Summer has arrived. People with glasses in their hands are swelling out of the cafes and clogging the streets as they bask in the warmth. More tables than ever are squeezed onto the narrow footpaths of Carlisle Street and everyone is smiling.

This exciting city of Melbourne is my ‘Seachange’. And I can’t believe I have been moaning about the winter and how long and cold it has been this year. Melbourne today and yesterday have been magical compared with August in my home city. How complacent I have become since I have been here. Expecting the winter to be mild and the sun to shine daily. It is so easy to become accustomed to our good fortune. Melbourne is my lucky city. Today and yesterday I felt bathed in sun, luck and the delight of daffodils. I drank tea in my courtyard and purred.

I’m trying to see where I can put some vegetables in my tiny garden. Years ago I read a cook book written by Don Dustan the then Premier of South Australia. I hadn’t been to Australia at the time and knew nothing of South Australia however his book captivated me – he cooked and grew his own vegetables. It was very evocative and if I remember it correctly full of good recipes and gardening hints. I’d love to come across it again especially now I live in Australia. I wonder if he mentions vegetables that possums do not eat?

Recently I heard a snippet of a radio programme asking listeners who they thought was charismatic. His book had that sort of pull. I wonder if he was charismatic in real life.

Where I’ve lived in Melbourne there are dead trees. In this house there are two in the property behind me. Pigeons like them. I can’t tell one pigeon from another but when I’m in my courtyard several of them will sit and coo at me from one of the dead trees. In the photo my still living silver birch is softening the dead limbs of the next door tree.