So Arthur and I arrived at my mom’s yesterday, and today Ann invited over a lot of her “Australian” family and we had a feast of barbecued ribs and other things to eat, some of which make me nostalgic like my mom’s bean salad and potato salad. The weather was humid and summery (in my feeling of the word “summery”, despite just passing the fall equinox here). The rain broke and the skies were briefly blue.
Here is everyone (minus me) sitting around some tables set up on the verandah at my mom’s house.
The picture shows the following people, going clockwise from the man in the foreground: “Hacker”, Karen, Aaron, Arthur, {my chair, which is empty}, Ann, Kirsten, Bonnie, Emma (mostly hidden), Gwen, Len.
It was nice to meet some of these people who until now I only knew from my mother talking about therm. These are the people who are part of my mom’s day-to-day life here. I am thankful for them and the kindness and generosity they have shown to my mother.
Here is a bird (of course my mother would know what kind, but I don’t) on the rail. [UPDATE, by Ann: The bird is a Noisy Minor, a type of honeyeater, native to Australia.]
The electronic zoom on my camera is quite limited – it’s hard to capture things like birds because you can’t get so close to the birds before they fly away, but far away they are just pixelated specks which when zoom in on end up a bit blurry.
Earlier, we took a walk down to the river (Vine Creek, which flows into Millstream) that runs at the base of my mom’s property. Here is Arthur, beyond the trunk of a big old tree.
[UPDATE, by Ann: The big old trunk is of a Casuarina cunninghamiana better known as a she-oak, or a river oak.]