Surprise trip!

After some quick juggling of plans, I decided on Monday to take the girls for a short trip back to my home town, particularly as we wont be going there next week for Christmas. We stayed at my mum's house and had a great time catching up with a lot of my family and it was so worth the effort! I was hoping to take some photos of mum's home, but after three battery changes, my camera was still playing up.....will be going to the camera shop to get it sorted out before Christmas. I did manage to get some nice shots in the vegetable garden, so here are some more pics of flowers and vegetables!

As you walk down to mum's garden, you are greeted by a gorgeous row of sunflowers lined up along a fence made of old galvanised iron sheets...

Mum (otherwise known as Ma Ma) follows the rambling garden pattern - ie. no set pattern, which she believes helps to confuse pests (she does not use sprays at all). Here is mum with Miss Chooken. The poor scarecrow is face-down in the strawberry patch, he needs a bit of work :)

Mum with a handful of strawberries...

Red cabbages all in a row...

Spring onion flower, such a gorgeous form. The flower head is nearly as big as an orange.

The shard or rainbow silverbeet.

More rainbow shard, yellow variety too.

Cornflower...

Artichoke...

A squash flower...such a pretty star shape.

Bean flowers...

Some of our bounty, a basket of strawberries and Miss Chooken pulling some carrots.... I need to get her into the garden more - when I asked her to pick some carrots, she was rifling through the carrot tops saying "Where?? Where are they mummy? I can't see them!" "Yes, you have to pull them out of the ground".


Miss Chooken and I also solved the mystery of Ma Ma's plucked radishes. Mum had been finding her radishes pulled up sans the leaf-tops. Miss Chooken spied the neighbours' horse reaching over the fence and helping himself to the radishes, but he was actually knocking the radishes on the fence so they dropped onto the ground, leaving the young leaves for the horse to eat. Clever horse!

Mum's farm cat Tom Tom. Yes, a cat on a hot tin roof :)

Miss Sunshine liked feeding the chooks and ducks...

Some of the old girls.

What a great time we had, family, sunshine, fresh air. It was hard to come home, but we were missing hubby/daddy and it is always good to sleep in your own bed. Now I have the weekend to catch-up on Christmas preparations and some laundry. What are your last minutes jobs to do before the holidays?