Author: margaret21
Zest up your day with toast and marmalade!
Blogging challenges, Food & Cooking, SpainIt’s that time of year when the house is permeated by the bitter, bright, clean and honeysweet smell of marmalade-in-the-making, as a pan of carefully cut up peels, juice and sugar bubble away enticingly in the kitchen to make this year’s supply of Seville Orange Marmalade. Is anything more guaranteed to wake you up and start your day with a zing than a couple of slices of toast and home-made marmalade?
I first wrote about it here, on this day in 2011. I wrote about it often. But our most memorable marmalade year was two years ago, when I wrote about it again, on almost this day.
Up above your head, in many a Spanish street, are oranges, glowing orbs of colour that brighten the cityscape. And two years ago we were in Valencia, home of the orange. Finding windfalls abandoned in the Turia Gardens, we gathered them and brought them home. What could be better than marmalade made, by you, from oranges you’ve harvested yourselves?
It turns out that my first marmalade post was written on 21st January. Today is the 22nd. I hope this isn’t a hanging offence, in the world of Flashback Friday.
Upstanding craftsmen …
Barcelona, Blogging challenges, Catalonia, Spain… work high up on the highest spires of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The squares show one of these craftsmen doing his work, almost at the very top. The featured photo gives some idea of how Gaudí’s as yet unfinished cathedral towers high above the city.
Up here, I’m the King of the Castle
Blogging challenges, Wildlife
Oi! There’s a duck up top!
Ariège, Blogging challenges, France, Laroque d'OlmesWhen we lived in France, the route of the Tour de France twice passed our house. Before the cyclists whizz past, there’s the publicity caravan, an unending stream of advertisers tossing out toys and trinkets to the expectant crowds waiting for the cyclists to pass. Here’s one ….
A duplicitous view …
Blogging challenges, London… of the V&A Museum, in London …
… because the image above is upside down.
This is what I really saw. Its reflection in the lake at the front of the building. But I up-ended it.
Up tails all!
Blogging challenges, WildlifeAll along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all! Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows
These are not the best pictures of shelducks that you’ll ever see, but there’s a limit to what zooming can do. I’ll turn to Wikimedia Commons to help me out.
Puppets from a hidden Cádiz corner
Blogging challenges, SpainTo cheer you up on a cold and snowy Saturday (rain later), here are puppets, all from the 1970s and 80s, from one of Cádiz’s best-kept secrets: El Museo del Titere – The Puppet Museum.
My plant pots have gone up a size
Blogging challenges, North Yorkshire, WeatherWhen I woke up on Thursday, this is what I found at the doorstep.
Normal life’s been disrupted by the snow, even more than Covid has ruptured our day to day rhythms. I occupied some of my day yesterday by slogging through the snow to bring you these photos.
A superabundance of brown birds
Blogging challenges, WildlifeI seem to have quite a supply of brown birds in my archive, which up until now, I haven’t shared. Here goes:
The rest aren’t square. But they are brown, so Jude can have them for her Life in Colour Challenge.
A greylag goose on our village pond. 
This week’s mystery guest. Please help. 
A parakeet in Málaga 
House sparrows in Berlin 
A godwit at Slimbridge. 
A song thrush in our garden in spring. 
A mallard, RSPB Saltholme 
A sad little nestling, probably pheasant. 
A chaffinch at Scar House Reservoir, Yorkshire
Click on any image to see it in it entirety, full size, and without its being obliterated by captions.
P.S. My mystery bird has now been identified by the wonderful Vogelsnipser, whose blog should be on the list of anyone who enjoys birds. His pictures are fantastic. Here’s what he says: ‘The bird on your photo is a stonechat (saxicola torquatus). males in early-year splendor dress.’
