A special weekend

I was delighted to receive visits from Mark & Cal from Adelaide plus Vicki from Kiama last weekend. This was a family weekend where the girls especially would check on Carol's things and make decisions about what to do with her substantial collection of creative things. They were indeed very busy and I am sure found the process emotional and energy draining. I was glad of their willingness to devote so many hours to this and hope that this coming together also helped in their own grieving over their mum. There are so many things that keep on cropping up and that defines who Carol is and what an amazing influence - ever so gently, she had on a each of us. As it turned out, while lots was accomplished, lots remain to be done, and that is fine.
Vicki was not able to stay longer than the weekend, though Mark & Cal tagged on some extra days and we made good use of these in several ways. One was to visit one of my favourite places, Salmond Ponds and have pancakes on the pond. Just lovely.

Gemma and her friend Sam from NSW also joined us and fed the trout that are probably over fed:
The following day we visited Carol's grave, now suitably identified with a bronze plaque. Afterwards, we made an enjoyable visit to the Botanical Gardens - always stunning. It was a bit late for Autumn colours, but amazingly, there was still plenty of evidence of the 'fall':
Mark could not resist going back to his childhood and just had to gather lots of autumn leaves and throw them to Cal:The next photo is of a horizontal branch, which I thought was unusual:There was time to go into the Conservatory and the following were just some of the gems in Orchids that are worthy of another look: