Springtime in the New England Tablelands

Looking across the valley toward South Hill

After ten months of winter, spring has finally arrived!  (It's nearly official, though many Australians consider September 1st to be the first day of spring.)  The wattles and cherry trees are still blooming--Armidale has so many cherry trees, and of course wattles are everywhere so it's a lovely town for spring blossoms.  Every once in a while you see a magnolia tree in someone's front yard in full bloom, and there are daffodils and narcissus, the flowering bushes that look like red plum blossoms (whatever it is, the wattlebirds love them.)  The one in our yard is still going strong because it doesn't get much sun, and there are little white violets growing beneath it with a couple dandelions.  We've really enjoyed watching the wattlebird hop around the branches as it feeds on the nectar and chasing away the parrots when they get too close.

The red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata), a type of honeyeater

The grass is also noticeably greener.  I took a picture of the grass in our backyard a month ago as it'd gone to seed and looked really interesting.  (The lawn maintenance guys came by last week and mowed it off, though.)

The backyard in mid-August

Front yard on September 1st

Since we returned from Queensland it's looked (and felt) more and more like spring every day.  We've had a few rainy days and a couple really, really beautiful days.  Our first day back in Armidale, Sunday the 1st was a nice welcome back to the New England Tablelands, a really sunny and beautiful day.  It cooled off after that with a few days of cold rain, but this week it's warmed up again.  Thursday was sunny with a high of 20!  That's like.. 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  Unbelievable.  (Of course, today is cloudy and cooler, though I'm a little excited for the predicted thunderstorm.  It's also nice to look at the seven-day forecast and see that almost every day the chance of frost is nil.)

Armidale seems really beautiful to me, but on reflection it probably has more to do with the fact that it's just springtime.  I think the town seems smaller than it actually is, too, which helps.  We don't see strip malls or buildings with huge parking lots, though there are a couple larger stores on the other, more industrial side of town.  It isn't that quaint or picturesque, but where we travel on our daily routes takes us by parks and tree-lined residential areas (and pastureland for Reid, who has been seeing lots of teeny-tiny lambs these days).  The downtown area is pretty nice as well, rather centralized with a long stretch of park that follows the creek, and there's something kind of nice about a town nestled in a valley.

The cherry trees in our yard are white-blossomed
and have a lovely delicate and nostalgic scent

The acacia/wattle trees were just starting to burst into color before we left on our trip and the early-blooming trees are turning brown, but a different variety has picked up the slack and are in full bloom.  They actually smell really good: you can't smell anything if you put your nose in the blossoms, but when the wind blows through a group of trees it's really sweet and lovely.

This week I have been pretty preoccupied with getting a picture of the parrots that have been eating the blossoms off the cherry tree outside our window.  The past few days has had a good-sized flock hanging out above, about ten birds or so.  At first we thought they were juvenile crimson rosellas, but upon closer inspection they are Australian King Parrots.  They're pretty noisy in the morning and have a call that sounds a lot like my squeaky bicycle.

The cherry blossoms are all gone now--they've completely eaten them from the tree--and the leaves are coming out.  I'm really looking forward to some greenery!  The bright new green is a nice contrast to the dull gray-brown-green of the eucalyptus.  The other trees are just beginning to bud out, little by little.  Not to get a bit cheesy, but the promise of new growth and a new season is rather a beautiful, wonderful thing.