blossom on it. It always fascinates me as it is the only tree I know that can have buds, blossom, baby fruit, developing fruit, and ripe mature fruit on it all at the same time. Here is a collage of photos I took all on the same day, to show you what I mean.

I have kept myself busy this week in my craft room and am very happy to say that I have finally finished clearing my desk. I now have doubled my working space which is wonderful.

It may not look very cleared, but believe me it is a huge improvement. The green basket on the left, was full and overflowing with stamps and dies that needed to be sorted and filed away. Some had never been used, and others had, but had not been put away. It was a mammoth job and I am determined to clear up after each project is finished this year. That's the plan anyway!

The green basket is now empty, and propped up against the wall so I don't start filling it up again. So here's a quick tour of the rest of my room. 

Up above my desk is the little shelf where I keep a few essentials ready to hand, and I also use it put projects on to dry etc. Above it I still have the old mirror that I decorated and the lovely card that my sister made for my birthday last year.

If I swivel my chair a quarter turn I see the rest of my desk space where my two most important pieces of kit live - that's my big shot die cutting machine and my Silhouette Cameo electronic cutter.

Another quarter turn and I am sitting at  my computer desk. It is very handy to have an office chair that lets me roll between these three spaces without getting up! Above the computer is my notice board with the recently made calendar that helps me plan holidays etc. with the boys when they ring me. And to the left of the computer are my two stacked printers. The lower one is an A4 black ink laser printer, and the big one above it is a flatbed injet colour printer that allows me to print my 12"x 12" album pages.

The rest of the room is shelves of boxes that house all my stash. As you can see I am really quite organised in there, and I like a tidy space to work in, so I am very happy to have sorted the desk area out. Since it was done I have finished two projects but they are not anything I can share yet.

And that is about it for this week. The days pass so quickly. I have managed to do lots of washing and dried it all outside which is always a blessing. 

I have had long phone calls and video calls with the boys, and with my sister, which is uplifting for both sides.

I have read two books on my Kindle while relaxing outside, or in bed. And the evenings have been spent watching TV - some good and some very bad! - while doing my crochet, and feeling cosy in front of the fire

The number of virus cases in our village is falling again and that makes me very happy. The Town Hall have authorised the lorries to drive round in the night, disinfecting all the streets and bin areas, and constantly issue messages of encouragement on Facebook, ending with 'together we will get through this'. It is good to be part of such a caring community.

So I will leave you with two sky photos. Neither were very dramatic, but both were so pretty. Then I will link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, and go and see whether Chris is wondering whether there will be any dinner today!