Regalos de España

My sweet sister, Debbie, brought back a couple of gifts for us from her recent trip to Spain. My gift is the cutest wine bottle apron. It is made to look like the traditional Flamenco dancers costumes of Sevilla, Spain. It is absolutely adorable. She brought David a pack of playing cards. The picture on the front of the cards is of a bull fighter. Ronda, Spain is well known for the beautiful bull ring there. The cards are different from most we see here in this country as you can see in the last photo. Thank you Debbie, you are so thoughtful!

wine bottle apron

wine bottle apron and playing cards

showing are the "king" cards, the remaining cards of the deck are in a stack with the front side showing.

from the left to the right I "think" they are spade, diamond, club and heart, however the spade looks more like a sword and the heart doesn't look anything like a heart

now here is the funny part, check out the "queen" card in the middle! The cards we would call queen are of males on a horse. Showing are the "king", "queen" and "jack", perhaps they call them something else in Spain.

Caught in the Act

We hung four bird houses a few weeks ago and had not seen any signs of birds occupying them. On Saturday we both worked outside all day and I kept seeing an Eastern Blue Bird flying back and forth to one of the bird houses. I could never see it actually go inside but it would fly there and land on the little perch, sit for a few seconds then fly away again. This went on over and over. Finally I walked over to the empty lot next to our lot and just stood there watching for a while. Sure enough the little bird came back and was going in and out of the bird house. At one point it sat inside with just its head peeking out and I felt it was time for the camera. Sorry to say the photo I managed to get was not the most flattering but I did catch it in the act of actually going in the birdhouse. I hope the other houses are as active. I want them all full!

Tiny Turtle

Look what I found today! I spent some time weeding my flower gardens and was putting up my gloves and tools when I saw this little guy. He is tiny! I have never seen one this small out in the wild before. I picked him up and he quickly withdrew into his shell and took his dear sweet time in poking his head out again for me to take some pictures. I put him in one of my gardens and after he felt safe enough he took off. I have never seen a turtle move as quickly as this one does, nothing slow about him! I don't know if he'll like staying in the garden or not but for now that is where he is. I hope he will hang around.

this will give you some idea of his size, slightly larger than a quarter

Simple Pleasures

Over the years I have become disgusted with how unflavorful fruit is these days. It seems everything is genetically or chemically altered, grown to be bigger and prettier but has no taste whatsoever. Sometimes I crave the taste of a small, sweet, ripe strawberry but most of what I can purchase is huge, partially green and no flavor. I always purchase organic when it is available but even then the taste is not as flavorful as I would like. Well one day this week I saw some tangeloes in the grocery store and bought one. I didn't want to buy more than one since I wasn't sure how it was going to taste. I just finished eating it and to my surprise it was absolutely delicious! It was juicy and bursting with wonderful orange flavor. I savored every single bite. It is those simple pleasures that make life so grand.