Another month has flown by, with limited time to post or read other blogs. I aim to participate a bit more in the coming months, as our days draw in towards autumn and winter.

February included some unexpected travel. My flight over Tasmania revealed intriguing circles of green on the land below, where some paddocks and crops have been watered.

I had a weekend in Sydney with torrential rain and storms, trees down, roads closed, power cuts that lasted days. We take electricity for granted. I missed my regular cups of tea. The choices for meals were limited. When offered a cheese sandwich, my son-in-law asked “Do you mean a raw Toastie?”

Then a road trip to Dubbo in NSW. The drive took us through huge landscapes with big skies.

Through bush fire impacted areas and communities, with miles of burnt out trees on both sides of the road. There were tinges of green after the rain but still a devasting sight.

We stopped at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, usually a place filled with tourists. It was very quiet following the fires and now the travel ban on Chinese tourists due to the corona virus. I was glad we could stop, shop, have lunch and support their local economy in just a small way. The Three Sisters Lookout was in the clouds, a beautiful eerie feel to the view.

This was the view when we were there last May.

Back in Tassie, we had weekends to relax and reconnect, to enjoy our local waterfront, summer drinks and beach walks.

This is my contribution to Su’s Changing Seasons Challenge.

What happened to January? I don’t know where the days have gone since we returned from our New Zealand holiday. As I look back through my photos for the month, we were busy, making the most of each summer weekend.

We went blueberry picking at a local farm. My first time. The berries are delicious and are “easy pickings” almost falling into the pot as you run fingers gently over the bunch. The bushes are a reasonable height so it isn’t back breaking work either. As well as enjoying fresh berries each day we also have a few kilos in the freezer.

As we passed another farm shop we bought raspberries and cherries a few metres from the orchards. All these fruit have so much more flavour than shop bought produce.

As we are thinking of changing our front garden to natives, we visited the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens and Inverawe Native Gardens for some inspiration.

We are on water restrictions and the landscape is parched, fortunately we have had reasonable rain in this recent days.

This is my belated contribution to Su’s Changing Season Challenge here.