Growing Stuff!

Summer has arrived and the sleeping garden is waking up.  It needs some work though, so David has been busy in it, pruning, cutting, tidying, gravelling, and sweating a LOT!  Hard work pays off though, it's starting to look really good and the grass is nice and green once again.

The girls are in their coop, they're loving it, and their cute little run...

 So again today, we found ourselves perusing the Garden Centres, dreaming of water features, mediterranean pots, fruit trees and exotic flowers.  And it's a funny thing, but you know you're really a grown up when you like going to places like this, instead of dragging around behind your parents..as you used to.

We ended up buying a few plants that swung both ways, which Daisy found highly amusing!

And Lucy took Auntie Ginny for a paddle in a pretty water fountain..

I think my favourite plants today were these - very Austin Power-esque! They totally floated my 'all things hippy' boat!

I wanted this - so it's firmly bookmarked for another time..

There was also enough time to view a few things small and furry, and a few more things, wet and swishy...

I could spend a long time in these places, and I really liked this little iron feathered guy..

Lucy wanted a colourful windmill...well, ok, maybe I did! ;)

Yes, I think I could work in a place like this...

Looking forward to many more days of perusing the garden centres and growing stuff...

First day of Spring!

This house, this garden, this little sanctuary that we all live in.  I still can't believe that we own this place sometimes, this little piece of land, this tiny part of Australia.  It's totally ours and I feel so lucky.  The garden is the best place to hang out right now. Spring has arrived, along with growing chicks, flowers on our strawberry plants, and little shoots pushing their way up through the soil just about everywhere.  The birds are singing (loudly, its pretty deafening sometimes), and there is a warm breeze caressing the whole of Queensland, it's just magic.

Apart from the fact that she always seems to want to go up and down the bloomin big stone steps, (touch wood, no accidents yet), and we're always trying to guide her away - the garden is the place that Miss Lucy wants to be.  She runs around, the wind blowing in her curly curls, chasing her brother and sisters, and it's just the greatest thing for me to take a seat, (with my Canon, of course) and click away...ahh heaven!  Poppy drags out her princess dolls, teddys, crowns, fairy wings and enters the make believe place that only Poppies can go, singing away quietly to herself as her imagination takes her on a journey.  And Joey is a little fireball of energy, bouncing on and off the trampoline, chasing Poppy and running from Lucy.  It's a busy hive of activity around here at the moment, and so fun just to sit back and watch them all...

And when Daddy comes home at the end of the day, it's another race to see who reaches him first..

I'm going to make the most of this Spring, and from me over here in Oz...G'day! :)

Garden Sprites

When I was a little girl, I spent hours in the garden, with my sister.  We had our very own version of home made perfume, taught to us by our Mother, and aptly called, 'stinky whiff'.  We would fill little jars with water and add whatever petals were available in the garden at the time, maybe a few leaves for good measure.  We dreamt, we created and we lived in our little worlds of make-believe.  Hours we spent, decorating swings with garlands of wild flower, making mud-pies, and  foraging for chives, nasturtiums petals or seeds to chew on until our breath stank and tongues were hot.   We turned chairbeds upside down, inside out, arranging them with crocheted  blankets and making tents out of them...lying there with the sun streaming through the gaps onto our little bodies.  Oh I long for those days sometimes...happy summers, just my imagination, my sister and I..
I watch my babies doing the same things, history repeating itself, little Emma and little Kate, discovering all that life has to offer.  All brand new for them.  Lucky lucky little girls, and their imaginations.

They run, they sing, they laugh, they play.  It's the beginning, just the beginning of some of the most amazing years of their lives, together.  They don't know it yet, but one day, they will.