A day working at home today, the first in almost two weeks, filled with many small pleasures:

• the spinebills on the red flowers of the pineapple sage outside the kitchen window – it flowers in autumn and through early winter, and the native birds love it;
• knitting for twenty minutes in the sunshine on the front veranda, blue fairy wrens darting in amongst nearby bushes, and a large lizard, enjoying the sunshine, watching me from just 6 feet away;
• chai tea in my favourite pottery mug, with a piece of chocolate fudge;
• a kangaroo and a wallaby, grazing in the late afternoon between the house and the small dam, while I watched from the sunroom while treadmilling;
• hanging out towels and sheets on the washing line in the sunshine – and bringing them in, with the fresh,warm sun-smell still on them;
• walking the dogs at sunset, kangaroos in the paddock, small birds settling for the night; several kookaburras laughing in the distance.

Sunset in the west paddock

(And I still have dinner of atlantic salmon with honey & mustard dressing and steamed greens to look forward to, plus (I hope) finishing the last 6 rows of the beautiful lace shawl I’m knitting this evening.)

Autumn has settled in; although we haven’t, yet, had a frost, the evenings and mornings are decidedly cooler, and the days are growing shorter. The past couple of days have had an edge of chill – and the University (where I’m working part-time this semester) has tuned the heating system on. We haven’t lit the fire at home so far, but I have started wearing my wool jumpers (that’s ’sweaters’ in American), and we turn the electric blanket on to warm the bed before bedtime.

In town yesterday afternoon, I caught these flashes of colour against the dark grey sky.

Autumn colour - Beardy Street, Armidale

Banner against autumn sky. Beardy Street, Armidale

Most Australian native trees aren’t deciduous, but Armidale has many plantings of non-natives in the streets, many of them chosen for their Autumnal colour displays, as we do have the advantage of four distinct seasons here – unlike many Australian towns and cities.

I’m not sure what the banners are celebrating – but they were all through the Beardy Street pedestrian mall, and looked great fluttering against the grey sky.

And it did occur to me, as I was taking the photos, how nice it is to be in a built landscape where the sky is so visible, and isn’t crowded by high-rise buildings.

I assigned numbers to each of the contest entries, fired up the random number generator, and the three winners of the As Darkness Falls book packs are:

Shirley Lewis
Jennifer McLeod
Laura Booth

Congratulations, ladies! I’ll be contacting you by email, to get your snail mail addresses and will send your packages out soon.

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest- I’m just sorry that you can’t all win!

I returned home last night after a few days in Canberra, visiting my family. It was my Dad’s birthday on Easter Sunday, and my sister and her family came over for dinner – scrumptious asparagus with smoked salmon for entrée, roast chicken and roast veggies for main course, and pavlova slathered in cream and fresh berries for dessert. Yum!

I played three games of pool with my 14yo nephew – and managed to beat him twice, despite having only played about 12 games in the last 25 years All three games were good ones, and I enjoyed both the playing and the time with my nephew. Other activities included a visit to the Bus Depot markets in Kingston with my sister on Sunday; some shopping and lunch out with my Mum on Monday, and then afternoon tea with my sister at Koko Black – fortunately, I hadn’t pigged out on Easter chocolate before then, because I made up for it with the heavenly chocolate mousse at Koko Black!

On Tuesday, after the morning with my folks – and a massive thunderstorm giving Canberra a desperately needed drenching! – Mum dropped me off in the city, where I met up with my niece, Lauren, who turned 18 recently.

About 18 months ago, I had coffee with Lauren and a few of her friends from school, with a great, long conversation about books and writing. Lauren’s friends were in the early stages, back then, on a project of writing an anthology of short stories, and I was very fortunate that my visit to Canberra this time coincided with the official launch on Tuesday evening of their book – A Roundabout Town, published with the assistance of a grant from Youth InterACT.

The launch was in a gallery at Lyneham, and a great crowd of friends, family, teachers and supporters attended to congratulate and share the excitement of this first publication for the eight contributors:

From left to Right – Luke Allerton, Susie Wang, James Woodman, Aaron Hairsine (digital compilation),
Jennifer Huyn, Cal Doyle-Scott, Dharshi Thangarajah, Katie Cox, Elisia Ramsey.

I’ve read the anthology now – and it’s great! Imaginative and well-written short stories and a poem from these talented young writers, and a pleasure to read. They’ve done a fantastic job, not just in writing the book, but in drawing the project together, in writing the grant application, arranging the book’s publication, and in organising and presenting the launch itself. I am impressed by their talent, their enthusiasm, and professionalism.

So, to add to the congratulations and support them in their endeavours, I’m going to include a copy of this book with each of the As Darkness Falls prize packs in my current contest. There’s still a few days left to enter – so for a chance to win my book, and their book (signed by each of these up-and-coming authors!), plus some other goodies, hop on over to the contest post and put your entry in!