Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Flora

My New Years resolution is to blog more (I aim the bar low, people) and since I have published a grand total of 4 blog posts in 2013 I ring in the new year as a resounding failure.  At least I'm not at a loss for topics to write about because I am hella behind on posting about the stuff we've done the
past few months.  Let me begin with:

Strawberry picking


Funny enough, the main task of my day strawberry picking was not to procure luscious, vine-ripened fruit.  It was to take a picture next to the huge-ass strawberry that happens to be located at the strawberry farm.



My girlfriend Karen (on the far right) has this "thing", and it's a really random, hilarious thing.  She likes to take pictures with Big Things, such as the aforementioned huge-ass strawberry.  Homegirl has traveled near and far to get her picture taken with big things.  So we went all the way out to this strawberry farm just so she could get her picture taken, which you can view at her adorably titled blog, Little Karen, Big Things.

I would like to bragmention that even though I farmed (yes, I farmed) nearly a kilo of strawberries that day I ate only two of them, which took an incredible amount of willpower.  Why on earth would I subject myself to such torture you ask?  Because this was in the 6 weeks leading up to my sisters wedding and I was on a brutally hardcore low carb diet in preparation.  It was pretty successful, if I do say so myself:


Fruit is sugar, people, whether you consider it "good" sugar or "bad" sugar, it's sugar.  I didn't get looking this way eating strawberries, I can tell you that.  I will cease evangelizing now, but let it be known I have the willpower of one of those monks that meditate for years on end.

Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers


A "flower festival", admittedly, sounds legit lame and not worth my time.  I was skeptical at first but holy crap, people, that flower festival was awesome!  It sounds like I'm being facetious here, but I promise I'm not.

The town of Toowoomba is about 2 hours inland from Brisbane and every year its citizens hold this flower festival.  Private residences open their yards to the public to show off their gardens, and these gardens are off the freaking chain.  I cannot imagine the time, effort and money spent tending to these gardens (though I think the term "grounds" is more apt here).

The millions of pictures we took don't do the gardens justice, so I will end my spiel about the-most-amazing-flowers-on-earth with this picture and quote from Martin:


"I'm going to a flower festival with three women.  How gay am I?!"

Even he admits that the gardens we saw (only two, because we're idiots and didn't know where to find the flowers at the flower festival) really, truly kicked ass.

A Day on the Green

In keeping with the plant-based theme of this post, our next activity is a concert held at a vineyard.  A Day on the Green holds different concerts each year, with different musical themes.  This being Australia, one of those themes is 80's music!

I don't think I've mentioned this yet but Australians love 80's music.  It's everywhere (at least in the greater Brisbane region of Queensland).  Over the loudspeaker at stores, on the radio, anywhere background music is played.

This is one of my absolute favorite things about Australia, as my top listened-to CD in high school was not Britney Spears or N*Sync, it was Monster Ballads.

We had a gay old day at the Sirromet vineyard listening to the classic musical tunes of....do I even need to type their name once you see this?


Devo!  I don't know why their silly hats are blue and not the iconic red, but everybody should recognize them.  Note that the action of the guy in the middle is, in fact, a whipping motion.  So much fun!

We also saw Simple Minds, who aren't as visually recognizable, but sang the theme song to my absolute favorite movie ever.  And I saw it live!  Like thirty years after it was popular!

I know a whopping one song by each of these bands, but cut me some slack because I was, uhhh, a toddler when they were popular.

This being a vineyard the highlight of the day, for my lush self at least, was proximity to wine.  80's tunes and wine....screw milk and honey.....Australia really is the promised land!

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