Our rainy kingdom
Beautiful fat rain is pinging and plopping off every surface in Lung Mei Tsuen, drops kissing the windows and bursting over the front awning.
It's damn fresh, and I love it.
Our little village is a verdurous paradise of greenery, not the muted and beloved browned hues of Australia but vigorous chatreuse, algal and forest greens beneath which flourish hothouse butterflies, 15-foot Chinese cobras, lazy little turtles, a range of translucent lizards, and birds and bugs of fantastical and exotic assortment.
It's like living at the zoo, but better because you don't have to pay $75 to get in, nor smell elephant piss on warm mornings (I grew up 5km from the Melbourne Zoo, and that was the smell that greeted me each summer morning when I opened the back door. The harbinger of summer, I call it. THE HARBINGER OF SUMMER. Possibly it's just been a while since I've used "harbinger" in a post, but nevertheless you can trust me that that stuff stinks. About as much as being kept awake every night by the fucking "Jazz at the Zoo" twilight series. A clarinet is rarely delightful and particularly not after a long tiring day of decreased oxygen consumption due to trying to ward off the stench of pachyderm uric acid by clasping a garden peg over one's nostrils).
"I'm so happy, I just did a massive piss on some steaming concrete and now it's wafting over West Brunswick..."
Here are some of the birds that live at Lung Mei. I see most of them as I walk down to the bus each morning. Shout going out to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department for graciously if unknowingly furnishing the following photographs of the local birdlife:
Ah the Great Tit, everyone's favourite. Especially Zadie's now that I've weaned her (oh yeah!)
And now, the local insect kingdom. Please see under the cut for many more amazing examples of the resident arthropods, like this dude...
Here's a couple of lizards that have eased the pain of leaving our pet lizards, Colin and Fairy, back home in Australia (released illegally into a nature reserve at Williamstown and currently probably fucking with the evolutionary process in their unnatural new home). This guy lives by our front steps:
And this see-through one took up residence in our of our bathrooms for a time. Nice small intestine, mate.
And just to finish on a romantic note, a big fat toad.
And a snake eating a rat.
Love to you from our little village on this wet afternoon at the start of the rainy season xx
It's damn fresh, and I love it.
Our little village is a verdurous paradise of greenery, not the muted and beloved browned hues of Australia but vigorous chatreuse, algal and forest greens beneath which flourish hothouse butterflies, 15-foot Chinese cobras, lazy little turtles, a range of translucent lizards, and birds and bugs of fantastical and exotic assortment.
It's like living at the zoo, but better because you don't have to pay $75 to get in, nor smell elephant piss on warm mornings (I grew up 5km from the Melbourne Zoo, and that was the smell that greeted me each summer morning when I opened the back door. The harbinger of summer, I call it. THE HARBINGER OF SUMMER. Possibly it's just been a while since I've used "harbinger" in a post, but nevertheless you can trust me that that stuff stinks. About as much as being kept awake every night by the fucking "Jazz at the Zoo" twilight series. A clarinet is rarely delightful and particularly not after a long tiring day of decreased oxygen consumption due to trying to ward off the stench of pachyderm uric acid by clasping a garden peg over one's nostrils).
"I'm so happy, I just did a massive piss on some steaming concrete and now it's wafting over West Brunswick..."
Here are some of the birds that live at Lung Mei. I see most of them as I walk down to the bus each morning. Shout going out to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department for graciously if unknowingly furnishing the following photographs of the local birdlife:
Ah the Great Tit, everyone's favourite. Especially Zadie's now that I've weaned her (oh yeah!)
And now, the local insect kingdom. Please see under the cut for many more amazing examples of the resident arthropods, like this dude...
Here's a couple of lizards that have eased the pain of leaving our pet lizards, Colin and Fairy, back home in Australia (released illegally into a nature reserve at Williamstown and currently probably fucking with the evolutionary process in their unnatural new home). This guy lives by our front steps:
And this see-through one took up residence in our of our bathrooms for a time. Nice small intestine, mate.
And just to finish on a romantic note, a big fat toad.
And a snake eating a rat.
Love to you from our little village on this wet afternoon at the start of the rainy season xx