Rocking Your World 2019: Week 25

Thank you to everyone who visited and left encouraging comments last week. It is always lovely to hear from you. I don't know whether everyone has the same problem with Blogger as I do, but I no longer get notifications when someone leaves a comment, so I have to remember to go to my dashboard and check for new ones. That is why it sometimes takes a while for them to appear under my post. However, I enjoy hearing from you, and they do get seen by the next week!

So, this week of course, started with our choir concert. It was up in Albox - roughly a forty minute drive from here, so Chris agreed to be my chauffeur as I don't like driving less familiar roads after dark. It was held in the function room of a small hotel, and the charity we were supporting did a good job of selling tickets, so the room was full.

We did two forty minute sessions, including some old favourites from our repertoire like a medley from Les Miserables, and some new pieces including Bohemian Rhapsody which was quite ambitious, but was very well received.

David is a very good MD and knows how to get the best out of us. I don't know how much money was raised but it must have been a good sum with a raffle and the ticket money. Generally we invite a charity to organise a concert - venue, advertising, tickets and a raffle if they want one, and we just turn up and sing for free. It usually works quite well, and we do one Friends and family concert each year for our own funds. This concert was for an organisation called AUAN who have worked tirelessly over the past decade to regularise the paper work for people whose houses were deemed to be illegal, despite them having the correct paperwork! - and therefore freeing them from the fear of having their homes demolished. It has been a worrying time for so many people, but this organisation have managed to find a path through the bureaucracy, and are beginning to see the results now. They have to meet huge legal costs so we were happy to help them raise some much needed cash.

Since then the week has flown past. I did manage to get to the market on Tuesday, and I found the local cherries were down in price a little, so I bought two  and a half kilos to make some jam. The girl knocked an extra 30 cents per kilo off because I was buying a lot, so yesterday I made a dozen jars of jam. Half them are 'sold' on order all ready so I may make one more lot, but I'll wait until nearer the end of their season and see if they get even cheaper.

Of course the worst part is removing all the pips. It takes quite a while to stone that many cherries and it can get messy, but the jam is lovely so it was worth the effort.

I don't know is any of you also follow Virginia's blog called Rocking Your World, which I also link this post to along with Annie's Friday Smiles. Well last week, Virginia posted a picture of a plant that lives in her bathroom, and it suddenly shot up a long stem that eventually had a fairly insignificant little flower on it. Well I have one just the same (not the same plant, but the same behaviour).

Mine is a cactus and I thought I'd share it here. It sits by our window and the stem has been stretching up for several weeks. I watched with interest as buds started to form, but I needed to get right in close to see the tiny flowers when they finally opened. Its very pretty but you do have to look closely to appreciate it!

Chris and I each have our own space, mainly because we each have so much equipment, materials etc that we would need a barn to both fit in it. Also we like to listen to different music while we work etc, so this arrangements works for both of us. I have my craft room, and Chris has his 'office'. We both work in semi-chaos, but we nearly always know where things are. Chris has his computer desk and a second table under the window. He chooses to keep his blind down through the summer, but the windows open, and the cats have discovered this is a cool place to spend the morning. I was surprised to see both Charlie and Tango quite happily sharing the space this week, but when Paco jumped up there and saw the competition, he decided "two's company but three's a crowd", and promptly made off to find a different place to rest in.

This morning my computer decided to throw a wobbly, and after closing itself down, it refused to open again. So I am very grateful for a techie-minded husband who managed to get it up and running for me again.

And now for my Ta-dah moment. My blanket is finished. I love it, and my son does too. He saw it in progress when he came over on holiday last month. Another son, Ben, is coming over in July and he is hoping to be able to take it back for Jonathan. So here it is.

The pattern was called Early American inspired afghan, and the patterns all have their own symbolism so the designer, Lissa Conley, gave us this picture to explain what each section represents.

There was the option to have the wolves both facing to the right, or facing each other and I chose the second option. It was also my choice to use two alternative colours, with black as my main colour, and then I decided to use yellow for the moons. That was almost my undoing as it turned out to be quite a hassle, but I am glad I persevered with it. I am also glad that I managed, by sitting under the fan and doing a few rows each night, to finish it, as the weather is now very hot, in the mid-thirties by day, and I couldn't manage such a big, heavy piece of work for much longer. I shall be looking for small and simple items to work on now until the autumn.

