A Postcard A Day - Friday 9 July 2021 - Friday Smiles

 

Hello lovely ladies! Here I am again with some smiles. Whatever life throws at us, we continue to make lemonade if you get my meaning. Actually, with this heatwave, lemonade is literally what we want.

I have a very unusual card to show you. It is the Ladybird Cinderella story. I used to read this to my son (who is now in his mid forties). 

The unusual bit about this postcard is, is that it is made of wood (Plywood?). Take a look yourself:

It was sent to me by someone called Michelle who lives on the island of Guernsey. This is one of the islands in the British Channel, near the coast of France. For those who don't know where Guernsey is:

Here is a satellite photo:

The island on the left is Guernsey. My husband was born on the island and lived there as a child, as his mother (my mother in law) is a Guernsey woman. People from Guernsey are called Sarnians. The ancient Romans named the island Sarnia. (No, not Narnia).

The stamps are beautiful. (Thank you Michelle). The one on the right even says: 'Happy Postcrossing'! 

 

The one in the middle is a green finch and the stamp on the left is a black and white photo of the British royal couple. It is from a series of stamps  50 Years Royal Couple.

I've had a good week, although it has been very hot. Monday my friend needed to get certain patio chairs and I accompanied her on a trip to Granada (one hour and a half by car) to try and find what she had in mind.

The trip was successful and we rewarded ourselves with coffee and cake. The pastry we had is a Granada speciality called Pionono (I misspelt it on my collage). It is named after Pope Pio the ninth (In Spanish Pio Nono). I wrote about it in my previous blog post.

Saturday was a quiet day and we didn't do much as it was so hot.

Sunday was even hotter (42 degree C or 107 F). We watched our usual two church services. One of them had a virtual communion. So I poured out two little glasses of Port by ways of wine and a Dutch dry biscuit (Knappertje) was the bread. It was very beautiful.

The gym has shut for the summer (too hot) and my friend and I go walking on the days that we would have gone to the gym. On the way are about ten exercise contraptions, so at 8 am we start with those. Her husband and dog come along too. We usually walk about 4,5 km.

Because it is so hot that we keep all the doors and windows shut, we forgot to shade the plants out on the patio. Some of them got severe sunburn. (Hubby's gooseberry)

Tuesday evening we went to see a friend in the village who has just started with chickens. We wanted to see hers as hubby is also making a chicken coop.

Wednesday morning we went walking again. I showed my friend where the capers grow and showed her the magnificent flower. Isn't it beautiful?

I'm also making Kombucha again. I do a second fermentation with raspberries (defrosted). I have tried many fruits but this is our favorite.

Yesterday we went to see the oncologist again. For 5 or 6 weeks in a row, hubby's platelets were too low to have chemotherapy. Again, today, his platelets had not gone up. As the chemo was really preventative, the docs have decided to stop the chemo as it seems to be doing more harm than good. He will be referred to a hematologist to check if there is some underlying problem with the blood and of course they will keep a close eye on him with tests and scans, but for now life can go back to a bit of normality. No wonder he is smiling!

The other smile is the fact that we have now ordered our chickens. Five chickens, all different. We start with those and see which ones we like best. They will take about two weeks to arrive. I'll keep you posted on that.

I will post some funnies at the end so you can be smiling too.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend (Bear a thought for us as temperatures are going to hit 40 again this weekend!)

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 6 July 2021 - T for China, port and the pòpe

 

Hello lovely ladies, I have some unusual postcards to show you today, both from the People's Republic of China.

The first one is this:

Bronze sword of Gou Jian, King of Yue.

Later spring and autumn period.

Length: 55.7 cm, width: 4.6 cm. The sword is covered with elegant lozenge shapes and partly inlaid with turquoise, a glazed glass beads. The blade edge, cast after the ridge portion, contains a higher proportion of tin, increasing its sharpness, while the ridge, cast with a higher content of copper, has greater resilience. The sophisticated technique that went into producing this sword, still in perfect condition, continues to be studied. The eight characters on the sword read: The sword made by Gou Jian, King of Yue, for his personal use. 

Unearthed from Wangshan tomb 1, Jiangling, Hubei Province, 1965.

