Once the swifts have come and gone Winter is upon us. The first fall of snow appears on the mountains. We awake during the first weeks of July to mornings of dense greyness where just the tree-tops appear out of a mysterious sea of mist below us. Although we have many leaden days, the sun does shine and the sky can be blue. During this month, Terry and I create order out of our garden’s riot of disorder when we clear the overgrown areas behind our pool, which will open up our view towards Port Phillip Bay. We are never lonely in our endeavours! Willy wagtails, blackbirds and wattle birds follow our progress along with our two small dogs, Tennyson and Kipling and two cats, Tobias and Pickles.

Magpies and kookaburras pay the occasional visit, the first with a choral, the second with a cackle of laughter. In the early mornings and early evenings, flocks of grey and pink galahs wheel across the house screeching madly, heading for a nearby gardens - if not our own. We've manage to attract eight types of parrots into our garden - cockatoos, galahs, black parrots, King parrots, Crimson and Eastern rosellas, corellas and parakeets by filling our birdfeeders with sunflower seeds. Occasionally, this is the month when we see a lonely Ibis who will sit perched, silhouetted in the dusk, upon a dead tree branch.