Gummy's birthday...

It was great to have Gummy over for her birthday this year, especially having not made it back to the UK for her big one in 2009.

Water dragon with a dummy...

This was hilarious - Iona dropped a dummy over the side of the verandah and one of the many water dragons living in our garden picked it up and held it in his mouth for a good 15 minutes!! The Manly Daily published the photo when we sent it in that evening!

Here is Pumpkin in her element, hooning down the middle creek.

Chook pens and the team...

Iona always manages to step out in style when crossing the paddock to check on what Dad and her brothers are building. This day they converted the small feeding shed into a fairly snake-proof/fox proof night enclosure for the chooks. Arthur built a 2nd nesting box and the chooks took to laying eggs in it within 48 hours. A happy, tired team pictured with Dunc below.

Wildlife living in our garden...etc

Some of the critters that share our garden with us have been photographed this week and are shown below including skinks, geckos, turtles, water dragons, superb fairy wrens, kookaburras, ducks and ducklings (these have diminished from seven ducklings to one in just a few days due to crows plucking them out of the paddock sadly) and a tawny frog-mouthed owl! The most alarming one was the two metre long red bellied black snake which crossed the grass, slithered into the middle creek (which Pumpkin loves to run along!) and slid off down the tunnel and out of the property with ALL of us watching as it went! No photo of this but it is true!