For the first time since my surgery on Wednesday, I ventured outdoors this morning, taking slow steps alongside the golf course, with Vilis beside me. I enjoyed the birds and soaring, elegant street trees. On my return to the house, I again delved into our past nearly eleven months in Australia. Today’s post is a collection of photos of landscapes with a closer view than those I featured yesterday.

North Queensland, as the above serene photograph illustrates, is a beautiful and in many ways easy-going region of the world in which to have spent a collection of months spanning nearly a year and the gamut of dry tropics seasons. I particularly appreciate it now, recovering from my surgery, as the balmy temperatures don’t necessitate tossing split logs of firewood into a wood stove and wearing several layers of clothes, as would be necessary in my secluded, rural home in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Townsville bird life, too, keeps me aware of the external world even when I am relegated to the indoors, the squawking rants of rainbow lorikeets, soft croonings of peaceful doves, and liquid gulps of friarbirds relating tales of nectar abundance and territorial assertiveness. A male yellow-bellied sunbird with long, curving beak and shimmering, iridescent black throat flew to my writing window and clung to the frame, its glorious gold/olive/black plumage like a gift, as though this wee nectar feeder were telling me, If you can’t come to us, we’ll come to you.