Meanwhile .......

There's nothing much going on here, while we wait and watch the latest COVID outbreak numbers and signs of things improving (or not). There aren't many places we can go or plan to go at the moment. It hasn't helped that Canberra has had a very wet, very cold and very cloudy winter this year - not very mood lifting some days.

However, upon reflection there have indeed been some bright spots over the past two weeks here in (currently unaffected) Canberra ....

We took Jody and Ella on our weekly Mt Ainslie climb in the last week of the school holidays (while Abi was at horse riding camp). Ella didn't find the climb too challenging but she found it hard to understand why we walk it when there is a perfectly good road up to the summit - to drive up!

The same day, approaching home, after picking Abi up from horse riding we had this most amazing sunset experience. Abi remarked that the sky looked like scrambled eggs (on fire)!

and then reflected back on to the Carillon and Aspen Island ......

We get to see a lot of our lake - our bridge to bridge walk is our main outing most days. Rob captured the shifting fog this morning a week or so ago while we enjoyed our coffee ......

And I tried to capture our view of the dusting of snow on the distant Brindabella Mountains on this morning's walk, but I think I was too far away!

It felt a bit daring to travel towards Bowral during the week and stop for lunch at Bendooley Estate. We did it - it was lovely - but maybe we shouldn't have??

Surprisingly, there were plenty of other people there having lunch too. It wasn't against the health directions for us  - but probably not advisable with all the uncertainty around. The Bowral area is getting pretty close to the Greater Sydney defined border!

A lovely (safe?) thing we were able to do was attend a members only (guided) viewing of the new Know My Name (Part 2) exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia last Friday night. Ewa Pachucka's fibre art "Landscape with Bodies" was probably one of the most distinctive works in the space ........

but this "Fear Eats the Soul" neon installation by Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley is probably what is most relevant to the current times!

Winter depths

Any spare time we had in June was spent doing final preparations for our long awaited trip to the Top End of Australia (Darwin, Kununurra, Broome and Karratha (Murujuga NP). Our departure date was Sunday the 27th June - the day that everything went pear shaped all around Australia in terms of border closures and lockdowns. This was the drastic response to a small number of Delta variant COVID cases escaping from hotel quarantine in Brisbane and overseas traveller transmission in Sydney. Our trip was off - indefinitely - and at such short notice!!!!

This picture taken from our front windows on the 24th June - it sums up our mood pretty accurately - we've had lots of these foggy, rainy mornings lately.......they're drab and a bit dispiriting.

Luckily Ella and the fam got in a quick day trip to Sydney JUST before all hell broke loose there (COVID wise) so she was able to complete some birthday wardrobe purchases. It was great fun to see what her choices were (mostly from her fave Culture Kings just off Sydney's Pitt Street Mall).

Those very desirable Air Jordans are so clean and new - and perfect!

And we loved the story behind this T-shirt - a satirical take on Elon Musk and the dogecoin phenomena - typical Ella sense of humour!

As well as the letdown of our cancelled trip (at very short notice) we're even in a heightened state here in Canberra with mandatory mask wearing as of this week (although not outdoors or at home) and a range of other restrictions. We have no cases here but there is concern that we're so close to the Sydney region and all the breakouts there!

But one nice outcome of missing out on our trip is that we're around for the Winter school holidays. We were lucky to have the young ones over for lunch during the week and caught up on all their news..

This pair are probably the tallest kids to ever use our Hassett Park swings ...

the North Melbourne supporter!

All the kids are loving that our small creek is flowing better now - thanks to all the rain and the efforts of our Park weeding group.

Some very special pics of these funny, gorgeous kids and their Mums  .......

Abi's had some quiet one on one time with us too. She loves getting the paints out and doing a bit of creative construction when she's here. This visit she made a wonderful horse float from a box I'd saved for her. It was very involved and took her a few hours of concentrated work ......

But it was perfect when she finished!