18 July 2013

In the Bleak Mid Winter



The title of this post is a joke, of course.  It is mid-winter, but it has been anything but bleak.  Today was Melbourne's warmest July day on record.  It was disturbingly balmy this morning and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are living right at the frontier of climate change.  Even the garden looks like Spring around here, with jonquils and violets blooming.  Although our inherited English cottage garden has mostly gone now as Craig gradually replaces it with more indigenous plantings, I do love the bulbs that have self planted and come up in suprising and new locations each year, the violets that grow like weeds and our few remaining roses.  We moved to this house at the height of the drought and it amazed me how tough those old roses and the camellias were, thriving with barely a drop to drink.
After the warm start to the day, a huge storm blew in.  By 3.30pm the sky was black, and rain was lashing the windows of my 12th floor office.  And then the clouds lifted and the sun came out and there was the most perfect, full arched rainbow right over the city, descending into the Rialto and coming out, slightly distorted, the other side. I've never seen anything like it, and didn't even try to get a photo of it.

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