Sundog on Donnelly Street.

Rain in Armidale

Had a bit of rain last Friday and Saturday; Dumaresq Creek was overflowing its banks. We took a walk Sunday and the rain let up enough that we managed to not get too wet.

Around here you will often see signs near bridges: "road flooded--indicators show depth" and when it's dry it's hard to imagine the road ever being flooded, but we haven't been here in a non-drought year. After a weekend like last weekend, it's much easier to imagine why the creeklands are kept for playing fields.

Noisy Little Corellas

It's the beginning of autumn which means gangs of little corellas rove around the town from street to street, going from one stand of street trees to the next, nibbling all the Chinese pistachio seeds and sweet gums and generally causing a ruckus. We pretty much always hear them go by first thing in the morning, and they often visit our street in the evenings around 5:30pm.

I was speaking with an Armidale local a few weeks back and he said they haven't had these huge flocks of corellas until about five years ago. I have some suspicions about street trees maturing and providing ample food for a population boom, but that's only complete conjecture on my part.

As far as we know, Uralla does not have similarly roving hoards of little corellas. At least, not so much this time of year!

The Cactus on North Hill

This morning I took a walk to North Hill to see the cactus blooms. There is a large cactus by a roundabout and on some Saturday errands we saw it was flowering, but didn't make it back to check it out until Sunday afternoon--and by then the blossoms were closed. So today, I took a little journey to photograph the flowers.

View from North Hill, looking south

Above Civic Park, the central green space in the downtown

We don't often have a reason to go to the other side of residential Armidale, so it was a nice walk up unfamiliar streets. The autumn colors are starting to turn here and there, though by and large most of the vista looking across town is still green. There is also a common pink flowering shrub in full bloom right now. We have one in our yard and we see them all over town, so they are quite popular. Someone decided to line this particular street with them, which is nice now but will be even more spectacular as they grow taller.

Looking down, to the south, and to the west. The hill is less
noticeable without any tall church spires.

And finally: the cactus! I had reached my destination.

It really is such a lovely cactus.

Armidale Neighborhoods

Armidale is not a very large town and yet it has numerous neighborhoods, although I am not sure where one begins and another ends. It seems a bit arbitrary to me, but I do find it amusing my smartphone can't make up its mind to which neighborhood we live in: changing between South Hill, Newling, Armidale, and sometimes all three in a day!  And all within the confines of our living room. Today for instance...

Very occasionally our house wanders into Soudan Heights, but I have only noticed this just once.  I am pretty sure this is a mistake, because Soudan Heights is pretty far away.

Of course when we move to Uralla in three weeks, we won't have this problem! Uralla doesn't have any designated neighborhoods.  We shall always be in Uralla and in Uralla we shall be.

January Blackberry Picking

Yesterday we went to a nearby farm to pick some blackberries! It was a warm sunny day with a hot sun and blue skies, perfect to get out of the house for a bit.  Since it was a rare free Sunday (that is, no market that morning), we wanted to go out and do something, but we didn't really feel up to a bushwalk or want to drive very far.  A 'u-pick' berry farm outside of Arding seemed like a nice compromise: not a lot of hassle to get there and back, plus we'd get to bring home the fruits of our labours.

I had never been to Arding before (and to be fair, I still haven't.) Arding is a tiny rural community west of the New England Highway between Armidale and Uralla.  The berry farm is on the far side of the crossroads of the "town" and to get there we drove south almost all the way to Uralla on the highway before turning westward onto a winding road and then heading north.

The only straight stretch of the road as it meets the New England Hwy

It's a pleasant drive, typical of the fields and forests of this part of New England. Not all of the roads out to these rural communities are sealed, but this particular one is. Also typical of this area, the road is quite narrow and winding. The posted speed limit is 100km/h but it's hard to imagine that with the 50km/h turns.

Berry Good: probably the world's number one
berry-related business/branding name.

We couldn't help but remember all our u-pick in Michigan
which were always crowded and swamped with people.
To contrast, we saw about ten other people here.

It has actually been quite cool since just before Christmas and hasn't felt much like summer, but this week will be warm again. Starting yesterday and today we're back to 28C (82F) and by Thursday the forecast rises to 34C (93F). It'll be hot!  The blackberries were just starting to ripen and the pickings were pretty slim, but we figured we could drop in again later in the week when all those berries are ripe.

For ever five unripe berries there was one ready to go.

Despite the 'slim pickins' we got ourselves quite a treat

Just over a kilo of berries (more than two pounds)

The farm is not small by any means, but not huge, either--but there was plenty of room for everyone there to pick plenty of ripe berries. There weren't more than ten people under the nets at any one time: there were two families leaving when we arrived, and another group came while we were there. It was pretty hot under the sun: the bird netting didn't provide any shade, of course! We wore our hats and long-sleeves, but we picked our tubs full pretty quickly anyway and wouldn't have had to worry about sunburn.

Bird protection

It was hard not to think about Michigan and remember the u-pick strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries we enjoyed while we lived in Ann Arbor. It's very different here of course, with so few people: in Michigan you absolutely had to be there first or nothing would be left (for strawberries) or it would be crowded and noisy with all the people and families (everything else.) Here, it's a much more laid-back experience.

But: just so we don't forget we're in Australia, we saw a triple-decker sheep trailer on our way back into Armidale. (That's something we never saw in Michigan.)

The three levels of sheep: baa - ram - ewe?

And: to finish our perfect berry adventure, Reid made a blackberry crumble!  It's been a long time since we've had blackberries, and even longer since we've had a crumble. Next weekend is likely to be very busy with the market prep (or maybe not - it's cold weather forecast which means no drinks which means much less prep to do) but if we get some more berries maybe we'll treat ourselves to a blackberry cobbler or coffeecake. Yum!

 Before (before baking)

After (before eating)

Rainbow Lorikeets

Just last weekend, looking at all the fruit trees in the yard, we wondered out loud where the rainbow lorikeets were, and why weren't they eating all this unripe fruit?  The very next day, they returned.

A contender for one of the angriest birds in my Angry Bird Collection

I think my lorikeet photos this year turned out a little better than last--I would like to think that through practice, I am getting better at my picture-taking.  (Has it really been a year?  How time flies.)

Black Gully Reserve - Sunny Afternoon

Poplars line the road on the far side of the Reserve (from our house, anyway)

Callistemon

Big clouds above the green playing field.  Greener than it's been in months

Black Gully Reserve - Morning Fog

Another magical foggy morning from earlier this spring.  Ducks, kingfisher and
a willy wagtail were among the birds at the pond.