Cupcake Memories: Life in Sydney, Australia

Spent a couple of hours this afternoon hosing down the front of the house, garage door, windows, rubbish bins and driveway. I couldn’t bear seeing all surfaces covered with red dust from the recent dust storm. I’ve already hosed down the sides of the house and backyard yesterday.

Felt so guilty using so much water for surface cleaning but at least it’s from the recycled water pipeline, so no water restrictions there. Hope no more of such dust storm recurring.

We really appreciate the sudden change of weather from the sweltering of over 40C to just less than 24C with showers. I hope this bring the much needed relief to the raging bushfires in the state of Victoria. My sympathy and heart goes out to all victims and their loved ones who perished in the fires.

I hope there will be more rain. The fires have to stop. My utmost respect to all the firefighters, volunteers and others who put their lives on the line to help save others.

Flowers … they signify …

- tranquility
- the beauty of nature
- God’s gift
- love
- softness

Took this shot from a plant nursery. I love daisies.

Our local council is really doing their bit to go green. We have had council workers knocked on our doors on several occasions to ask if we would like to have energy saving light bulbs installed, which is provided free of charge by the council. If we said yes, the workers would help to install the bulbs immediately (though I am not sure if there is any limit to the number of bulbs per household).

Unfortunately we had to decline the kind offer as we have already been using energy saving bulbs throughout the house. Sometimes the council also gives out free energy saving light bulbs at the shopping mall. There are also incentives to install water saving shower heads (but we’ve already got them installed when we built the house).