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Australian streets are awash with the magnicient purple-blue blooms of jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia) in late spring and early summer.  Jacarandas work well on their own as a specimen tree in an open lawn, where their fallen flowers form a colourful carpet of blue, a s well as being superb street trees,  I took this pic yesterday at Roseville NSW. What caught my eye was the contrast with the Bougainvillea lit up by the early morning light, right behind this tree. Australians think of jacarandas as natives, but they’re not. Natives to Brazil, they are deciduous, not because of cold winters, but because of the monsoonal wet and dry seasons.  They briefly drop their leaves at the end of the dry season, then leaf up again when the rains come. Jacarandahs can reach a height of around 10-15m, and a spread of the same size, so you need to be careful where you plant them.  A jacaranda is a magnificent shade tree. While the most common flower colour for jacarandas is the lovely purple-blue,

October 1968, Ward and Irene Austin honeymooned in the  USA  He was a dedicated music fan and a fanatic for all things American, Elvis Presley in particular, and The South in general.  He had a number of famous catchphrases which became part of the vernacular at the time, including "a rickapoodie and a fandooglie", "Too much for the human unit" and "Anytime you're ready Pally" . Ward married Irene Combe in 1968, when she was 17. He had met her Irene she was 14 and proclaimed his love for her, though at the time he was 31.  On their honeymoon in the USA they were excited to meet Ward's idol, Elvis Presley.  I stumbled across this 2UE Top 40 chart from 1962, and therewas was WARD "Pally" AUSTIN grinning fresh faced as a schoolboy at the bottom of the page.  the caption starts "2UE music man WARD AUSTIN spins all the latest discs. I love that kind of talk. (Judy Stone was the only Aussie to make this par