I must have glanced out the window a thousand times today, and still there is no sign of Mount Warning. Our Sleeping Giant appears to be lost amid a steamy haze of mist and glare, now the water in the valley has finally started to evaporate. Consequently, we’ve had humid weather today.
Yesterday, however, the rain didn’t stop all day. Only a very small amount of rain was predicted, so the deluge took everyone by surprise, including my eldest daughter. She was working, so I had a cooking day planned with my granddaughter and my younger daughter Emma visited as well, with her baby. We had a wonderful time baking biscotti, rum and raisin shortbread, the pieces for a gingerbread house which Emma will decorate next week, and some gingerbread men, in preparation for Christmas Day.
By 2pm, when the rain hadn’t eased, I messaged my daughter to see how she was going. I was getting a tad concerned that she wouldn’t be able to get back home, as the road to her place is prone to flooding. She replied, saying she was finishing work early and heading back to my place. As it turned out, she couldn’t get home, so she and Aurora spent the night with me. Her husband, who had also gone to work in the morning, drove along the road to their home as far as he could, abandoned the car about five kilometres from home, then waded through waist-deep flood water to a point where someone could give him a ride home. They have a fifteen-year-old dog who had been left outside for the day, who he couldn’t bear to leave alone overnight!
Sitting up last night until 11pm, and drinking tea while chatting with my daughter was a treat that I haven’t had in many years. And waking this morning to a little girl’s voice saying “Nana” is a moment I will always treasure.
I can’t quite get my head around the fact that it’s just one week today to Christmas. This week, with the flooding, family visits, and trying to prepare ahead for Christmas Day, it has been quite overwhelming. I’m getting dreadfully behind with so many things, including reading blog posts, so hopefully this weekend I will have an opportunity to catch up a bit.
I have been wondering, has everyone made plans for Christmas? Or is 2020 the Christmas which will be remembered as the year when few people celebrated?
There was a brief break in the rain this afternoon, so I ventured outdoors with the two dogs to have a bit of a look around. I have spent most of the last two days indoors, watching the rain pelting down and the wind ripping at the trees in my garden. As the first photo shows, looking down towards the pool, debris from the palm trees is piled beside the pool and floating in the water. There’ll be a big clean-up down there next weekend!
What looks like a massive pond in the valley is actually water-filled sugar cane fields.
Low-lying land pockets as far as the eye can see are filled with rain water.
And no surprises here, the mountain is still hiding behind a thick, white veil.
It looks like there are two rivers running parallel to one another. The actual river can be glimpsed behind the row of trees in the photo above. The other “river” in the foreground is flood water.
The river ran across roads in many areas, and people were advised not to go out unless they had to. My daughter, Hayley, went out as she had an appointment for her 20 week ultrasound. Luckily, her husband drove her to the appointment in their four-wheel-drive ute. From there they took the sealed envelope that had been given to them to our local balloon shop to have a special balloon made. The envelope contained a card with the gender of her baby on it. 🙂
Aurora, who is to be a big sister, was pretty excited about popping the balloon ~~ Mummy and Daddy were excited to see what colour confetti was in the balloon ~~
Before 7:00am this morning I had a kookaburra waiting outside my kitchen window for breakfast. Husband left for work early, so my day began about an hour earlier. I had already given the pot plants a watering and finished a few chores around the house when kookie arrived, and when I went out with his meat, the magpie family arrived too.
Moments after I went outside, there was a huge thunderclap in the valley, and a few spits of rain suggested an approaching storm. A quick downfall, accompanied by several more loud crack of nearby thunder though, and it was all over.
Petunias waiting to be planted.
By 9:00am, I was heading out to spend a few hours Christmas shopping with my daughter. We had a lovely morning, and met up with my other daughter and her two-year-old, Aurora, for morning tea. Aurora’s other Nana joined us for coffee as well, and met my baby grandson, Eli, for the first time.
Last years Gazanias, still looking happy, regardless of our excessive early summer heat.
I may have finished my Christmas shopping now. Hopefully I have, as the only reason I want to go to the shops now is to buy food.
Later this afternoon, the threatened morning storm arrived in earnest, with thunder, and heavy rain. After the storm passed, husband checked the rain guage, and found that we’d had 20ml. of rain in about half an hour.
I hadn’t expected any amazing sunset colour-show in the valley after seeing the amount of white mist that had rolled in with the storm. Half way through cooking dinner though, this is what I saw –
The sky lit up in orange-red hues, the mist had disappeared, and the valley made her magical early evening offering yet again. ❤
Well, it is dark and stormy now, a complete contrast to the brightness of the valley this morning. Even though there were a few showers of rain about, the rain did not deminish the brilliance of the valley, mountain and sky colours.
