It has been a while since I updated our ‘blog.  Remiss of me, I accept.

Especially as the house is coming on well, with the garden becoming steadily more beautiful.

This is our Acer Japonicum Acantifolium tree, which we’ve put in the front corner of our garden.  The predecessor to this tree featured in “Landscaping (2)” blog, when it broke off.  This is the replacement tree.  It has blossomed and started to produce leaves – vivid green at the moment, with beautiful little dangling flowers.  It will change colours through spring, summer and autumn, ending up with rich red coloured leaves in autumn.  The Crimson Sentry maples in the grass outside the front wall are also growing beautiful red leaves, but we will leave those pictures for the next ‘blog.

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Next is a picture of Nick and his good friends at the Western Sydney University Medicine Annual Ball this year.  They will all be graduating this December, so early 2019 there will be a third Dr Coulshed on the wards of a hospital in NSW.

Nick has been allocated Liverpool Hospital.  It’s altogether a little of a coincidence (only in name of course, this is a completely different “Liverpool”).  I (David) suspect that he will have a similar experience to mine when I worked in Walton Hospital in Liverpool, UK: a very busy job, in a relatively poor area of the city.  Hopefully with the great camaraderie which I experienced at Walton – this is the sort of thing which helps you get through.

Andrew, meanwhile, is doing his research year at UNSW, and seems to be doing well.  That is, when he’s not going round the country as UNSW “AMSA Rep.” – representative for his med. school at the Australian Medical Students Association.  Yes the students have their own Australia-wide society, complete with conferences, dinners, competitions, political agendae, etc.  He went to a committee meeting in Melbourne recently.  He flew down for a long weekend, which included the rewards of going out to trendy wine bars (see picture) including one called “Naked for Satan” !!!!

Unfortunately the AMSA weekend coincided with a final rehearsal for Medshow 2018, in which Andrew had a central part.  No problem.  He flew from Melbourne to Sydney for the rehearsal on the Saturday evening, then flew back to Melbourne for the rest of the committee meeting.

It was all worthwhile.  The production was a triumph (even if Andrew and we thought the Medshow last year was even better).  The dancing was superb, with amazingly good choreography, acrobatics, music.  All from a group of medical students.  The picture is of the final bows being taken.  Andrew is in the centre, in blue “scrubs”.  He played a boofy orthopaedic surgeon.  I’ll add a link to the video if one is released (sadly it wasn’t good enough quality recording last year).

Sue?  Well all our energy has been taken up with trying to sell this house, before moving into our new one.  Not easy, with the housing marking falling, trying to sell the best and most expensive house in the suburb.  
Sue has been fighting a battle to keep the garden in good condition to have a favourable impression on the viewing parties.  Not helped by the lyrebird.  One particular lyrebird – it has an injured leg, which makes it identifiable.  This is a not very good picture of the battle in progress.  In terms of deterrence, Sue has been on the losing side.  In terms of making the garden look good, despite Fred the Lyrebird digging it up every day to look for juicy morsels, Sue has won.  I’m afraid to say David Nick and Andrew found it very entertaining, even as we helped with the Lyrebird Defences.