CHANGING SEASONS photo challenge

The seasons are a'changing here in Melbourne, Australia, too. I detect a couple of little short sleeves in that closet there! It is spring now here..heading towards summer. Melbourne is a very changeable city, weather wise..they say they can have four seasons in one day. Bright blue sunshine can rapidly deteriorate into grey skies, and thunderstorms and cold weather! Even in summer.
Today we experienced just that by driving up into the hills not too far from here. Daddy and Grandma took the little people for a drive , to let Mummy have a break for a bit. She works very hard looking after twins and a four year old, just changing suburbs and kindy, and trying to unpack into a new home. The clouds came rolling by, the wind blew up, and it turned freezing cold, and quite unpleasant for little people. The lookout was equipped with a lovely undercover lookout, in the guise of a very expensive restaurant! We decided to eat our meusli bars in the car instead and drive home, forgoing the pleasure of finding our way through a (paid) maze in the freezing cold...we might come back another time, when the weather might be a little more child friendly, and we get more value for our money!

However, the sun has returned since we returned down to the city!
The little spring flowers are popping up in the lawns and ground
the spring bulbs too
and there is always new growth on the trees...this was a magnificent fig tree back at their old rented house further in towards the city! I will miss all the fruit trees at that old house! It might have been a very old rental house, but there were so many fruit trees packed into the yard. Besides two huge old fig trees, there was a magnificent old locquat tree providing wonderful summer shade, a plum tree, nectarines, and a lemon out the front. Have I remembered them all? Probably not! Oh, a huge old cactus tree out the back corner behind the figs...what was it called, Prickly Pear...they were a pest in Queensland way back, and they had to bring in an insect to control it (was it the cactoblastus, see footnote below) before it took over huge tracts of land. I even tried to eat the fruit off it, carefully pulling off all the Very Prickly spines..looking up advice off the internet. It tasted alright, but very time consuming..and dangerous!

I also looked up locquats on the internet, but couldn't find any less time consuming ways for peeling them...there is so much seed, and not a lot of flesh. But they were very refreshing! Mr one year old R and I used to love just eating them as they were, as well as all the other fruit. Trouble was he wasn't very good at distnguishing the good from the bad!!




The spring blossoms were just bursting forth in Toowoomba and Brisbane, just before I left. I love this photo I took at the Japanese Gardens in Toowoomba a couple of weeks ago!

The Brenda Photo Challenge is hosted this week by:

Amanda @ Penny 'n' Pounds

You should be able to go to her blog and click on the other participants...to see their photos!

FOOTNOTE...the cactoblastus memorial hall is on the Warrego Highway out of Toowoomba...between Dalby and Miles...I am sorry I cant remember the name...was it Boonarga...where it was...I passed it many times when we travlled back and forth visiting my husband's parents wheat and cattle property out in that corner of the Darling Downs.

ps Yes, it appears to be at Boonarga..what a memory! I just found an interesting little travel blog someone wrote about their trip out there..interestiing to read and see about that area through other's eyes! I just typed in Cactoblastus memorial hall into google..Don't know what all that has to do with changing seasons..sorry about that!