Coming into spring

We arrived back in Australia last week Tuesday evening, and it has nice to come back to a beautiful warm, sunny spring days! Our first plum tree was in full bloom, spring bulbs coming up, peach trees blossom, and all sorts of spring blossoms around town. We now have daffodils and today our other plum tree blossoms opened up in the warm weather - it has been quite superb. There were 20mls in our rain gauge when we came back and have had a couple of showers, so things are actually greening up a bit.

Walking home after work

Dramatic spring skies

New plum blossoms

The process of going through our Mongolia photos is quite daunting, but I am resolved to have something posted for every place we visited, or at least for every day of our trip (and our tour was 16 days, so there is a lot to come). It may take a while though - there is a lot to do at home and I started my new job as soon as we got back, but I will not stop halfway through this time ;) (the way I did with Japan and our Victoria roadtrip... still working on those!)

Delias aganippe (red spotted Jezebel)

 

I had the good fortune of seeing this beautiful butterfly floating around the plum blossoms over the weekend, when I was free and able to take the camera and try to catch a couple good snaps. We don't often see many butterflies, so it was a treat to watch it flit about (and a challenge to try to capture it.) It was a beautiful day! Clear blue skies and a warm wind. It's full on spring in New England.

Springtime (again)

Hard to believe spring is rolling around again here in Australia. I'm sure it'll be summer again before we know it -- at 71F this last weekend it felt a scorcher! September 1st is the official start of spring down under but a lot of the spring blossoms are already on their way out. This time of year always passes so quickly, so we will try to enjoy it while it lasts.

Spring has sprung!

Cherry blossoms on Salisbury Street, Uralla

 Cherry blossoms and a wattle tree

Crimson rosella

Wattlebird in the green spring leaves

It feels like spring in our part of the New England Tablelands, with the paddocks turning green, flowering trees bursting into bloom and other trees beginning to leaf out. It is very nice to have some color in our environment again, and to hear the frogs at night and the birds in the morning. Spring truly is a lovely time of year! I have been enjoying taking photos of the blossoms around town immensely, especially since it seems as though I haven't had time to pick up the camera in a while.

More rain

More rain last week meant means wet paddocks and overflowing creeks. Friday night we had a big storm with rain and wind (with many trees down around town), Saturday morning we happened to be down by Dumaresq Creek:

Faulkner Street under water, under the pedestrian bridge.

It has been a wet spring: dam levels are up, the grass is turning green, and the waterfalls are overflowing. Hopefully we'll have a couple of dry days for this weekend that we can get some gardening done! We have plans to rototill the garden.

By Sunday the creek levels had returned to normal high.

The willows are also budding out in spring green.

Cutting down a Tree

Last month we decided to undertake our first big house project. Painting the interior walls and ceilings, and painting the exterior trim and replacing the gutters was one thing, but we decided to take out a tree at the front of our yard before it grew too large such that we wouldn't be able to do it ourselves.

The tree in question

We might end up cutting down the smaller one someday, but for now it can stay.

We checked with Council to make sure we were allowed to cut down the tree (ie the tree wasn't heritage listed, which anyone looking at this tree could see it was not going to be heritage listed, but we checked just to be safe), borrowed a chain saw and got ready for a busy weekend.

Cutting down the tree didn't actually take very long, especially not after our neighbor saw what we were doing and came over with his chainsaw to help. It was the cleanup once the tree was in pieces all around the yard that took the longest (about three weekends in fact.) Last weekend we finally transported the leftover pile (after we'd sorted out all the firewood for next year) to the tip.

Tree limbs all over the front yard.

Tree stump with a little Jazz for scale.

Spring has begun to arrive in Uralla and Armidale! One of the decorative plum trees in our front yard just started to blossom. There were buds last week Friday night and after a little rain Saturday morning, the buds finally began to open. It's been a rainy week and Dumaresq Creek in Armidale was flooded with the road closed for two days in a row.

We've also been busy around the house and garden in preparation for summer, planting some dwarf fruit trees in front of our house and cultivating a few plants in our sunroom.

The cleaned up front yard

Fruit trees: apples, pears, peaches. Plus some potted figs, peas and blueberries.

Planting the peach tree

First plum blosssoms

Sunroom. When it's sunny all day it gets pretty blazing in here!

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.)

Cottonwood and Magpies

I had an interesting experience with some magpies the other day.  A lot of cotton/fluff had fallen from the poplars near the Cultural Centre, blanketing the ground beneath the trees, so I went out to snap a few photos.  As to be expected, there were magpies stalking the grass.  We all minded our own business until I approached the area covered in fluff.

A curious juvenile magpie

The interesting thing was that as I went into the fluff-covered area, two of the young magpies followed me.  And as I crouched to take photos of the fallen leaves, they approached me very closely.  Before, all of the magpies had been sticking to the open grass.  As the young magpies followed, an adult followed them in turn.  Which made me nervous... I wasn't the one getting close to the juveniles, but I didn't want to get swooped if the adults felt threatened!

Juvenile magpie on the left, adult on the right. 

One of the young magpies lost interest but the other continued to follow me into the deep fluff.  It was quite peculiar.  I had the feeling I was less of a curiosity than the fact that I was wading into the fluff for no apparent reason, or that the fluff was just as peculiar to the magpie as the magpies following were to me.  But, of course.. it is easy to anthropomorphize and extrapolate upon these things.

Knee-deep in fluff

The leaves nearly glowed in the bright afternoon sunlight.

Caught in the tall grass.