Parrots of our garden

From time to time we get visitors to the garden, with variably-destructive outcomes.  Actually, the mad bird life here is something I particularly enjoy, and even the 6am Kookaburras make me smile.

The bottlebrush tree is particularly attractive to Rainbow Lorikeets (Swainson's Lorikeet).

 

Sulphur-crested Cockatoos prefer the magnolia, however I'm assured they'll try to strip the orange tree just before the fruit is ripe (so probably a month or so away).

Not sure what this tree is, but Australian King Parrots like it.  This is a girl - the flashy boy was squawking from a distant gum.

 

A new place (a month ago)

A month ago (or closer to two months ago), we moved into a new place.  It's older than the last few places we've lived in, but far more of a home - so it suits us to the ground.

It comes with shiny blue sky, and barely-visible solar panels:

A generous, well-lit back porch is perfect for those extended brew days.  Comes with convenient water supply, power, and drainage.

Of course, these photos were taken before we actually moved in - but the lazy is too strong in me to take more at the moment.

The decent garage holds all of our beer paraphernalia, and bicycles.

Finally, we have a back yard and vege garden to play in.  We've been missing those things since we left NZ in 2008.

 

Among other things, the garden has a passionfruit vine, but it's yet to produce fruit.  Flowers are nice, though.

Graduation

Finally got around to doing the graduation thing - video available here, courtesy of Massey University and the power of internets.

 

  

Kate made a fabulously awesome graduation cake - absolutely appropriate, given the Sheep of Destiny's resemblance to chondrodysplastic Texel sheep (barrel-chest, wide-based forelimb stance, etc).  More spectacular cakes are available to view/order at her website, woohoo cakes.

 

Mobility: We have it.

Hyundai i30 SX hatchback, 2.0L, 5-speed manual. We finally have it, and are very happy with it.

Stuff!

The joy of having stuff.... Our junk finally arrived from Oregon - but of course now we need somewhere to put it (unsurprisingly, our 2-bedroom studio doesn't have that many places to store things). We're impressed with the packing/moving company - nothing was damaged.

The only this better than getting stuff is unpacking stuff. Also, building a wall of packing paper.

Randomly, I finally have a plant. He's called Mr. Brainley, pictured below alongside is favourite tequila.

Here's our resident blue-tongued lizard, being relatively photogenic: