Gardeners and Garden Gems

Sometimes the dogs want to give more help in the garden than is actually useful!!

Kiki:

Ruby (now with her second ear up!!) .... who has been pruning my kiwi vines whether I like it or not!!:

And some 'shots' of colour around the garden, blue star flowers - several clumps amongst the roses:

Some lovely little daffs, a bit bashed by dogs!!:

The daphne a riot of blooms again this year - star!!  And heavenly perfume :)

The flowering quince, tons of flowers and ignored by the crimson rosellas this year... maybe thanks to the dogs?

Have been looking around the shops for a red japonica, since the flowering quince is doing so well, but then I found I already had one!!  Not very big yet, but very pretty :)

A couple of pockets of grape Hyacinths looking lovely :)

And not to be forgotten the natives are also doing well, the grevillias are in full swing:

 Jonquils, nearly past it:

And just 2 flowers so far on the prunus, small but perfectly formed!

Canberra Quilt Show

Last Saturday we (Freya, Mum, Scarlett Rose and I) visited the Canberra Quilt Show, some of the quilts that caught my eye, either for their design or their quilting (and there were many examples of extremely intricate quilting!!) shown here:

Winner - and a worthy one - of the '10' challenge:

Details:

Fractured blocks (for some reason my auto focus deserted me for a few shots in the middle of the day!! so apologies for the poor quality, but still worth seeing!!):

Kaleidoscope Quilt and details:

Shattered Glass quilt and details (made by Jenny Bowker):

After the quilt show we went for a late lunch at Mecca Bah in Manuka... not a suburb my sat nav is familiar with... apparently!!  Delicious lunch, thanks Mum :)  Scarlett sporting the jumper and matching hat that her GG knitted for her:

 Afterwards and back at the ranch we wanted to get the 4 generations shot that Dianne suggested... but couldn't find anyone to take it... next week I'll set up the tripod and remote shutter to get the job down... meantime, GG enjoyed a cuddle with Scarlett Rose:

Scarlett has a new activity centre courtesy of Alan and Aleisha, she is very taken with it :)

Scarlett Rose and her Great Grandmother

This weekend Scarlett Rose met her Great Grandmother - they seemed to hit it off immediately!!

And in news just in....

Our little llama cria Rhys has just won first prize in the photo comp for 'cutest cria' in Llama Lines.... very pleased :)

This is the winning photo:

Llamas, Cats, Dogs and Llama Association AGM

Its been a little while.... so we're due for a bit of a catch up.  Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me last weekend when I took Ruby back to visit her mother and sister.  She seemed a little reluctant to play at first, but soon decided to get involved.  She had a fun time and totally wore herself out.  She slept all the way home in the car, AND all through my visit with Scarlett Rose, no pics of that either - next week!!

But there are some pics of the Llama Association (NSW/ACT Branch) AGM.  First we had llama play at Glynda's place, where we practised some handlings skills and got some practical advice on training llamas :)  We had a lot of cute crias to play with, as well as some older bigger/trickier animals.

Jennie was attempting to explain to us, and then show us how to help a llama that doesn't want to be handled/around people in a pen full of llamas, when this one decided that far from pretending not to like people she'd show us how very keen she was to interact :)

Afterwards we all went to Gundaroo for a delicious lunch at the pub :)

You know its cold when..... all four animals are on the same mat in front of the fire!!

Seconds later the blissful scene came to an end when Kiki got too close to Fatty and WWIII broke out!!  Winners and custodians of the mat were the dogs!!

One of Ruby's favourite places to sleep is in Kiki's cage!!

Ruby's ears are coming up.... one at a time!!

This is Red Riding Hood - believe it or not!! - although round here she's more commonly known as Ms Hood.  We are very much hoping that this very round belly is because she is going to produce a cria in the next month and a half to 2 months time ... if not, she better spend some time in the Jenny Craig paddock!!

Orchid, always worth a picture :)