Spring has most definitely sprung here and it has caught me completely by surprise. Usually, in the UK, when winter is starting to come to an end I sow seeds to plant out months later when any danger of frost is over. Not so here, it was the first day of spring one day then, about a week later, our neighbour had fully grown lettuces in his garden! I can see I am going to have to join a gardening club if only to pick the brains of the other members to find out what to plant and when.

Another, very pleasant, surprise has been the flowering trees. Almost everything seems to burst into bloom at this time of year. Many people grow imported plants in their yards and some look very much like gardens I am used to seeing in England, they even grow roses, which can be quite a challenge in this climate.

But it is the native plants that I am enjoying the most, they are so different to any I have experienced before. Even trees and shrubs that look very ordinary for most of the year are out in their Sunday best at the moment. There are bottlebrush blooms of varying colours all around and the big Banksia trees have finger like growths which suddenly burst into huge fluffy things that the birds love.

It seems there is something new to see every time I leave the house. Interesting things are popping up in our own garden too, like this beautiful Amaryllis.

One less pleasant aspect of spring is the swooping magpies! They are nesting at the moment and they do attack, there are warning signs in particularly attack prone areas.

Apparently they really dislike cyclists and we have experienced this a couple of times already, as we are cycling along we hear a tapping on our cycle helmets which is the magpies swooping and pecking, bike helmets are compulsory here but I didn't realise it was to protect us from magpies!