Rocking Your World 2021: Week 22

It has been a quiet week here with rather less sunshine, lots of clouds and some rain. Sunday did its best to be nice, but despite being warm, it was too windy for our usual dinner outside.

Monday was the worst day of the week with steady, quite heavy rainfall all day and most of Sunday and Monday nights. It was still fairly warm but felt colder because of the rain and the animals were not impressed at all. They all looked out of the door and changed their minds. I liked this picture of Tolly looking so fed up, curled up on the telephone seat with his chin propped on a little paw. "I just want to go out and play, but I don't like all that wet stuff!".

But one thing that did like it was the flowers. My hibiscus are all out in flower and these two, one bright orange and one yellow, made a lovely splash of colour despite being covered in raindrops.

Tuesday was better so I managed to do some tidying up outside and potted up the flowers I had bought last week, and also some lovely sturdy geranium cuttings that my friend Chris gave me when we visited last week.

Chris also gave me a rather nice heavy metal climbing tower for roses or similar, so yesterday I suggested we visited another garden centre to look for a climbing rose. I found the one I wanted with lots of tiny red flowers on it, and we also bought a white flowering vine to put on the other side of the tower. I knew this as a Diplodenia, but apparently it is now called a Mandevilla flower. It is a tropical exotic and likes the sun, but it could be a challenge to keep it happy along with the rose. I am not sure how either will do in a large pot rather than in the ground but we will soon find out. It started to rain again just as we got home, so we will get them planted out later today or tomorrow.

A few weeks ago I was happy to see some flower buds forming on my little silk tree. I have watched them daily but they have taken a long time to develop. But today they are just beginning to open, showing a brighter red than I expected as the flowers on the parent tree were lilac, but maybe by next week they will be fully open and I will see their true colour.

I am going to risk showing a little poppet I made this week. No need to guess who it is for if you are a regular follower. It hasn't been posted yet but I am pretty sure neither of the parents see this blog. I wonder who recognises it. It is of course, Miffy, a cute little rabbit immortalised in children's books by Dick Brauna. He is Dutch so I know Lisca will have recognised him straight away. 

The books have a very simple text on each page and they were a favourite with my own children when they first started to read, and also with my little ones at nursery. I will have a couple of the books sent directly to their home once the parcel has arrived, so hopefully Miffy will be enjoyed by another generation of 'our tribe'.

The clouds parted around tea-time on Wednesday and when I went out to take my rubbish to the bin, I noticed an almost full moon rising through the still-blue sky. So I fetched my phone and took the opportunity to try out my new tripod and I was quite pleased with this picture that I took.

The garden centre that we went to yesterday is right on Mojacar Playa. Once again it was windy but not very sunny, but still quite warm. I had another go at taking video of the lovely lively sea, and this time I did a bit better, so I will try to add it on here. You can hear the wind whistling around the phone.

I find these sort of seas quite mesmerising and I could stand and watch them for ages. Chris had other ideas, so when I suggested a quick drink at one of our favourite cafés just across the road, he said we might as well stop and have lunch there which saved me cooking so it seemed like a good idea! I like this café because if I ask for 'té ingles' I get a pretty teapot of hot water, a jug of cold milk (that is a bonus as they often bring hot milk!), a pot of tea-bags including, black, red, and green teas, Early Grey, and their own choice of mint or chamomile, but I also get my own pot of PG tips! There is usually enough to get two cups of tea out of it, and we also get a small glass of fresh orange-juice, Chris gets a glass of water with his coffee, and a plate with two mini savoury cheese and ham rolls, two sweet dough balls, and a little bowl of nuts and seeds. That is standard with anything you order so it is always a good place to stop.

For lunch Chris had his usual of Tortilla francesca in a big baguette with salad and chips, and I had a 'Sandwich Mojacar' which turned out to be a triple layer of toast filled with ham, tuna, lettuce and tomato, and a fried egg, plus chips. All of that was fresh-cooked and cost a total of 10€ and we were well filled so it was a bargain.

As I said earlier, it was raining once we got home so I was busy in my craft room when I heard the doorbell. It was a surprise parcel, a large brown box that I soon found held my new mixer, which I wasn't expecting until next Monday - Wednesday. I have owned a Bamix, stick food mixer for many years and it was finally showing its age. The latest model is very similar to the original, except that it is red, not white like my old one, but the stand is much more compact and will take up less space on my table. It is an excellent mixer for many things, and very easy for me to use, but the best bit for me is the Slicy, an attachment that slices, chops and grates far more efficiently than anything else I have tried. It also handles small quantities which is usually what I want , and I find my larger food processor does not. It is a high end of the market appliance but if it works for me as well as the old one has done over the years, it will be money well spent.

And that is about it for me today so I will link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, before I ramble on any more.

Rocking Your World 2021: Week 21

Well I wonder what has made you smile this week. For me, what better way to start my post than with a beautiful baby; my Grand-daughter Aisling sleeping peacefully on her daddy's hairy knees!

