Rocking Your World 2020: Week 26

How time does fly by, and here's a real reminder of that for me .

0-49 in the blink of an eye!

Yes it only seems like a few years since my first son made his appearance and today he is celebrating almost a half-century. He and his wife are very happy with their move to Sydenham at the end of last year and enjoy being just a short ride away from the city. He is celebrating today with lunch from his favourite takeaway - the famous beigle shop in Brick Lane.

Our week started on Sunday, with what could have been a disaster as the Cabrera mountains were the site of a wild fire. Sitting on our porch we could see a small plume of smoke, that rapidly increased and caused a grey swirl to stretch all along the coast. We soon realised it was getting out of control when we heard the drone of helicopters and other small aircraft that scoop water from nearby reservoirs and drop it on the fire. The sirens of fire engines could be heard in the distance and as darkness fell the flames could be seen from our house. There was one heart stopping moment as it seemed to be dying down and then the flames flared up again, and ran straight down the side of the valley and back up the other side. According to the media, there were 50 firemen and twenty auxiliaries, plus twelve aircraft, all bravely battling against the wind, to get it under control. Military were drafted in with their vehicles to surround Turre in case the wind changed during the night and drove the fire down towards the town. I am filled with admiration for these men working in such scarey conditions. They did a fantastic job and by the early hours of Monday morning they had it all in control. Well done those men - and women of course!

We had exceptional rainfall earlier this year so everything grew very fast as summer approached, and now it is all tinder dry, so some fires are almost inevitable. The local authorities have brought in heavy machinery to clear all debris from the open plots within the villages, as a fire prevention measure.

Here are a few photos taken from our house.

The positive from this is that no-one from the public nor the workers was injured, and it proves what a well trained and hard-working team we have taking care of our community.

I am keen to start taking a short walk each day as I am getting used to sitting around at home and really need some exercise. So I got up a little earlier one morning and walked up through the village and back round on the perimeter road. Sadly my foot, which completely gave out on my previous walk, started to hurt again, and although it is not painful like it was the first time, I am very aware of it every time I stand up, so I won't be walking very much just yet.

While I was out I saw my favourite wild flower out in bloom. Every year this creeper covers the railings that fence off the rambla at the top of the village, and I don't see them anywhere else. They looked so lovely.

They look very pink here but they are actually more mauve. Unlike the white bindweed, these have leaves a bit like the very blue cultivated Morning Glory, that bloomed across the road from us until the fence was taken down and the land built on. I have tried to get them to grow on our back railings, but so far I have had no success. But I have collected a couple of seed heads so I can try again this year.

Next door's garden is getting a bit untidy. The owner has not been able to travel to make her usual Spring visit. She always calls in the workers while she is here, and has it all cleared. Some men did come in and clear part of it, and deepen the trenches around the fruit trees to help with watering them, but left unattended, it soon grows over again. On the area they cleared there is a ground cover weed that has spread very quickly and it too is covered in trumpet flowers, but these are much smaller, and they do have leaves like bind week. I guess they would be considered to be weeds, but I think they look really pretty bobbing around in the breeze, and the bees and other insects love them.

The other thing I noticed on my walk was all the fruit setting on the wild fig trees. It looks as though there will be a good harvest later.

My 'memory' on Facebook from a year ago, showed me the big potted palm we have in the front garden with a new crown of fronds growing from the centre. I wasn't really aware that this is an annual occurrence, but sure enough, there is exactly the same thing this year. The new fronds are soft to touch, but before long they will be hard and very prickly like the rest of the plant. I always try to water it from a distance because if I get too close, the leaf ends stab me through whatever I am wearing!

Our weather has been lovely most days, though it is a bit hotter than I would chose some afternoons, but there had been no rain forecast so I was surprised to wake up one morning to gray skies. I went out the front of the house to look around and on the horizon the sky was a hazy yellow where the sun was trying to burn through, and above that was a layer of grey cloud, and between the two you could see heavy rain falling not too far away.

As I stood there I caught the very edge of it as big warm drops of rain fell, so infrequently you could measure the distance on the ground between where they fell. It never came to anything more, and before long the sun was out.

The next morning it was grey again, and this time I was out the back of the house. We did have a very short shower, just enough to lay the dust, before the sun made it through again. The grey skies didn't deter the little birds though. There were plenty of them around. I think they all have babies in need of regular feeding whatever the weather.

My boys are frequently changing their profile picture on social media but I am very lazy about it so yesterday I decided to change mine and take one with my 'lock-down hair'. Selfies are not something I take very often but I had a go and managed one that I thought I could use. Just then Tango walked passed so I picked him up, but I soon found that taking a selfie while holding a cat was not going to be easy. So I called for backup and Chris came and took one for me. And that is the one I used for my profile.

I am soldiering on with my crochet project but for a little light relief I stopped and made this pair of coasters. I like the Celtic knot pattern and they were quick and easy to do, though a bit fiddly for the finishing off. I have a third one half made that I will go to when I need another break.

