Some spookiness

It is Spring time in Noosa. There are lots of butterflies around now, and different plants are starting to flower, for example jacarandas and frangipanis. Baby magpies have fledged, and so the adult magpies are no longer so territorial and we haven't noticed any swooping down at cyclists recently. 

Here is an Orchard Swallowtail butterfly (they are huge with a wingspan of about 10 cm); it is a female one laying eggs on our lemon tree:

A couple of weeks ago, we went to doggy beach which was great for swimming as there were no waves. The water was very clear and fish were swimming about. There were lots of very excited dogs about playing with each other. Seeing all the dogs was good practise for a party at our friend's house with their HUGE dog.

Isla and her ukelele: 

Australian magpie and baby:

 Cycling around the duck pond:

Sunset in our street:

Evie and I have been doing quite a bit of baking together. Here she is making banana bread:

She's been wanting to make bread for ages now. Here she is kneading the dough:

Then we put the dough outside in the garden to rise and had some lunch. Evie is enjoying tomatoes:

The dough had risen a lot outside, so we finished making our bread:

At the weekend, Isla and I went to a birthday party at a huge softplay centre filled with trampolines. Isla had a great time. On the way home on the motorway, we could see smoke and as we got closer to our suburb, the smoke got thicker. We could see the orange glow in the sky and could also see the flames of a bush fire. It was very quiet and the firemen were controlling the spread of the fire by back burning to ensure that homes in another housing area and the road were not reached by the fire. 

On Sunday we decided to pop to the beach. When we got there we bumped into two of Isla's friends from school and she played with them for a bit. We found some pipis (a type of smooth clam) and watched them dig down in a bucket.

We had a walk by the mangroves after school this week. There is a mud skipper fish and a mangrove crab in these photos, if you can spot them!

A Noisy Miner bird on a cane. They really are noisy and squawk very loudly whenever Monty even thinks about going outside. 

We were lucky enough to have some beautiful Rainbow Lorrikeets in our garden yesterday:

On Monday, it was Halloween. After school, Isla and Evie made some pumpkins and bats out of paper and we stuck them to our postbox at the front of our house. We also stuck up our Halloween banner from Granny Ilene's house from last year. People in our street put decorations up to show that they are happy to have Trick or Treaters visit. We had loads of visitors! Then we went out for a short while ourselves:

Some people had very spooky decorations: