Yesterday I started my day with a lovely walk at my local park. We are lucky to live in an area considered the “sand belt of Melbourne” so we have a lot of green spaces and golf courses in the area. Some of the parks are manicured and kept in great condition because they’re also football (winter) or cricket grounds (summer) while others look wild and seem like you’re in the bush.

The parks have great barbecues all clean and maintained. They’re gas and they’re free. (You’d hope so because we are paying for them ).

As I was walking around here, I thought that if you really wanted to save money on gas, you could come to a park with your kettle, pots and pans and just cook outside.

Prepare all your food in the park – at no cost.

It’s a great idea. As the weather warms up why not?

You could sit there on the table, have your cuppa and big fry up, read your paper and listen to the birds. You may also have some visitors like curious dogs run up salivating looking at you with sad eyes, while you eat your bacon.

The couple of parks near me have had lots of these trees planted. They’ve been planted quite close to each other. They’re a eucalyptus plant but I’ve never seen the leaf structure like this – round and tinted red. They looked lovely – like some Christmas plant. I had to look this plant up.

I have an iPhone 12. If you take a photo of the plant, and click on the “i”, there’s a Look Up feature.

Using this, it tells me it’s a Eucalyptus Polyanthemos.

Oh no. Polyanthemos.

My Greek kicks into action. Poly=many and anthemos=flowers/blooms

“Great,” I think. “My hayfever is going to go wild” as I look at the tens of eucalyptus anthemos planted around me.

Sigh.

Oh well. At least I can feel the new season coming in. We are still having a lot of rain and the weeds have taken over but it’s nice to see some plants and trees have bloomed.

The cherry blossoms have exploded.

It’s the one time of the year that I love – the short period of time in the year where there is colour and blooming flowers around me.