Spring beauty

Spring snuck up on me this year. Every day is slightly warmer. The city is hazy and beautiful and there are unfurling feathers of new growth and ripening flowers everywhere. It feels as thought the entire city has been fleetingly carpeted with soft purple. I can't walk under a jacaranda tree without craning my neck upwards in the hope that I'll catch even one tiny, down-soft flower. The fallen flowers bruise quickly, and I always feel like the tree is trying to hide the brown petals with another layer of purple as soon as it can. They're my favourites. It may be warming up, but this sub-tropical city is a nature baby's dream in spring. 

They're worth the wait, honestly. 

I even bought my own bougainvillea plant. He sits by the front door and is beautiful and cheerful whenever I get home. 

As a florist, living here and travelling out to the farm promises a seemingly never ending supply of incredible colours, textures and scents. One has cacti and almost tropical forests and the other, temperate classics. I went completely mental over a wisteria vine. I've never smelt anything so good. 

Except, maybe, for the Toowoomba Flower Festival. Toowoomba is a very, very pretty town. This visit was almost like walking through paintings. Part of the joy of flowers comes from a love of pure naturalness, I think. There's no hatred within a flower. They're an embrace for the eye and a balm for the heart.

Beautiful curiosities.

This is the perfect time of year. For anything. Especially fresh starts. Does your city wake up in Spring?

Holidays

Lots of things happened in two months.

Like beach holidays. Mid-winter beach holidays. Mid-winter beach and thrifting-at-lovely-country-villages holidays. Wait, what? That's right. I live in Queensland. There is no such thing as winter at the beach in Queensland.

Currumbin aka case in point.

Mooball, the greatest town name on earth.

No big deal, really. Just visited shops stocked completely by my dreams... And giant seventies pottery lamps in electric cobalt. 

I changed the sideboard around again. And again and again and again and hey, look! More cacti in the bedroom!

And there was a frost in Brisbane. Actual frost. On my car. We figured out what it was eventually, after sitting in the car for five minutes, wondering why the window wipers weren't doing anything and also why the glass looked "really weird." It was ice! Outside a freezer!

I also bought a bunch of radishes because I really wanted to cut heart shapes in them.

We're not allowed pets in the apartment but we've 'adopted' a blue-tongue lizard that lives under our porch. He sunbakes all the time. He's Lizard Friend. He lets me sit on the stairs next to him sometimes. 

I painted a few things. And dreamt about studying fine arts. 

I sat in the sun and looked at the sky a lot. I also drank a lot of tea.

I also remembered that the kitchen wasn't just a place to store leftover takeaway. 

Best of all, I was asked to be godmother to a cherished friend's youngest little lady. I adore this tiny, roly poly girl and can't wait to watch her grow. As a person raised by a Buddhist mother and an atheist father, it's uncharted territory for me, but all very exciting. And such an honour. And, y'know, babies!