Sophie's Patch

Today we had a great blip meet with our NZ friend Spikes2013. The day started out with her meeting Raj and Mishy at our home, followed by a trip to Mt. Barker to Sophie Thomson's Open Garden, known as Sophie's Patch.  Sophie is a regular presenter on the ABC programme called Gardening Australia.

Took some video of the butterfly bush and then lots of photos of everything in this fabulous garden. Spikes got to capture a superb photo of a blue-banded bee, seen here. I decided to blip this striking Sussex chook that seemed to own her part of the garden, with some more pix worth checking out in my extras. Paladian caught 4 bugs all in one shot, seen here.

Then it was back down the road for about 1500m and we stopped off at Laratinga Wetlands for a short time of bird spotting, before going on another thousand metres or so to check out the brand new Springs Wetlands that was opened yesterday.

Finally it was a wonderful lunch in Mt. Barker at our favourite cafe called Sazon. I would say it was a pretty darn good day.