This week we celebrate Epiphany, the visit from the three Wise Men or Kings who came to see the Christ child.
My choir sang 'We Three Kings' on Sunday: I always enjoy that.
As is traditional here, I took down the Christmas tree and decorations on the Twelfth Day of Christmas: Epiphany.
When we travelled to Europe last Easter, we overnighted in Dubai. I found two little camels in the airport, and they are now part of my Christmas Nativity scene.
Our new house has an interesting garden, which was professionally landscaped in the past couple of years. There is only one tree (remember the jungle we used to have!). It is a mini Magnolia.
I have been watering it for weeks, only to have the buds die in the heat.
But at last today I found this:
So exciting to have these beautiful white floral giants to see in the back garden. There is another one just about to open too.
The garden has few blooms, and a lot of the above: native Australian grasses which are tough, but a bit boring.
We are removing a few of them and planting some flowers we have brought with us. We love roses and have added three new ones which are thriving, and have buds.
One flower which is dotted around is this unusual agapanthus, quite small and a variegated blue/white flower. It can stay!
We don't know what this tree in a pot is, and wondered if it was dead.
However, it had a couple of white blossoms last week, and has tiny shoots all over.
We have always liked to live in an elevated position, and our choice to move to a ground-level house with no steps brought us to a suburb with a plateau with a lot of level plots. And we still have elevation, high above local flooding and catching the breeze.
I passed these unusual trees today - I wonder what they are?
Today I was in a street which goes down hill from the plateau, and could see this mountain in the distance. I have enlarged so you can see the TV towers in the centre of the picture. This is in the view I saw up much closer from the back deck in our previous house, which has been in many blog posts. We have moved about 10km and several suburbs away, so we still live in the same general social and shopping areas.
This week I also saw a curlew, this strange Australian bird with very big eyes. It stands very still, hoping you can't see it. This one was in a small shopping centre. They are ground dwelling nocturnal birds, who in patches of long grasses and woodlands are active at night and their strange cry echos around the hills as they hunt for insects.
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