I hear the birds calling.....at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne

it's a saturday morning, a day that is almost invariably awaited for, especially after a long, long week....the first thing that eventually came to mind was to go for a walk, a long, long walk....hmmmm, thought i should get up early and avoid the crowd, much less the traffic that usually comes in the christmas season. checked the weather, good....a top of 26, sunny with late showers....but outside at 6:00 in the morning, it felt like 15 degrees C....nothing could be better than that, in fact it's almost perfect, as i love the cold...nevertheless, bring a jacket, just in case....i still remember going there last winter when the temps just dropped suddenly, i almost could not take photos as my hands started to freeze after taking a few shots...:-(

i usually follow my heart when it comes to choosing a place to go for morning walks, and i think it's almost a norm, for me,  that gardens, i mean expansive gardens, would be my first choice, and the second would be the beach....well, the beach might be a bit too much at this time... so, here i go, down to the royal botanic gardens...the drive was an easy one, whereas normally it takes a little more than half-an-hour to drive to the city, it's usually cut by fifteen minutes in the mornings when it's still early...

this is probably my longest post since i started this blog, even if it means posting only 10 per cent of the  400+ photos from 2 hours of walking!

aah, nothing could be more refreshing! :-))

for more information about the Royal Botanic gardens:  http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/

a night before christmas...

and a brief walk around the city was worth the while, what a breath of fresh air, after the rain...

the giant christmas tree at swanston street

flinders street station

bike share

bourke street

myer christmas window showing 'the nutcracker'

lost and found?

swanston street

Brighter days - another visit to Heide Garden

This is probably the wettest start of summer Melbourne has ever experienced since I came here... It's been raining cats and dogs on most days and today was no exception, except this morning which gave us a bit of sunshine after a foggy start to the day.  I drove down to Templestowe which is a seven-minute drive after dropping my son to Sunday school...thought it was a good time to go for a walk, in a place called Heide garden...how I loved the fresh smell of grass, especially after the rain...even the flowers and trees looked reinvigorated...

Overcoming camera shyness

Okey, that's me, warts and all. I have not had a photo of myself for such a long time and even previously, I could count with my fingers the number of pictures taken with me in there. I rely on the fact that I have the prerogative to exclude myself in photos or to delete them, just because I am always the photographer in the family, heh :-)) But then, I have realized that if I want to practice shooting portraits, I must have a ready subject....well, this is just a couple from a series of photos...but a good start, I guess.

yummy dessert -Mango Gateau

This is probably one of the cakes that has instantly become my favourite lately.  I first tasted this at a friend's birthday party... actually one of the two birthday cakes that she had for the day. Mango Gateau is a French style sponge cake traditionally made with cream and may be a multilayered cake, this one (above photo) is  topped and layered with thin slices of sweet fresh mangoes and wrapped in crepes! It's the kind of cake that one could never have enough even after eating a few slices....and hmmm, how it melts in the mouth...
One can buy this from BreadTop, a chain of bakeshops in Melbourne that has recently became very popular among Asians and Aussies.