I thought it had been hanging around for a while, and the dog has drooled on it, and the cats have sat on it, so since taking the above photo, I put it inside a single duvet cover and washed it in the machine on a gentle program. It came up really well, so fresh and bright, and I was able to pull it into shape and leave it to dry, so now it is all ready to parcel up for Ben to take back to its new home.

So now I just have two more photos of the night sky to share. Chris found the app on his phone and we were able to confirm that the planet I could see was in fact Jupiter. It was still visible this week, though a little lower in the sky so I took another photo of it. I don't know where the green came from?

As it was so big and bright, I also took another one of the full moon which turned out rather well.

So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World. Have a good weekend everyone.

Rocking Your World 2019; Week 24

Well here we are again, and I am glad to say I feel considerably better than I did last week. I still have a rather raw throat, which is a pain as I am singing in a choir concert tomorrow night, but as there are only four of us altos who can be there, I need to do my bit. But I feel better in myself, probably because I have stopped all the tablets, so I have tried to get a few things done this week. 

I knew I wouldn't be in church again on Sunday, so on Saturday I asked Chris to run me over to a friends house with some papers I wanted her to take for me. When we left her, Chris suggested we stopped off for some lunch before going home. I wasn't up for eating much, so I only had a snack and some rice pudding which features on every menu in Spain! But Chris had a good lunch which made up for some of the scrappy meals we have had while I was unwell. We sat outside on a shady balcony and from where I was sitting the scenery was beautiful. 

Chris is looking a bit grim, but he didn't know he was in my photo! You can just glimpse the Cabrera mountains between the olive trees, which this week have mostly been capped with light clouds. The red and yellow flowers in the foreground are lantana. They are often referred to as the Spanish flag flower because they have tiny yellow heads in the centre, and fiery orange/red ones around the edge. They are very attractive and make a good display, but they are aggressive growers and soon take over if not kept in check.

Here you can see some in our own little patch of garden. They are in urgent need of cutting back, but I am afraid neither of us have been up to doing much gardening this year. I took the photo really for the rose of course. I wanted to show it to my friend who bought me the plant when I was so poorly early in 2018. It was slow to get started, but this year it has been lovely.

I stayed at home again for the rest of the weekend and all day Monday, but on Tuesday I went to my friends house because it was the last meeting of our house group before we stop for the summer, and we were following it with a bring-and-share lunch, so I didn't want to miss it. We had a very good discussion for our second look at the Book of Revelations, and then the cool-bags were opened and food spread all around the kitchen. This is just some of it, and it was only for ten people! A lunch fit for a king.

My friend's house has a good size fly-free area, similar to ours, with a dining table in it, and we sat there to enjoy the food and have a good chat together. We usually have a couple more men in the group but they were unable to attend.

Most activities come to a stop now, as many folk who find the heat too much, return to UK for the summer. others are busy with family and visitors, and it's hard to find times for everyone to meet.

I saw this lovely photo of Mojacar on a tourism page recently. The pueblo sits on top of a hill and we can see it from miles away. The views from the top are great and we always think of it as being so high up, but when you see it like this, it is dwarfed by the Cabrera mountains behind it. Beyond the village, Mojacar Playa (beach) stretches for several kilometers, part sandy and part rocky, and very lovely.

The yellow flowers in the foreground are oxalis which grow wild everywhere around here, and usually bloom from March to May.

And now for a couple of memes that I spotted. The first is bit mean to all the lovely dads out there, but it made me smile.

I'd be the first to admit I have on occasion messaged my sons or grandees to explain what their abbrviations stand for, so this one gave me a chuckle too.

On occasion I have managed to take a fairly decent photo of the full moon with my little camera. I would have loved to take photography more seriously, but I left it too late to get started, and now I simply can't carry the equipment, and my hands are not steady enough to go without a tripod. But a couple of nights ago I took my rubbish out to the bin and noticed one very bright 'star'. There was about a half moon behind me, but this one spot was shining so brightly and Chris said it was a planet, not a star. Well, of course I wanted to get a photo. My efforts at taking stars before have failed. All you get it a distorted flash of light. But I tried anyway and this is what I got.

Nothing startling I know, but considering all I have is a little point and shoot camera with a fairly good zoom, I thought it was good enough. It shows it is certainly a planet, and from what I have read it is probably Jupiter.

Apparently last night we had a big thunder storm. Chris asked me if I had heard it but I slept right through it! We actually had some rain with it, though not enough to raise the reservoir levels I don't think. This morning the sky is blue again, but it smells fresh outside, and everything is sparkling.

And with that I will link up with Virginia on Rocking Your World, and Annie's Friday Smiles.