A Postcard A Day - Friday 5 May 2023 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely ladies, here we are again sharing our smiles for this week.  I've had a good week although I've tried to take it easy, there was lots to smile about. 

Let me start with my postcard:

It's a lovely map card of Minnesota. Minnesota is close to my heart as I had a dear friend there (now passed away) and I visited several times. But I don't remember ever having been to Itasca State Park.

Here is a better picture:

It reads:"Here 1475 ft above the ocean, the mighty Mississippi begins to flow on its winding way 2552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico."

The stamp is a beautiful yellow/orange gerbera flower. My favorite (Dutch national colour).

Being Dutch, I do love my flowers. I have bought two roses for my patio. (See Tuesday's blogpost). The pink one has already got some flowers on it:

Now that is definitely making me smile. Then yesterday I also got a flower on the yellow rose:

That makes me very happy. Yes, I have had lots to smile about.

It rained here a few days ago! Every one was very excited about the rain as it hasn't rained for at least 6 months if not more. Earlier this week i went to my plot to fill up the water containers with water from the asequia, (the Andalusian system of water canals that was started by the Moors and which is still in use). I then had to pump it up to my containers. I have two 500 litre containers with which I irrigate the land.

I had some help and here are my 'helpers' changing the pipework around as the pump was pumping the wrong way around. (a bit like when you put the vacuum cleaner tube in the wrong end).

I found that some parts of my plot had wild flowers (because it had rained):

And when I checked our aloe veras, I found that several of them were flowering:

On Wednesday our friends Kim and Andy came. Andy spent hours putting the last Ikea cabinet together :

Andy you are a star!!

This is what it looks like now:

They are really good quality, solid wood. I'm very pleased. 

Seen together with the unit he did last week:

The unit on the right looks a different colour. It's not. It's just the sunlight shining through from the patio.

I cooked Ras-al-hanout chicken with rice:

Very nice it was.

It has been King's Day in the Netherlands (King Willem Alexander's birthday) and the Dutch really go to town. The building that my mum lives in
was decorated too:

My cousin came to visit my mum and asked her to stand on the balcony and wave:

The green-white-green are the colours of Rotterdam.

Yesterday my Danish friends who live next to me, invited me to have lunch at the lake-side restaurant. 

I had duck confit:

It doesn't look like much on the plate but it was actually very nice.

In Andalucia they serve a 'chipito' after dinner. A complimentary liquor. Here they just brought us the bottles and some glasses so we could help ourselves!

There was Limoncello, a Bailey type cream liquor and on the right my bottle of anise.

The water in the reservoir is still very low, you can hardly see it.  We had booked a table outside on the terrace so we had a lovely view:

They are leaving tomorrow for France as they are going to walk the Camino de Santiago. I'm excited for them and I'll follow their progress on Facebook.

That is all from me today. I'm going to link up with Annie at A Stitch In Time for some more smiles.

Of course i will put some funnies at the end. (I don't have so many this week).

Enjoy your weekend,

Keep smiling!

Hugs,

Lisca