Minibreak in Lorne

What happened to the last couple of months? I had every intention of keeping this blog up to date but already after only 3 or 4 posts, it's already the end of December ....

G and I had a wonderful weekend with Gus this week:





..... 3 days in Lorne with all the sand, sea and surf a little water dog can handle (that pup really must have been an otter in a past life!).












He has taught himself to duck-dive and almost jumps out of his skin with excitement whenever he has the chance to swim .....makes us hope more and more that we'll be able to buy a house a little closer to the beach one day.



This week Bonnie and Sally are staying with us, so now we have 3 little whirlwinds filling our little house with pre-christmas glee and joy and boundless energy.



Great kids, cute giggles - life is certainly different with kids around the place. Gus thinks they're pretty fab too.

A lush green getaway

What a wonderful time we had in South Australia last week!

Despite the packs of noisy bogans prowling the streets outside our hotel on the first night in Adelaide, we managed to get a couple of hours sleep (after changing hotel rooms at 4:30 in the morning!) and were able to start truly relaxing on Monday.

We were mightily impressed by the lush green landscape surrounding us on the drive to the Florieu Peninsula - through the rolling hills of the McLaren Vale wine and dairy district and on to the vast surf beaches fronting the Southern Ocean.





Our base at Beach Huts in Middleton was beautifully presented, perfectly located 5 minutes walk from the beach (providing a soothing background rumble of rolling surf to lull us into slumber at night), complete with a friendly (cheeky!) border collie who acted as concierge during our stay.







We spent 5 days strolling in the sunshine along the beach, walking around Granite Island (off Victor Harbour), exploring local wineries, restuarants and olive groves, as well as taking a boat tour in the Coorong National Park (Storm Boy country). What a life! It certainly had us thinking about moving to a rural coastal town some time in the future ...... Gus would be in heaven living near such wild and dramatic beaches!

Unfortunately we missed the last lot of migrating Southern Right Wales; seeing them in the Harbour nearby would have topped off a perfect week .....

On Saturday we took a different route back to Adelaide through Strathalbyn where we rummaged in various antique shops, before heading up to the Adelaide hills. The old sandstone buildings are beautifully nestled into billowing fields of new green wheat, lush grasses, or explosions of golden canola flowers.
We went to Hahndorf to hunt down some German pretzels, but spent very little time there - what a kitschy little tourist town!









Our final night in Adelaide was cool and rainy but we relished every moment of our holiday .... back to the real world for a while now.






Don't know what happened to the pics in this post - they're rather jumbled and overlapping. oh well ...

The best kind of morning

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz....
I wonder where the birdies is?

Our gardens are getting a thorough turn over these days by hungry blackbirds, who just love scratching through the mulch to get at the best bugs, along with little grey-green birds (not sure what they are, but they're cute and they sing prettily). The wattle birds are getting noisier, scrapping and posturing and proclaiming their territory. Gus still gets frustrated by all these intruders but at least he's a little more wary of magpies since being swooped in the park.

I absolutely love settling into a piping hot bath in the morning or evening with the windows open, just so I can listen to the sounds of the garden as I close my eyes. We refer to the blackbirds as 'Jazzbirds', 'cause they sing such wonderful little syncopated melodies ..... (I'm diggin' that smooth groove!).

We decided to take advantage of the gorgeous sunny weather on Sunday - Godfrey did a 55km ride to Mordialloc, so was a little tired, but he's doing really well in preparing for the Round the Bay in a Day ride next month. After a quick lunch we bundled Gus into the car and headed off to visit the Garden of St Erth at Blackwood, near the Wombat State Forest.

The Diggers Club were hosting their annual daffodil festival and it was a perfect day for a gentle stroll among the new garden beds and gorgeous woodland plantings. We had a delicious lamb and apricot curry at the cafe and took lots of photos (with our phones, as we had forgotten to bring the camera!) in the gardens.

Although I really don't have much more room at all in the garden at home, I couldn't resist buying some aquilegias, and white agastache seedlings, as well as some more hollyhock seeds and jiffy pots for planting lupins and cleomes. Roll on Spring and Summer!

Cycle-a-rama

Time for another post! Its time for one of my pet topics at the moment - cycling! Looks like we were just ahead of the wave on the whole commuting into work by bicycle and Vespa and it's quickly becoming the mark of the cool and thrifty! The Age has come out with a bit of an article on our new lifestyle choice - "Two wheelie good ways to save". I guess the best part is the exercise and the smug self assurance as I shoot past all the stopped cars.

While I'm on the topic Bicycle Victoria have come out with a new set of discussion forums that are really useful for those of us on two self propelled wheels.

On the Vespa front Juddie is due to get her full licence in the coming months. Will be great to have her picking me up at work on the back of the Vespa. Ours is the lovely GT200 - very nice!

P.S. (added by juddie in September '08): G wrote this post, so please don't get all confused and think that I started writing about myself in the third person!)

The swoop

Rangers have caught a rampant magpie that injured several people in Gippsland by swooping on them during the past week. Kids have admitted to teasing the magpie, and everyone knows it's normal for magpies to protect their nests during Spring, so why remove the maggie and not the people from the area?

The story seems to have travelled quickly - it even made the news in India (reported from 'LATROBE CITY, Australia'): Dive-bombing magpie

Starting out

OK - so we're venturing out into the world of blogging. Hope this will allow us to keep in touch more regularly with friends and family all over the world, as well as providing a place to store and organise our photos.

We are enjoying our lives so much at the moment - it's the little things that make us smile every day. Spring has sprung in Melbourne; the weather is temperamental but the plants in the garden are slowly unfurling their new foliage, blossoms are swirling in the gusty breezes and the days are getting longer. Bliss! Sunshine is like a drug sometimes.

We'll try and post up pictures to the web when we can, and add our thoughts and observations for anyone who cares to read them.

For those who haven't heard from us for a while, all is well down here. We have made some minor improvements to the house and are enjoying the challenge of planning future makeovers.

Gus and Emerson have settled in so well together we think they spend all their time snuggling in secret when we're not home. Gus in particular seems quite enamoured with his cat, giving her particularly doe-eyed looks whenever she struts past with a haughty look, and she likes to curl up with him in the evenings now. Who'da thought it?