What an amazing sword! Here is what Wikipedia writes:

In 1965, while an archaeological survey was being performed along the second main aqueduct of the Zhang River Reservoir in Jingzhou, Hubei, a series of ancient tombs were discovered in Jiangling County. A dig started in the middle of October 1965, ending in January 1966, eventually revealing more than fifty ancient tombs of the Chu State.

More than 2,000 artifacts were recovered from the sites, including an ornate bronze sword, found inside a casket together with a human skeleton. The casket was discovered in December 1965, at Wangshan site #1, 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the ruins of Ying, currently called Jinancheng 纪南), an ancient capital of Chu.

The sword was found sheathed in a wooden scabbard finished in black lacquer. The scabbard had an almost air-tight fit with the sword body. Unsheathing the sword revealed an untarnished blade, despite the tomb being soaked in underground water for over 2,000 years. 

The stamps are really colorful. The stamp with the sailing ship is from 2013. But I can't find the other one with the flowers.

The second postcard also comes from China. It is a photo from 1936 of  Cai Yuan-Pei at the State Music School (now Shanghai Conservatory of Music) after planting a pine tree in April 1936.

Cai Yuanbei was a Chinese educator, Esperantist, president of Peking University, and founder of the Academia Sinica. He was known for his critical evaluation of Chinese culture and synthesis of Chinese and Western thinking, including anarchism. At Peking University he assembled influential figures in the New Culture and May Fourth Movements.

Cai Yuanbei was frustrated in his efforts to remodel the national system of education to resemble the French system, but in 1927, he co-founded the National College of Music, which later became the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and in April 1928, he helped to found and became the first president of the Academia Sinica. He and a wide circle of colleagues founded the China League for Civil Rights which criticized the national government and Chiang Kai-shek for abuse of power. The situation worsened, however; the League could not attain the release from jail of Chen Duxiu, Cai's former dean at Peking University, for instance. In June 1933, the Academia Sinica's academic administrator and co-founder of the League, Yang Quan, was shot and killed in the street in front of the League's Shanghai offices. After a period of shock and reflection, Cai retired from public view in a statement denouncing the political repression of the Nanjing government.

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, partly because of declining health, instead of accompanying the national government to Sichuan, Cai moved to Hong Kong. He lived there in seclusion until his death in March 1940 at the age of 72.

Cai advocated the equal importance of five ways of life - "Virtue, Wisdom, Health, Collective, and Beauty" (德、智、體、群、美) - core values that are still taught in schools today in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. He was also a proponent of women's right to divorce and remarry, and strongly opposed foot binding and concubinage that were widely practiced in China at the time.

The stamps are gorgeous.

 The one in the middle is from a series called Springe, Summer, Autumn, Winter. 

I assume the stamp on my postcard is Spring (But I'm not sure).

The stamp on the right is very beautiful. It comes from a series Journey To The West.

China Post issued on March 30 a set of four stamps, which visualize stories from the popular 16th-century novel Journey to the West. The whole set is priced at 5.40 yuan (79 US cents).

The classic literature was written by Ming Dynasty author Wu Cheng'en. He reproduced the accounts of Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang who traveled from the imperial capital Chang'an (now Xi'an) to the western regions (in today's Central Asia and India) for obtaining Buddhist sacred texts.

The new stamps are designed by young artist Li Yunzhong who employs the traditional ink-brush technique of gongbi (meticulous depictions) with vivid colors.

Today is Tuesday, when I like to visit Elizabeth and Bleubeard for the T-Party. All I need is a beverage. Well, I have always got a few of those!  Like this one. 

It is of course a bottle of Port. It is practically finished and I want another one, but I can't remember where I bought it. We don't have liquor stores here and I buy all my alcoholic drinks in the supermarket. I have this photo on my phone, so I can look for it when we go shopping in one of the three supermarkets that we frequent.

On Friday my Danish friend and I drove to Granada (an hour and 20 minutes on the motorway) as she wanted a particular type of patio chair. 

This store (Jysk) is a Danish store.

We eventually found them and we sat down for a well deserved cup of coffee:

The remnants of little pastries are visible. They are Piononos, a speciality of Granada:

Piononos are small pastries traditional in Santa Fe, a small town adjacent to the city of Granada, Spain. A pionono has two parts: a thin layer of pastry rolled into a cylinder, drenched with different kinds of syrup which give the pionono a sweet and pleasant texture,  and a toasted crown that pretends to represent the silhouette of the cylindrical head of Pope Pius Ninth (Pio Nono in Spanish) 

(Pope Pius IX in 1862)

hence the name of pionono. It is typically eaten in one or two bites.

