A Postcard A Day - Friday 9 February 2024 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely peeps,

Here I am again on Friday to collect smiles from the past week and then share them at Annie's at A Stitch In Time. But first I'd like to show you a postcard I received not that long ago.

I love street art and I always look out for it when I'm in an unknown city. This postcard comes from Germany and the sender told me she had found this 'Angel' on a wall in Düsseldorf. It seems to be spraying its own wings. I like it a lot. It says: artist unknown. Until I found an old article from 2017 with the same image:

A wall project from the art advanced course

January 3, 2017

We students in the advanced art course were offered the opportunity to design an exterior wall at Bäckerstrasse 6. The wall is located near the Rhine and is constantly sprayed by sprayers. The owners of the house were looking for ways to prevent illegal spraying of the wall and asked Mr. Steiner whether the wall design could be used as a topic for practical work in art class. We then created various colored designs that take into account the location of the house in the old town and near the Rhine. Two of the designs (see photos) were selected by the homeowners, one of which will be realized on site during the Easter holidays next year.

Haseena, Lk Art Q1

One of the photos was the above angel.

The stamps are great too:

The squirrel stamp is an 85 cents stamp for a standard letter up to 20 grams. The additional 10 cents brings it up to the tariff for sending to Europe. 

I'm still envious that from Germany it cost only 95 cents to send mail to another European country and we in Spain have to pay 165 cents!

The yellow flower is the Winter Aconite, Eranthis hyemalis, (Winterling in German).

By the time the winter aconite is in bloom, there are usually only two other plants to accompany it: the snowdrop (Galanthus spp.), a small bulb with white flowers, and willow catkins (Salix spp..). Depending on the year and conditions, winter aconite can begin flowering as early as January (in southern Europe) and as late as May (in Siberia and Canada).

That the winter aconite blooms so early is not surprising, because it has a remarkable ability: it melts snow! Indeed, the plant has stored, in its small tuber, a surplus of energy which it uses to heat its immediate environment. It does this to free itself as quickly as possible from ice and snow.

The effect of this “internal heater” is very visible when a light layer of snow returns a few days later to whiten everything. The winter aconite quickly pierces this white carpet; each plant melts a small personal snow-free circle. The effect is stunning: yellow flowers on a background of white snow. If the snow comes again and again, as it does some springs, winter aconite melts it every time. (From the Laidback Gardener).

Isn't that amazing!

Now, a little bit about my week: 

Saturday I had a fellowship meal and Bible study at my house (see my Tuesday blog), and on Sunday at the church we were saying goodbye to a couple who were moving to Barcelona, and we also had a bring-and-share meal.

Here we are praying for the couple.

Then we pushed away the chairs and out came the trestle tables and the food:

Above were the cakes (I had made chocolate brownies).

I had also made a trifle. I had left the whipping of the cream until the very last so here is the trifle without the cream:

Here we all are at the table (I'm in the picture too as I didn't take this photo):

The rest of the week passed without doing much. I went to Pilates once and my back pain has come back again, so no more Pilates for me for a while. I'm booked in for another massage at the physio today (Friday, but I'm writing this on Thursday evening).

Kate shows us many a beautiful sky, but this week I have one too. Taken from my window a few evenings ago:

That is all from me this week. I will show you some funnies at the end.

Have a lovely weekend,

Keep smiling,

Lisca

I've shown this one before, but it still makes me smile (and sing):

This next one is not funny really. Not funny that people need instructions to fry bacon, and not funny that bacon has so many other ingredients other than pork (water, sugar, salt, milk powder and maple syrup). I wouldn't buy it!