the joys of airconditioning

The climate in Brisbane is hot and humid and one thing that makes a huge difference to living comfortably here are North Easterly breezes.  My house was designed to catch those breezes and this means that I only use my aircon occassionally. 
However, Mr veryrichbuilder who is proving to the world that he has made it, has built a concrete block house that shuts out all breezes.  I came home this afternoon to find this:

 

this beauty is sitting about 25cms from his fence (and one of the only parts of the fence that is not all concrete - it is to be filled in with horizontal wooden slats so the sound will travel well through that!

 

I think it really adds to the ambience of my garden - thank heaven my hedges are growing.  

Rented flat in new farm is looking good!!!!!

A traveller returns

A prize for the person who knows what this is:

 

here's a clue......

  

Born in Italy

 

they are the fur cuffs of my exhausted coat which has been to America for a month and has been from West Coast to the East and braved many snow falls and blizzards!  You can see how tired it looks!

In New York, it visited the MOMO and brought me a lovely scented candle which is needed here to combat the rather musty smell from having a wet ceiling and carpet after rain got in in the storms. Written on the candle holder is "if you truly love nature you will find beauty everywhere".  I'm not sure which is more beautiful - the possum that has declared my swimming pool fence to be his own personal toilet or the Chinese fir tree which has just popped it's cones and delivered about 20kg of fir seeds to my pool and surrounds!

so it's off to the cleaners for the coat, a re-uniting with it's cuffs, and then back into the cupboard beside Victoria's wedding dress - I wonder which one will be the first to be worn again?

the sofas of number 53

While the city of Brisbane has been flooding, I have been on enforced stay-at-home leave.  The office building I work in has been closed and the power turned off.  My suburb has not been affected at all.  It has been quite surreal to think of all the people suffering from the floods while I sit here in the sunshine, and I'm not really able to join a work gang and help clean up. 
For want of something to do, I started considering my STUFF.  One important fact is that I have FIVE sofas - how can one person possibly use all those?  Being a great believer in cushioning, some of them have been re-cushioned lately and some are sadly in need of same - here they are:

poor little front verandah - sadly in need of something - it has to wait until the building next door finishes!!!!!

this poor thing is stuck in a room upstairs and is in danger of DROWNING!!!!!!!!

The ladies lounge sofa has had several lives - seems to now be leaning towards palm trees, elephants and pineapples.

Monkeys and palm trees - this one is for Floss

the elephant couch - perfect for tired people

I am thinking of downsizing - what fate awaits all these old friends?