The little Pee Wee bird who recently found my bird bath at the side of the house ventured around to the back of the house in time for breakfast this morning for the first time. Most of the regular gang had eaten and gone, leaving just a few scraps on the feeding table, which seemed to keep this little guy happy.
Today has been dreadfully humid. I spent most of the day with my daughter and her baby boy, Eli. Eli is the most kissable little man, and I would have loved to have held him all day if cuddling him hadn’t made us both feel even hotter.
Quite loud thunder has been rolling and rumbling around us for the last couple of hours, but so far we haven’t had any rain. The severe storm warning issued this afternoon may be relevent to other areas around us, but we haven’t seen a spot of rain. It did go dark earlier than usual though, hence the cliché title of tonight’s post. 😉
And once again, the daylight hours ended with a touch of drama in the sunset sky over Mount Warning. ❤
If I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden
So the hinges on your windows would rust and colour
Like the boats pulled up on the sand for the summer
And your sweet clean clothes would go stiff on the line
And there’d be sand in your pockets and nothing on your mind ~ Josh Pyke.
Summer wasn’t shy today about letting us know it had arrived. At 31°C and 88 percent humidity, it felt like the middle of summer and not the first day. Tomorrow’s prediction is for 35°C (95°F).
Regardless of the weather, I had a very special visitor today, my daughter Emma and her three-and-a-half month old son, Eli. Today, Emma turned 28. I apologise profusely every year for having her at such a hot time of year, which also happens to be the month of Christmas so her birthday can easily be overshadowed by another significant event. This birthday though, as Emma is now a mother herself and realises the futility of my tongue-in-cheek comment, we agreed that babies usually arrive on the day of their choice.
After Emma and Eli headed home, I spent some time Christmas gift shopping online. Even though Australia is travelling incredibly well Covid-wise, I’m still a bit of a scaredy-cat about spending time in crowds. Perhaps more to the point, it saves me time to shop online when I’m still sorting, cleaning, tidying and decluttering my house.
Maggie in a Tizz.
During the afternoon I heard a commotion out in the front garden. Noisy Miner birds – who are named “noisy” for a reason! – were kicking up a ruckus in the tree at the top of our garden, their squawks intermittently interrupted by the sound of a distressed Magpie.
I tried to ignore the noise, but it got the better of me. Even the two dogs sprawled out beside me got up and peered out the door, as if investigating the situation. The dogs know, just as I do, that magpies and miners are friends. If a miner carries on a treat as they were doing today, there’s a threat. I imagined one of the neighbours cats may be lurking around the tree.
Ignoring the noise wasn’t working for me, so I ignored the heat instead, and trudged to the top of the hill to investigate. Whatever the threat was, it seemed to be in the tree, which meant it could be a snake wrapped around a high branch sheltering from the heat of the day.
This is what I found –
A Pee Wee!
We occasionally see Magpie Larks in the garden, and I have noticed recently we have one dropping into the back garden each morning after the other birds have finished eating the food I give them. Magpie Larks are another native Australian bird, affectionately known as Pee Wees. They have a very pretty song and seem completely harmless, so goodness knows why the magpies objected so much to the visit. Maybe the magpie family feel that they “own” my yard, and the tree being in our yard belongs to them.
Satisfied that one tiny pee wee posed no threat to my lovely magpie family, I paused to take a photo of Mount Warning, which could be seen today, although not as clearly visible as it could be (first photo).
Later tonight at around sunset, I took another photo of the mountain. Dark patches of cloud had rolled in, and we didn’t see the beautiful orange sunset sky we have had lately.
The opening words of today’s post are song lyrics from Josh Pyke, an Australian singer, whose creativity with words conjures images of immense beauty when describing the most mundane moments of everyday life. This song is called The Summer, so very appropriate for today. I love this song as the words romanticise the one season of the year that I struggle to cope with. For anyone interested, here’s the rest of the lyrics to The Summer ~
But every year it gets a little bit harder
To get back to the feeling of when we were fifteen
And we could jump in the river upstream
And let the current carry us to the beginning where
The river met the sea again
And all our days were a sun-drenched haze
While the salt spray crusted on the window panes
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
And I’ll remember that summer as the right one
The storms made the pavement steam like a kettle
And our first goodbye always seemed like hours
In the car park in between my house and yours
And if the summer holds a song we might sing forever
The winter holds a bite we’d never felt before
But time is like the ocean
You can only hold a little in your hands
So we swim before we’re broken
Before our bones become
Black coral on the sand
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
So if I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden ~ Josh Pyke.
In My World 