And this little monkey is really a baby still too. Tolly is now one year old. I have read that ragdolls are not fully grown until 18mths -two years, so he still has some growing to do. He is already bigger and much heavier than my other cats but he is very light on his feet and very flexible, as you can see in this picture of him enjoying an afternoon siesta.

It doesn't look very comfortable to me, but he didn't move for hours.

At the weekend Chris and I did a short shopping trip to a local house and garden shop and then a garden centre. We went to look for something to make our front wall a little bit higher and chose some green panels, really designed for edging flower beds, but they were the most suitable thing they had. So during the next couple of days, Chris fixed them to existing metal rods and wires that used to hold a band of plastic netting. He only had to cut one panel for the end piece, to accommodate the slightly higher stone post. It took more than we had estimated so he had to pop back and buy another pack of panels! 

But it now looks fine from both our garden side, and out on the road and it gives us more privacy when we use the pool and then shower. Before, a tall person could see over the wall, but now even they would have to stand on tip-toes and make a point of looking in.

It was finished on the hottest day we have had so far, so we both decided to jump in the pool. The water was on the chilly side to get into but it was fine once we got used to it. We each took a photo of the other and then I photo-shopped them together to make this one!

                                        

After shopping for the fencing we went on to the garden centre so that I could look for some geraniums to go in our three-pot stand on the front porch. I did find three lovely ones, all a bit different from each other, and we also chose a blue hydrangea, and a very pretty pink alstromeria. They sat in a box on our porch for a day but then I did get them potted up, and they are looking lovely.

Last week I shared a little yellow daisy that had beaten all odds and bloomed on an arid piece of paved path. Well, while I was gardening I found another little surprise. Its little face was looking up at me and I just had to smile. I guess it was again 'planted' by a bird, or just fell from the rubbish when we cleared away the winter pansies and violas. How sweet is that?

I hadn't really been paying much attention to this plant which is one of the more exotic ones in the garden, but I suddenly noticed it had three flowers opening. It is strelizia nicolai, a member of the bird of paradise flower family. Though not as beautiful perhaps as the more common orange and purple bird of paradise flower, it is non the less very striking. The flowers are large with a black/purple lower petal, white inside petals and a pretty pale blue tongue. They are distantly related to the banana tree and the leaves are very similar to that.

On Wednesday we had a lovely day. We visited some very good friends, Chris and Phil. We haven't been able to see them for nearly a year. They made us a lovely lunch and we were able to sit outside to eat it. I took over a lemon meringue pie made with lemons from our tree. After lunch Chris and Phil did their usual disappearing act off to the bar for a few beers, leaving Chris and I to chat to our hearts content, and generally put the world to right! We were so busy chatting that I forgot to taken even one photo. Sadly they are hoping to return to UK by the end of the year, as Chris has major health problems and need to see consultants that speak the same language as her!

I shall really miss them when they go.

Yesterday I went to Turre for some quick shopping. It was a strange day, hot and sunny but quite windy with a chilly bite in the wind. As usual I took what we refer to as 'the back road' to Turre. It is less heavy traffic-wise, and much more scenic than the main road. I noticed that the campo is covered with clouds of yellow, which have replaced the pink and purple flowers that are often seen at this time of year. The yellow is wild broom, and it flourishes in this rather dry soil. Most of this is the common variety with small, not very significant flowers, but there are so many of them that it just looks like a sea of yellow. Occasionally there is a shrub with the larger flowers often seen in gardens back in the UK. I used to have one myself. I stopped to take a few photos because they looked lovely waving gently in the breeze. I don't think the photos do them justice but here are a few.

There was a small plant centre near to where I parked the car in Turre, and I stopped to buy this pretty hanging basket of petunias. Their colours really shone out from a display of mainly pink and purple ones. I have removed the plastic hangers because I find it is mostly too windy for hanging baskets around us. But I like petunias. As long as you dead-head them regularly they will flower for a long time, and these ones were unusual and eye-catching.

And before we leave the garden I was surprised to see a little yellow daisy flower on top of my 'pin-cushion' cactus. This has the fiercest spines on it and I can't touch it even to remove dead leaves that blow onto it. It flowered for the first time last year, but I am sure it was much later than this. It is on a little strip of land between our front yard and the garage forecourt, and we planted the silk tree at the end of it, so it has been watered regularly all year. Maybe that is why it has started flowering.  They are only quite small flowers, which was a bit disappointing as some cacti have very impressive blooms, and they close up as soon as the sun moves off them. But it does look as though there may more to come this week.

I don't often post funnies but these seemed particularly pertinent. The first one because I have known people refer to me as the cat woman!

                                   

And by now you all know I love all the creepy crawlies in the garden, and I think my favourite is the preying mantis. So I am sure at some time I have mentioned that they are very useful in the garden for eating unwanted pests, but they are also cannibalistic, and after mating the female will bite off the head of her mate, and often eat him. Which explains why these two really made me chuckle!

And now I think it is time to link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.  You are welcome to join us and share what has made you feel happy and grateful this week.