What an interesting and wild week this has been. Mixed in with trying to finish up written work for the school year, we had a windstorm, a downed tree and cable line in our street, ongoing smoke issues from the raging bush fires, AND another excursion to the city to see the koala statues we missed the first time.
Some puzzle progress from Monster to start off the photo gallery... he is making good progress on this 1000 piece puzzle. It is amazing how large the pieces to a 1000 piece puzzle seem, after working on a 1500 piece puzzle.
Tuesday morning we were holding our breath and praying for rain as a HUGE thunderstorm was predicted. Sadly, we only got a smattering of rain, a few claps of thunder, and wild wind. The wind brought down a large branch from the HUGE oak tree that grows three houses down from us. As it came down it took the cable TV line with it. So, first the firemen arrived to rope off the area and "baby-sit" the tree and the wire. Then the electricity company came to fix the wire, and finally the SES (state emergency services) came to cut up the branch and check the health of the tree. Sadly, the tree is full of white ants (termites) and will have to come down.
I was chatting with the SES worker while he stacked all the chopped wood and he found this interesting beetle. For size reference, that is Monkey's hand (my 10 year old) in the second photo.
A couple photos of the tree - sadly the photos don't really adequately show where the branch broke off.
Munchkin re-potted his sunflower seeds!
More puzzle progress from Monster...
Smoke haze at Sydney Harbour on Thursday...
A beautiful bottle tree in the Botanical Gardens
I will be doing some research to figure out what kind of flower this is...
This giant tree is covered with them, but we couldn't find a sign anywhere telling us what kind of tree it is.
Another beautiful tree and a close up of its flowers.
I love lilacs and the colour of this one is just glorious!!
Much excitement among all the children (there were 10 of them) and the three mums as well, when we spotted the Laughing Kookaburra on the sign. Then we discovered this baby Ibis and its parent. The kids were thrilled, until they watched as the parent regurgitated food to feed the baby. That grossed a few of them out!
We spent some more time in the Calyxx enjoying all the carnivorous plants again.
For a special treat, Monkey and Munchkin got to feed the Venus Fly Trap!!
If you look closely you should be able to see the cricket inside the closing leaves in this photo.
The treat for this excursion was soft serve ice cream cones from McDonald's!
The purpose of a second trip to the city and the Botanical Gardens, in just one week, was to see the Koala statues again. The Scavenger Hunt was going to finish on the 30th of November and we missed a few statues when we visited the week before. This time, with some difficulty for a couple of them, we managed to find and photograph them all!!
There were also two statues of Cassowary which I thought were magnificent!
Finally, a beautiful shot of the harbour just before we boarded the train home!
More puzzle progress...
The final treat of the week was spotting a pair of King parrots at the park during homeschool group. I wasn't able to get fabulous photos because they are nesting, but I managed to snap this one quickly before they disappeared from view.
