Why I live where I live.

I have lived where I live for less than a year.  

Serendipity brought me here...

but other things keep me here.

Well of course there is the garden.  It is established and superb, the soil loamy and fertile.  

The property large enough to do the things I want to do, but small enough to manage.  

The creek at the back is not only beautiful and has at least one platypus,  but also provides water for the garden.  

What more could a gardener want?

Although it feels like a bush retreat, there are neighbours and a welcoming community and all only one and half hours from Melbourne.

We can go on a lovely short rural drive to Yea and have lunch and a latte.

On the way home, just off the main road we can make a stop.

Imagine this

It is a warm humid day with thunder rolling in the distance and this is the view we must look at.  

There is a flutter of butterflies (what is the correct collective noun?) all around the car.  Because they seem so camera shy, The Cook offers to stand like a tree in case one might land and deem to have its photo taken. They just laugh and fly away.

The noisy cicadas, probably don't have time to be amused by our strange goings on.  They are preoccupied, serenading each other.  Cicadas have probably been speed dating longer than humans have been around.

On the grass at my feet, a shucked off cicada casing.  Next to it, its recent inhabitant acclimatizing herself to her new outfit.  

Cicaderella, ready for the ball.

The Cook, obliging as always,  offers a contrasting back to display the cicada in her finery.

 We didn't keep her long from her Prince Charming 

.

I'm not sure that March flies trying to bite one through one's jeans can really be a reason to love living here. But they are such a part of Summer in the bush...why not?  Anyway, they don't succeed.

 I don't know what this is, but it is pretty and matches the flower...besides I am very proud of this photo so couldn't leave it out. 

When the rain comes we sit in the car and listen to a show about Janet Frame, a favourite author, on the radio.  The butterflies disappear and the cicadas rest from their song...perhaps they are interested in the New Zealand author too.

The rain clears, the butterflies and cicadas get back to business and this is the view.

Once home, I sit with the goat babies by the creek. Listening to them pull grass and chew is very meditative.  I watch a baby currawong hassling its mother for food in a tree on the other side of the creek.  A kookaburra is perched, as he is every afternoon, on a dead tree with his head cocked to one side.  He is looking for movement on the creek bank.  Every now and then he swoops down and picks something up.  I am waiting for the time I see him with a snake in his beak.

Today I also planted the lettuces in the pottager, and more chamomile and corn in the vegetable garden. 

I made sure Henny got off her eggs to have something to eat and drink.  She does not enjoy this twice daily forced health regime.

The Cook made a fabulous risotto al fungi.  Warm orange cake, drizzled with orange sauce and cream is  desert.

Another 12 botttles of marmalade were made... to feed my obsession.  Soon it will be off to bed to listen to the night sounds of frogs romanticising and the willy wagtail who will warble on and off all night.

Now why I would want to live anywhere else!

I would love to hear why you live where you live.

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