Autumn

The season change to Autumn has brought with it rain and the promise of more. I awoke in the early hours to the sound of it and lots of it. After a three hour intermission it has returned. A happy Easter has passed and somewhere in between the many festive activities the children made some quiet time for a spell of egg blowing and painting. The making of these colourful eggs is a favourite ritual and one that my older child now takes responsibility for organising and showing our younger one. Each year we add the new offerings to the previous years.

The Small on Yellow

My eyes have become trained in seeing yellow everywhere these days. I believe that it has to do with the changing colours of our sun dried landscape. Yellow is the colour of dying grass, open fields, and of crisp falling leaves. Yellow it also has to be said is familiar and comforting. It is after all the colour of lemons, my favourite citrus. The colour of ripe bananas, an old school favourite, and the colour of fresh soft butter, a welcome indulgence. This is all I have to say on yellow.

Park Life

A visit to the Botanical Gardens is always a treat. In a city of high temperatures and water restrictions, the gardens provide welcome visual relief from the dry streets and browning city parkland's. Gardens top 5: running in shade, poking at fish in the pond, spotting turtles, walking with our own shadow, rolling down the grass slope.

Hot Tomatoes

Today is the tenth consecutive day above 35 degrees Celsius. In a summer (now autumn) of high temperatures and little rainfall I made the decision to let the veggie patch go. A logical decision really as I only keep a few herbs, a small group capsicums and 5 cherry tomato vines. My sense of disappointment however was high and for three weeks I was unable to make the walk up to the back of the yard to survey the damage. I will not dwell on what was lost but will instead proclaim with a hurrah! what was left. To take inventory: 1 oregano bush, a struggling collection of wild rocket and 5 twisted, distressed and fallen tomato vines, that had to my amazement managed to produce a small number of red and juicy tomatoes. I gently picked up the warm fruit. Some split down the sides at my gentle touch, so hot and ripe. I washed a bunch under the back tap while my younger one danced from foot to foot impatiently. Then we ate a selection of the finest ones, I savoured the sensation of biting into the surprisingly elastic skin then eating the soft and wet insides, while my younger one happily gobbled one after another while commenting on the wetness and warmness.

Treasure

It was decided by we three that our morning walk to the deli should include a walk on the wild side. We left our well trod path and descended into the altogether different world of the dry winding creek bed. Apart from finding what you would normally expect to see in a dry creek bed, rounded and smoothed rocks, broken tree branches, piled leaves that looked suspiciously like the nests of rats. There were also examples of the introduced, empty spray cans, broken glass and surprisingly china, a horse shoe in an advanced stage of corrosion. The latter two were declared treasure and quickly stuffed into my cloth bag to mingle with the fruit and bread we would soon buy.