A Brand New Year

A Brand New Year and a Brand New Day it was time to find a different walking route.  It's amazing what is going on so close to home but out of sight from our everyday routine.

Beautiful flowers, a gorgeous flame tree and knitwear for trees and signal posts.

It was a beautiful morning and a great start to a New Year with my two favourite dogs, Layla and Lupin.

Early Sunday Market

The sun coming up over the market

I finally found a market close to home that isn't one of those fancy markets where everything is expensive and "special".  This is just your ordinary farmers market with a bit of 2nd hand stuff as well.

I loved buying my fruit and vegies at the market when we were in the country and now I can do the same here without it costing a fortune.  I do this early while Garry is still asleep.

Today I was looking for some Basil to plant but I'm told I'm a little early for that.  So I just got a few silverbeet plants to add to my growing garden.

Layla was very lucky, she got a special cushion for the back deck. 
I think she likes it she's been like this for a few hours testing it out :-)

This Week's Favourite Pictures

We've been having very tropical weather this week.  Some very heavy downpours at night followed by hot humid days.  Great weather for frogs and mozzies.  I'm starting to look forward to the dry cold winter.  (although I'm sure I'll change my mind when it's here).

The grass is growing as we watch it and Garry is spending 3 hours a week on the ride-on mower.  I'm sure he is looking forward to winter to.

There have been some great photo opportunities this week. Here are my favourites.

Sunset reflected in the dam

This is the road we live on.  You can see how heavy the sky is and how lush the grass is.  You can just see our dam on the right

Daddy Frog and Baby Frog

Lilly under my chair staying dry

Sunday Morning

I love the mornings and am so glad that I was born a morning person !   I have a lot of work on outside of my normal work at the moment so that means I need to spend a fair amount of time in my office on the weekends.  That's not hard, this is the view from my office window.








Before I start work in the mornings I go for a walk around the gardens and see what has happened over night.   This is a pumpkin I hand pollinated yesterday morning and hopefully it did the trick and will grow.  If we don't hand pollinate our pumpkins we don't get any.  I need to plant flowers to attract the bees.

Lilly sees me with the camera in my hand and sits in front of me in her best pose.

Layla and Lilly both come up to say Good Morning to the chooks.

On My Mind....................

It looks like being a hot weekend here so it will be lots of swimming in the dam for the puppies.

Lilly looks like she is about to eat Layla but it's just puppy play.

This post is part of a Friday photo feature called "On My Mind" over at the Down to Earth Blog. 

http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/

Puppy Play

Lilly loves the water

 

Maggie (Oct 2010 - Feb 2011)

Some will think it strange that I’m writing about a pet that lived such a short life and is no longer with us, but Maggie was something special.   Garry and I had been talking about getting a dog once we were more settled into the house and had the lawns and fencing in order. We both thought that with a property like ours it would be a shame not to give a dog a home here.  To be honest I wasn’t too bothered, up until this point I wouldn’t have considered myself an “animal” person.  Garry had dogs most of his life so he already understood how life is enriched when you own a pet.

Maggie was found by a colleague of Garry’s on a country road west of our house and Garry decided Maggie couldn’t be taken to the pound and he must take her home.  I was home at the time and when he opened the car door and showed me Maggie I didn’t know what to think.  All the reasons why we weren’t ready to have a dog filled my mind.  No fences, we were going away for the next 2 weekends and it went on and on but it was too late.  I’ve since learnt that if I pick up a puppy and give it a pat that puppy now belongs to me, I can’t put it down.

So we made Maggie comfortable in a box under the house, left food and water and thought if Maggie is here when we get home from our weekend I guess we have a dog and if not then we were just part of Maggie’s journey to her new home.

OF COURSE she was here when we got home.  It was much more comfortable than walking along a country road on your own !!!!     As the weeks went on we fell more in love with Maggie.  She was a smart dog and part Kelpie so she loved to jump and run.   Over the next few months we built fences to keep her safe.  When she jumped over those we made them higher and higher. In the end Maggie was scaling fences taller than we could build.  We just couldn’t keep her contained.  I called her our free range dog.

Sadly the story ends pretty quickly.   Garry got a phone call about 4 months after we found Maggie to say she had been killed by a car on the road just outside our house.   Garry called me and I’d just finished work and was waiting for a bus in the city.  It was one of those heart renching moments.  I came straight up to house to be with Garry and we both had a very sad few weeks.  Maggie showed me how important animals are in our lives and I don’t think I could ever not own a pet again.  Thanks to Maggie we now have two more puppies that we saved from what could have been an unfortunate life.

Rest in peace Maggie.