Some more firsts....

Every day its seems to get noticeably lighter when we go for our 5 am walk, less stars but fantastic clouds lit with the rising sun.  The birdsong is incredibly loud and very beautiful but it also means its rare we hear a possum climbing around in the trees now.  Sensible little things are tucked up possibly asleep, not known for day light activity.  The Lorikeets, on the other hand get up earlier and sound very excited.  They are getting noisier and we can hear them quite a distance away from the Gum Tree Cafe where their having their breakfast.

On one of our walks Rick spotted a beetle, similar to the one below, crawling along the road. He looked very much like a Stag Beetle who had been spray painted for Christmas.  He is quite harmless and as you can see very beautiful and shiny.
Funnily enough he is actually called a Christmas beetle.

The Honey Eater family have been taking evening baths together which is very amusing to watch. The youngsters (now adult size) gather around the edge of the bird bath and take it in turns to splash noisily about in the water.  They then jump out and frantically groom their feathers, when they are perfectly preened, all feathers neat and tidy they perch themselves on the lower branches of the gum tree and fluff up to dry off. Very cute.

At the weekend we had the first celebration of my first ever summer birthday... can there ever be too many celebrations?


Rick got some very entertaining balloons, all with smiley faces, which made me laugh to start with.  Dotted in various places around the back yard they seemed to take on a life of their own.  Every now and then when we least expected it one would pop. We could have sworn the rest of them were sniggering at making us jump!






The washing line, we discovered, also makes a wonderful card holder.







There were 8 of us in total, we realised belatedly that we'd taken all the fold up tables down to Naracoorte and could only seat 6 at our 'normal' table.  So we are now the proud owners of another fold up table, I'm sure they will all come in useful one day!

It was a beautiful hot sunny day, temperatures in the 30's and not a cloud in the sky..... bliss.


There was  food and drink in abundance and all was really delicious.  We of course had a BBQ with lots of lovely fresh salads, not all made by me, which was a treat.  Followed by a delicious homemade apple cake (the first ever birthday cake made for me) with a yummy orange sauce drizzled over it, fresh fruit salad and meringues. Total bliss.....

The star of the show, who very quickly stole all our hearts  was this little one, let me introduce Baxter.

Baxter belongs to Mick and Elise, he is a pug cross cairn terrier, about 12 weeks old and very well behaved. Amazingly he was not at all fazed by the balloons randomly popping and even fronted up to one that came away from it's moorings and bounced up to him.  Very amusing.  

He also apparently likes sitting on shoulders, and perched very comfortably on Ricks shoulders, having climbed up there mostly unassisted.

It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon with lovely company and conversation, very relaxing.

And the following day, Sunday 1st December was officially the first day of Summer.....and of course it rained!  Which reminded me of many other past wet summers the big difference here though is it's still wonderfully warm and the rain clouds are much needed and don't last long.