It's winter in the Southern Hemisphere

 August 16

Cold nights (around 55°), low humidity and no rain for months, dusty roads, and cloudless skies characterize the middle of winter here in the highlands of Central Brazil. A lot of trees and bushes flower now, including the beautiful ‘quaresma’ and all our mango trees. The nights can be spectacular, though right now the moon gets bigger each night and outshines the stars, and the Milky Way.

The wild quaresma tree that flowers throughout the dry season. View from our porch.

 

The mango tree closest to our house now promises a bumper crop this year after all.

We spent almost a month in Brasilia, watching over the care of our grandson while the rest of his family – my son, his wife and daughter – went to the States for three weeks. Among other things, they attended a conference for families of children with the 1P36 micro deletion syndrome that our little Giovanni has.

Giovanni enjoys a musical therapy session in his Brasilia apartment.

The residential neighborhoods of Brasilia, mostly groups of  three-story or six- story apartment buildings, astound one with the variety of flowering shrubs and trees, including some that bear fruit, such as pomegranate, mango and avocado. It makes walking a pleasure.

Pink IPÊ. First we get the pink variety, followed in succession by the yellow flowered ipê trees,
then the white, and finally the purple

A pattern on the cloudless blue sky.

Poinsettia (in our winter), and  the sun shining on dry leaves.

Flowering vine along the side of an apartment building.

 Hopefully my next post will show the beginning of some of our new projects, but so far we’ve just been settling back in and cleaning things up.