It is very hot at the moment. This is not unusual in southern Spain of course:

Indoors it is 27 degrees C (80.6 F) and outside 42 (107.6 F)! Fortunately it is very dry here.

I'm going to leave you with a photo of a facade of a winery in Italy:

That is all from me today. I hope you will all join me in visiting the T-Party.

Take care, stay safe,

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 2 July 2021 - Friday Smiles

 

Good morning lovely ladies,

The weekend has started and I hope it is nice weather in your part of the world. Where I am in southern Spain, it's pretty hot, but we're used to it. But I heard that in Canada and parts of the US there is a heatwave. Please stay cool and calm and drink plenty of water.

I have two postcards to show you this morning and they are both from Russia and they are both drawings and they are both pretty ladies.

The first one is one of those adult colouring images. As you can see I haven't gotten round to colouring it.

It is by artist Ella Makina and is entitled 'Lovely Garden'. She is a designer, illustrator according to her Instagram account. I can't find out any more about her.

The stamps are gorgeous and I hope looking at the Kremlin in the snow helps you to cool down a bit.

The second postcard  is entitled 'White Irises' and was drawn by Olga Isaeva.

She is an artist in St Petersburg. Her portfolio is impressive. I have found a few other artworks by her. Have a look at these:

This squirrel-like creature is called Fenglog.

This one is entitled 'Tarot Judgement'.

And this is 'Amethyst Elf '.

The image on the postcard is called 'White Irises' and one of the stamps features irises as well.

Although they are not white but yellow.

Now a bit more about me and my life here in Spain. Last Thursday, hubby's platelets were too low to have his chemotherapy, but he did get his second covid jab. (Moderna). It made him feel tired on the second day. So we had a quiet day, just relaxing.

On Saturday he was feeling his good old self and I found myself doing what I love most: baking. I baked a custard tart, a Greggs cheese pastie and I cooked Spanish meatballs (called albondigas) in the  sauce that they do here.

In the early evening we met with our Intercambio friends for the first time since Covid started. We met in the park and brought our own fold-up chairs with us. Here you can see it better:

There were three Spanish and four English speaking people.

On Sunday morning we had a beautiful encounter with a swift. Hubby opened the patio doors in the morning and nearly tripped over a bird. It was alive and fluttered a bit when approached. We we looked carefully it didn't seem to be visibly wounded. We didn't know what to do and we each did what came naturally: I went to Google, and hubby managed to carefully pick it up. He was holding it cupped in his hands (I wish I had remembered to take a picture) by the time i had found out that swifts get disorientated when on the ground. So hubby carefully carried it outside, and facing the mountains he carefully opened his hands. Then whoosh! It flew away! 

Monday was a busy day. I went to the gym in the morning. The photo of the olive tree is on my way to the gym. Then in the afternoon we went grocery shopping.

In the evening we went to our friends next door for a BBQ. I had made that Speedy Broccoli Quiche (Jamie Oliver) again, and we bought an ice cream tart at our favorite ice cream shop. We had a lovely evening.

Tuesday we took it easy after that busy Monday. I didn't have to cook as there was meat left over from the BBQ. I made a card for our gym teacher as Friday would be the last gym session. 

Although we don't have telly and we are not really interested in football (soccer), there is a Eurocup going on and of course we follow the results. Our family in England we very pleased when England won the match on Tuesday and moved up to the next round.

Here are some photos of our last day at the gym. We do half an hour aerobics and then go upstairs to do circuit training. This time we all went to have breakfast together, where I presented the teacher with some money we collected and put in the card that I had made. (The Spanish don't 'do' cards, so the teacher took the envelope and shoved it in his bag. He will see it when he opens it later)

That brings us round to Thursday again, and another visit to the hospital, only to be told that yet again hubby's platelets are too low to have treatment. I think it has been 5 weeks now (I lost count). He is happy about it because it means he can get on with building his hen house.

And that, my lovely friends, is it for this morning. 

I will link up with Annie (A Stitch In Time) with my smiles and with Virginia (Rocking Your World Friday) with what's happened this week.

I will show you some funnies at the end as per usual.

So, have a lovely weekend, stay safe and...

Keep smiling!

Hugs,

Lisca