It's cliche, but home is where the heart is...

I love where I live. Like really, really, REALLY love it. Our Sydney suburb is like a mini Chinatown and incredibly diverse. There's a great park we can stroll around in the evenings and we're only a train ride to the city and a short car ride to the beach. I love the signs on Liverpool Road for souvenir shops, all written in Chinese.

And I really, really like that every evening at dusk about a thousand rainbow lorikeets will  occupy the tree outside the Civic Centre. I tried to take a video, but it just doesn't do it justice. It's an incredible sound when they sing. 

I also really like our garden. It started off being quite the jungle. Saying it needed a bit of TLC was an understatement. Don't be fooled by the pebbles. They are a ruse to trick you into thinking the garden is a very zen place. After lots of  manual labour and some Googling on how to get rid of aphids, it's  perking up quite nicely. We've got a lemon, lime and mandarin tree in there now, along with some lavender and rosemary bushes. My favourite though is the bay tree. Fresh bay leaves in cooking are totally different than dried and really smell deliciously out-of-this-world.  

 To the left is the before, and below is the after. 






It's a place I can call home. When living in London, I used to say that I have a home there, but that Chicago would always be home. Sydney is different. It's definetly (sorry Mom) more permanent than London ever was. Perhaps it's because MacBoyfriend's family is here and he has 'roots' here, but it fits that little bit better than the dark, dank days in London. 

Do I miss the culture of London and free trips to the Tate Modern on Saturdays after a stroll through Bourough Market? You betcha I do. Do I miss £50 return tickets and the ability to go pretty much anywhere in Europe for a long weekend. More than ever.

I miss all the people and places left behind in both the UK and USA, and have been thinking about this more than usual. Perhaps it's all the Christmas gear coming out in full force, which is not supposed to happen until after Thanksgiving. And it doesn't acutally register that it's mid-October as we're in full spring swing here in Sydney, complete with random rain showers one minute and clear blue skies the next. The seasons remain confusing, but I think it's in my emoti-memory that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. 

So, for all this and more, I remain ever thankful I have lovely people across the globe, a truly amazeballs place to live, and the love of my life to share it all with.