Friday Smiles 364, but a first for me

Hello Ladies, I thought I would join you for the first time, We have just finished our second week of lock down, it hasn't been too bad, we are waiting, hopefully for this bad weather to change so we can start on the jobs around the garden.

After seeing Elizabeths garden I thought maybe I you would like a walk around my garden in Spain. This what I call Tthe cabbage, it started out very small, about twelve years ago.

It is pretty big and we are worried it will pull the wall down so when we are actually allowed out of captivity!! I'm afraid it will have to come out. I will be very sad as I really love it. This is one of two babies that Steve is growing for me, we took them off the main plant about 18 months ago so we will replace the big one with one of these.

This is the Bird of Paradise, I do love it, we did have a giant Yucca there when we moved in but it's roots started to push up the floor tiles so unfortunately it had to go, it started life really small in a pot, it took two men to pull the roots out!

You might noticed the walls behind are covered in stone, I did it with Steve's help, mixing the cement etc, also the bricks around the gate, Steve made a wooden form and a paper plan, he cut them all to fit and I cemented the bricks in place, when it was dry we took the wood away and, a with a big sign of relief it stayed in place.

Our front garden is just gravel and fruit trees, we have Orange, Lime, Pink Grapefruit, Lemon and here you can see the Kumquat, It's quite a young tree, maybe only four years old, the old one was near the pool but grew so big we had to take it out, the old tree had so many fruit on it I would fill shopping bags up and send them round to friends to make marmalade. I waiting to make these last few into marmalade when I can get enough sugar.

This our pool. it's filthy at the moment with all the rain we've had bringing down sand and dirt with it, we have to wait for it all the settle to the bottom before it can be cleaned, we are hoping for good weather so we can start to swim every day to get some exercise as we can't leave the house.

The mosaic behind the pool I'm quite proud of, it took me ten months to complete, it's two metres high and twelve metres in length.

I took a photo of the beach where we live to give me some ideas. I started by roughly drawing in the palm trees and when they were finished I started on the islands and boats before filling in the sky, sea and sand. We used old pool tiles for the sea and sky, the pool people would leave any spare ones behind when they finished and so we would go around the empty villas at night to find more, you can imagine how many we needed! for the sand we used some floor tiles.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend, after our DIL sent a video of what to do with your shopping after you bring it home I will most likely be spending time cleaning my food packaging so no chance of boredom here LOL Keep Safe, Jan x