Special guests and dry stone walls

The long expanses of dry stone walls near Derrinallum, have always intrigued me. 

They are thought to have been built in the late nineteenth century.

This particular one is called the Hamilton Highway Wall and is part of a dry stone wall heritage trail.

They are remarkable. 

They are actually two walls that start at about 900mm wide and come together  at about 400mm apart with a through stone to hold them together. The centre is filled with small stones and rubble.

I cannot begin to imagine the laborious effort that has gone into their construction.

They are such a compelling part of the landscape there and I love them.

We always pass them on our trip to Warrnambool in the Western District.

We were special guests at Ned and Jake's school on Friday.

We created...

We read....

We visited the classrooms....

We sang.....

We went out for dinner.....

We talked about where we'd been and what we'd been up to.

The boys had been to the Bulldogs vs Cats game.

Jake took his own flag.

Thank you for inviting us boys. We loved it all.

The trip home was spent oohing and ahhing at the amazing cloud formations ( well, I was anyway).

These are whooshing past photos again!

Dad's broad bean seeds were planted a few days ago ( hope I did it correctly!)

This was the woodiest bit of woodland I could find to plant my precious hellebores.

Under the deciduous trees would have been perfect but each hole I tried to dig there, was filled with roots.

So I settled on this little patch under the old apple tree.

There are ten of them but they won't flower now until next Winter.

The jonquils have been growing there for a while and make it even more woodland- ish.

These leucadendrons look so pretty at the moment.

Beautiful little daisies ready to burst into flower.

This was different......the ducks decided to have their meeting on the Taj Mahal...!!

Kiann is looking gorgeous. 

 

Hellebore heaven

I had forgotten that much of the garden sleeps in Winter ( not the weeds though, as we have discovered on return).

And definitely not these little specimens of gorgeousness.

 They are blooming their heads off right now.

This is their time to shine.

( these are yours Judy D.)

A visit here yesterday has truly inspired me to add some more of these beautiful tough plants to our garden.

These photos were taken on my phone whilst juggling my gloves, hat, scarf, bag, etc so a bit blurry but I'm sure you get the picture!!!! 

They are truly a glorious plant.

Unlike us, they are not troubled by cold or frost and eventually become quite drought tolerant.

You can collect the seed and grow your own. (Course I will be!)

Right then, which ones to buy?? Which ones to leave behind??

 Names like double primrose picotee were jumping out at me!

Such a dilemma.

I eventually settled on this little collection of ten.

Most of these little pots were $7 each.

The bigger flowering pots were $30 each.

 I really would have loved ten of those!

We were taken on a tour of the production line.

It must be hellebore heaven working there in spite of being labour intensive.

Icy water for the early birds today.

Home to some reading material. Mmmmm.....which one first.

Gorgeous daphne blooms just opening after being unceremoniously plonked in the ground just before we went away.

A lovely welcome home from these two little pooches.

Kiann's friends gave her a wonderful baby shower yesterday.

Baby White is due mid September.

And we had FaceTime with this little shocker.......

......who lights up our lives every time we set eyes on him.

( blurry image from trying to take a photo whilst talking to him)

We are flying over in a couple of weeks to scoop him up and play Superheroes with him. 

( Must remember to google who they all are and whether they are goodies or baddies!)