FROM JANET FRENCH

As Janet included (and anyone else from Las Lomas), I am sharing her email letter with all. The French Twins, I believe I have known and been best friends with since Church Street, around 2 or 3 years old, the Bible Schools for preschoolers at our 3 main churches on what is now known as Locust Street – Presbyterian, Lutheran and Episcopal.

Dear Mary Jane (and anyone else from Las Lomas),

While you are cold with snow on the ground we are having really wonderful weather here in Queensland.  The days are a little on the warm side and, as we get towards the cyclone season, the humidity is increasing as well.  However, my idea of paradise is sleeping under just a sheet, which is what we will do from now until April.  I remember as a child in Walnut Creek waking up on summer mornings, after a night spent with just a sheet over me.  The bird bath in the patio dripped into the fish pond and the birds were singing.  It was, and remains, my favorite time of year and also my favorite activity, lying in bed listening to birds.

Here in Keppel Sands we have a lot of migratory birds.  They make their way along the coast, some from as far away as Siberia.  This year we had the same pair of Tawny Frogmouths that we had last year.  My Complete Australian Bird Book tells me that, if a pair successfully raises a clutch of eggs (and last year they raised three), that pair will return to the same place subsequent years.  Well, sure enough, we heard them calling to each other and she started sitting on her eggs about the end of October.  This year she raised two chicks, presumably a boy and a girl.  Now the babies are the same size as the parents, so I imagine they will be gone by Christmas.

Following orders from my elder daughter I have planted native flowering plants to attract the birds.  At different times we have a variety of parrots (very loud) and this year we had white cockatoos (and they really shriek at each other).  Yesterday we heard kookaburras for the first time this year.  Queensland does not have daylight saving (the other eastern Australian states do) so at this time of year the sun rises well before five a.m.  Seeing as the birds start singing at first light this means we have a cacophony of bird songs to wake us up early.

When we moved into this house in July of 1995 there was a tree trunk, the size of my thumb, sticking out of the sand at the back of the house.  Because it was not in the way of our cars when we back out from under the house I decided to leave it there.  I did not think it would survive because it was collared by three feet of sand.  Well it did.  The trunk is now more than a food in diameter and the tree has orange flowers in the spring and produces huge seed pods in the autumn.  I took a leaf to a nursery and was told it was a Black Bean Tree and that they should not grow further south than Cairns, 500 kilometers to the north.  Seeing as the seeds are the size of hens’ eggs it is impossible that a bird dropped it into my garden.  The only problem is that, when the tree (which can grow to twenty meters) gets above the height of the roof the leaves scorch in the salt air.  Consequently we have to take the middle out of this tree every other year or so.

Terry tells me he saw a snake under the house last week.  I think I can leave this off my agenda.  However, I really love the big goanna, almost five feet long, who comes to eat the cat’s food on the front porch.  Our cat made the mistake of thinking this was something to eat and ended up being badly scratched.  The goanna lives under the house three houses to the south.  Seeing as many of the houses are only used for holidays the shelter they provide for native reptiles is significant.  Most critters will avoid us as much as we want to avoid them, but I am happy to fail to see snakes nearby, even though I suspect they are always there.

Janet French