Category: winter

Australia · Changes · family · gardening · grandchildren · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · Tweed Valley · winter

Approaching the middle of winter

Joanne5 Comments

It’s a glorious time of year in the subtropics! Each night is cool enough to warm the house with our fireplace, I can wear cosy winter clothes for a few weeks, and on Monday I spent the whole day gardening without breaking out in a sweat at all.

Today we had our third day of rain for the week, so gardening has been put on hold. It wasn’t too difficult to stay indoors to keep dry and warm though. The valley – and most of our garden – has been hidden by mist all day, so todays photo of Mount Warning is one I took last week.

It had been overcast weather all day, then as nightfall approached, in the distance, beyond the mountain and grey sky, a strip of light sky appeared. It was a stunning sight, and something a bit different to our usual sunsets.

“Life” has taken up more of my time than usual recently. What with final university assignment writing at the end of semester 1, and various family events, my blogging, and visiting blogger friends’ sites had to be put on hold. Also, my son, daughter-in-law and two of my grandsons have moved in recently. They sold their home, put a deposit on a new home, but when the building report on their prospective new home wasn’t up to par, they pulled out of the sale.

Meanwhile, houses in our area are in high demand. With more people buying than selling, house prices are on the rise, and Covid 19 is the culprit. People are selling up and leaving the capital cities, where covid “lock-downs” have become a regular occurance. Many people are relocating to areas such as ours where we have been virtually covid-free from the beginning of the pandemic, searching for freedom.

The changing market has forced many locals into a similar situation, so they simply have to be patient. The right house will become available for my son and his family eventually. In the meantime, I can enjoy grandson-cuddles every single day, which isn’t a bad thing at all! ❤

I have one last photo for today of a pair of kookaburras, taken last month, looking at something that obviously caught their eye. They are gorgeous characters, these birds. 🙂

Hopefully by tomorrow, the weather will have cleared and I will see the mountain again!

Australia · birds · Mount Warning · photography · seasons · sugar cane · sunset · Tweed Valley · winter

Across the Valley

Joanne6 Comments

There was mist in the valley again this morning. Now the weather is warming up I will probably see fewer misty mornings, so I can’t resist taking photos of the effects of cooler weather while they last.

We had an arborist here today, cutting back some trees and trimming the high branches off others. The area he worked on is right down the back of our property along the back boundary. So later this afternoon, after he left, my camera and I took a walk down there to see what we could see now.

Besides a magnificent, uninterrupted view across the valley, there was a sugar cane fire way off in the distance, which I hadn’t noticed from the house. Just slightly to the left of the lower centre of the photo above there are previously burned blackened cane fields, which will turn green again in no time at all. To the right of the black fields are plenty of green cane fields still awaiting harvest.

By the time I arrived back at the house the sun was setting. The sky had just a hint of orange and looked very pretty.

So today is officially the last day of winter in Australia. The temperature reached 26 degrees Celsius, so it was definitely not a cool day! We could still have a few cooler days, but from now on the warmer days will become more frequent than cooler days. It’s a beautiful time of year now, but I’m really not looking forward to the humidity of summer at all! I complain about the heat every year though, and each year I try to find things to enjoy during the summer months. This year will be no exception.

Oh, and I had one of my regular visitors drop by around sunset as well. 🙂