And finally I have been shocked by some of the photos on the news and social  media this week, of the careless and anti-social behaviour by a few folk, since lock-down in UK has relaxed. I am very aware that the majority of people are taking the situation seriously and proceeding with caution, but I really hope the reckless few do not ruin things for everyone else.

Throughout the pandemic we have had much stricter rules in Spain and we are expected to abide by them. This 'Royal Decree' was issued this week, and makes it clear that we will not be back to normal until a vaccine is found.

I have to say the masks are not pleasant to wear, especially as temperatures are rising, but with notices like this, you don't risk breaking the rules! And woe betide any visitors who try to as well.

And on that note I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and say Good-bye until next week.

Rocking Your World 2020: Week 25

Hi all. Today I am finally using the new Blogger for my post, having spent this week doing several trial runs (later deleted), to ensure I was inserting photos, videos and links correctly, and also resizing and positioning photos as I want them. It was obviously going to be possible but it took me a while and a few failures, to sort it all out.

I actually like the cleaner view as I am typing, so hopefully I will not have any more problems with it.

I have very few photos this week as I have had a 'computer week', which doesn't make for very exciting photos.  As well as working with Blogger, I have tried to master Open Office as a replacement for Publisher. It is nearly time for me to upgrade my computer as I still work in Windows 7 and it does not recommend upgrading to 10. When I do, Chris would like me to use open source programs but I have not been able to manipulate Adobe templates for scrapbooking in Gimp as we had hoped to, so I will probably end up paying for Photoshop on a monthly contract. (Chris will not have any Apple items in the house, so that is not an option). But it has been good trying all these things.

Having settled on keeping Adobe, I also joined a Design cuts group which offered free Photoshop tutorials all this week, and they have been very helpful. So, a lot of hours have been spent sitting here.

However I have had some time out in the sunshine too. Early this week we had two visitors in the garden. This little mouse was swimming frantically round and round the pool, seemingly unable to climb out. I didn't know mice were such good swimmers. Anyway Chris fished him out with the pool net and set him in a sunny spot in the green zone.

When I went back to see if he had gone, which he had, I spotted this little fellow on a branch of the oleander. I thought at first it was a lizard, but closer inspection, plus advice from my Wildlife Facebook page, I think it was a Moorish gecko. It has a longer tail and slimmer body than the usual geckos, but you can just about see the suckers on its feet that it uses to shoot up vertical walls. Lizards have more claw-like toes.

I have also spent a lot of time watching the birds. Every morning and evening the swifts and house martins have a feeding frenzy over the green zone. It was difficult to capture the real feel of their aerial show on my phone, but I had several attempts. I  spent another morning trying to edit something worthwhile out of one of them. Again Chris was able to find an open source video editor that was free, and after a lot of trial and errors, I got this one, and as I have mastered getting them to Blogger without uploading them to the internet first, I will add it here.

The house next door is a sparrow hotel, with loads of pairs bringing up their young in the tiny ventilation holes under the tiles. So the house martins nest in the eaves of another tall house just up the road from us. You can see the parents constantly flying in with food for their young and going off again for more. I stood and watched them for a while but they are too quick, and the nests are too dark to get really good photos. But these were my best two. You can just see the adult bird with its head in the nest in the first one.

And, of course, I am continuing with my crochet project. It is definitely a challenge but I am persevering with it.

It is a change for me to be working with cotton-based yarns, but I know I will return to my favourite acrylic DK as soon as it is cool enough to handle it. I stick with the same make as it has a wide range of colours, over 50 now I think, and is usually easily available online from UK. They are not posting internationally right now but I am sure they will again soon.

Recently they added five new colours to their range, and as I try to keep one ball of each colour in my stash, I wanted to buy one of each of these, but they sold out very fast. People have been asking for the purple for so long, so I think they all rushed out to buy them. And the orange and yellow are more gentle tones than their other very bright ones. So when I saw a different company had them back in stock I ordered one of each, plus one of the navy that I used up on my previous blanket project, and they came this week.

Chris took the parcel in and handed it to me with a gruff "Feels like more wool!", and of course he was right. But what tickled me most was its wrapping. As is usual, the wool was tightly packed in an organza drawstring bag, and this was inside a tough plastic posting bag. These are often grey but this one was bright yellow, and printed into the design were several of these signs.

How right they are. And it made me smile.

The wool is lovely too of course. I shan't be using it yet so it has joined the rest out in the garage, but I am glad to have brought my stash up to date again.

And now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking your World over at Celtic House.

P.S. Just a quick update on my neck fan which raised some interest when I showed it. It is very good, light-weight and comfortable to wear, and gives a gentle cooling stream of air. The heads can be rotated through 360º, and there are three speeds though I have so far only used the slowest one, plus various coloured lights, and the possibility to add drops of essential oils to them if you want to. I think they were a good buy. There are several makes available in Amazon and other sites I am sure.