Winter Garden

First day of the school holidays here, so this afternoon we got out into the garden. Last week we had a lot of wind and there were sticks everywhere, up to an inch think. I got the girls to collect as many as they could, and I paid them $2 each for their troubles.

I got into the overgrown flowerbed and yanked out massive clumps of erigeron, and pruned the old growth off the gaura plants. So it looks marginally more respectable now! Oh dear, we are so not gardeners.

But at least among the overgrown greenery I was able to find a few flowers to photograph today. It was lovely to be outside in the afternoon sun, working, the smoke from a neighbour's logfire adding it's flavour to the winter day (until Emily got too much of it and started coughing).

The magnolia is one of my favourite signs of winter, (although it always reminds me of the week I spent sick with the flu and morning sickness when I was pregnant with Emily and I lay on our bed and stared at it). Such majestic flowers.



And I found the first grevillea flower right in the middle of the shrub.

Next project, to try and photograph some less cooperative subjects - my daughters.