Sarah and gardens

While I was gardening in the rain yesterday, I heard a cooeeee that I had not heard for some time - and there was Sarah looking like a cross between Mary Quant and Twiggy and carrying an elegant and intricate floral umbrella that was more like a parasol.  Sarah spends her time stripped to the waist slaving in her garden or swanning around like a super-model.  She used to live in a shed up the Darling and created a garden there that was like another world.  I was furious when she sold and moved to the Clare Valley, having based all my plans for a future bicycle on treddlying to her place.  I have no photo of her but here's the bag of walnuts she brought me.

It was a bit like an early harvest festival yesterday.  Firstly Steve N brought around some eggs.  Then Sarah arrived with the walnuts.  She was in town for Annie's Market, a tradition of some years standing held before Easter and Christmas.  It is a beautifully girly event which used to be at Annie's garden but is now held at Artback, a gallery and cafe at the end of Darling Street and opposite Annie's place.  Sharyl, Raeleen and I had arranged to meet there for lunch, which we did, and emerged 4 hours later.  But not empty handed.  I bought 2 bottles of wine from a vineyard at Yelta just over the river, some chocolates from Broken Hill and a bracelet from Ashley and Sarah's Dangly Bits stall.  I was also tempted by dip tins, buckets and watering cans made by Wally the Tin Man but by the time I got my act together, Wally (in his 90s) had gone home.  And I was referring to him as Willy the Tonne Man, so delicious did I find the Yelta wine.
The weekend I got back from Tasmania, I took Mum to the Clare Valley to visit Sarah's garden  as part of an Open Gardens scheme.

I suppose I can understand why she relinquished the shed in Wentworth.  Here's Mum having a rest and a read as I explore.

Unfortunately, no matter how long I stood and waited, those 2 women insisted on being in the photo.

Sarah has a wonderful sense of whimsy.  Here's her chook made from an old dip tin.  And here's her chooks.

Bit of a dodgy photo I know - taken through heaps of fox-proof mesh and in the shade- if you click on it you'll see better.  Huddled chooks to the left (Sarah once left them in my care in Wentworth, and I think they remembered), beautiful swan right of centre and happy gnome in the right-hand corner of enclosure.  The gnome was Sarah's farewell gift from the Yelta / Wentworth Garden and a Glass of Wine Club which she always referred to as The Gnomes.  Finally, a parting shot of a lady who filched white pelargonium (Sarah had sold out of potted up cuttings...)

ouch