Autumn is here with all of its beauty
On Monday we observed “Qing Ming Jie” by visiting Joe’s grandfather’s grave which is located in an idyllic location southeast of Melbourne. You could forgive yourself if you thought you were on the outskirts of Suzhou with the incredibly manicured gardens and temples. In our cultural landscape it is pleasing to see this where ceremony is just about the family without political or religious overtones.
At a more local level, it is the term one holidays and Joe has survived and thrived in the environment of Melbourne High which was either made for him or vice versa.
We have moved into our house in Kensington and have our floorboards laid in the living room and carpet laid in the upstairs area of the house.
As an added bonus, two interesting things have happened. We only have 7 houses in our street which overlooks a park. A willow tree obstructs the entrance to our small street and the garbage truck currently refuses to enter. After a failed collection I contacted the council and met some of our neighbours which turned a potential negative into a positive. The Melbourne City Council folk were wonderful although I think the waste collection folk are in a bad place at the moment.
We have also discovered that through some process there is a massive community garden bed going in at the end of our street. I will be arming the gopro to capture a timelapse of its construction tomorrow. The seeds will be planted on Saturday. This means we will have veges and herbs no more than 10 metres from our front door.
Around the corner from our street there is a person (I haven’t met them yet) who places tiny seedlings of chillies and other plants out on the street for people to take. I will meet this person who like so many I remember from this area are very community minded.
Onto the subject of this post… with less than a week of term one holidays left, the leaves on some of the trees in our park have quickly transformed from green to orange then red in a matter of days. This picture was taken from our bedroom balcony this afternoon while parents and children took the opportunity between rain periods to play in this wonderful little park.
I will be at a NAPLAN workshop tomorrow in Collins Street and have a number of very interesting education events lined up over the coming month that are not only adding personal value, but offering insight into opportunities for our schools in the Northern Territory. These are presentations by Telstra, Brainary, Autodesk that we couldn’t justify a trip for, but because I am already here, there is no transport or accommodation cost and the magic of video conferencing means I can share back an unbiased contextual briefing on what I have seen. I hasten to add what I have seen is extremely impressive.
