Where I live

A week or so ago, Bells invited us to share pictures of where we live - not our house as such (although no reason not to) but more of your suburb or neighbourhood.

I finally got some great weather on Sunday morning, so went for a bit of a walk.

First up though, my tibouchina tree in my front yard - it is a little past it's flowering prime, the purple flowers are fading a little, but it is a lovely colourful tree to have in the garden. Each year we get a little handwritten note in our mailbox from one of our neighbours (we don't know who) advising us it is time to prune the tibouchina so that it flowers well next year!

I realised when I was thinking about where I would walk to take pictures that we are surrounded by parks (big and small) in my suburb. This one is almost diagonally opposite my house - apparently it used to be a brick pit and lots of the houses in the suburb were built with bricks from the pit (in the 1930s).

This one is around the corner - I suspect it might once have been a brick pit too, as it is sort of stuck in the middle of the road.

Further up the same road as park #2 is this one, which is really a soccer field, where little kids play on Saturdays, and sometimes adults on Sundays - we can hear the crowd noise from our house! Once I saw a couple of guys flying huge kites here - they had a dog which had great fun chasing the kite shadows (and sometimes the kites themselves, when they dipped a bit low).
Opposite park #3 is this - the view from the rather imaginatively named Bay Walk - an 8km round trip which I have to admit, I rarely do.
Park #4 - a little one that juts into the bay. Can get a little windy but on a calm day is a lovely day for a picnic. And you can watch the kids in their little boat thingys (have no idea about boats) scudding around the bay (you can just see the red and green sails in the bay photo above) and if you are early, or late enough, the rowers.
More bay shots - I'm often surprised by the number of boats moored here.

Park #5 - this is a biggie - lots of open space, room for soccer or touch footy, as you can see, plus a kid's play area, softball cages and, during the week, a popular spot for personal training sessions (clearly, not mine!!). We watched the new year's eve fireworks from here one year - it was very nice - not packed with people, and a pretty good view, and best of all, a 5 minute walk from home!
One thing I particularly love about Sydney is how you can be driving or walking along, almost anywhere, and seemingly out of nowhere, up pops the Harbour Bridge. This one is on the street where parks 2 and 3 are:
This one is up the road from park #5 (and #6, which I didn't take a picture of, but which has a rotunda and a skateboard ramp!). Added bonus in this photo is a learner driver - we get a lot of these in the suburb as it has lots of quiet streets perfect for driving s-l-o-w-l-y along, indicating to turn way too early and practising reverse parking!
And again, popping up behind the trees on the bay walk (it's there, honest, to the right of the red sailboat on the right!).
And photos of where I live in Sydney would be incompleted without one of these:
Yes, we live below the flight path...not directly, we are fairly lucky actually in that we don't get too much plane noise, just now and then.

So where do YOU live?