Tieve Tara at Mt Macedon...

Right, well it's officially Winter. Ugh, I can feel my insides getting colder already.

​Garden wandering again....this time in Mount Macedon. You'd think by the number of posts on this blog that contain trees, leaves, flowers and other bits of organic-based tat, that I actually enjoy gardening. I don't particularly, and I know stuff-all about it, but I hated the back dirt we used to have so I thought I'd have a crack at growing stuff. I do like the fruits of my labours when I can walk out the back and pick some basil and capsicum, et viola! I'm halfway to dinner! This guy was so perfectly formed, it was almost a crime to eat him so I photographed him for prosperity. Or to show off. 

Some people just eat them

This garden I went to is called Tieve Tara - which is apparently Irish for 'hillside' or 'side of a hill', and yes there are some nice little hills involved around the grounds but it's probably a stretch to consider it to be a garden built into the hillside. Or maybe I'm just so vertically challenged that I didn't notice I was walking down a hill to get to the other end of the gardens. It's easy to miss such things when you're dawdling and stopping every few minutes to photograph stuff.

Peaceful enough here...

The day was blue-sky warm with the slightest of breezes. Bird song and the occasional shriek of a child's giddy laugh filled the air. And there I was, strolling along, minding my own business and enjoying the ambience of the garden, wondering what the poor people were doing until I remembered I was one of them. 

Suddenly, the air was charged with tension. I was no longer alone. And, it appears, I was not where I should've been either. You know that feeling when you suspect danger is imminent but you're not really sure where it's going to come from? A furtive glance this way and that revealed nothing to fear; just me and a bunch of geese who were munching away on the grass.

Until one of them wasn't munching any longer.....

This thing wanted to kill me.

This guy had decided I was standing where he wanted to eat so he came at me, wings a-flapping, neck and head lunged forward like an arrow, death laser eyes engaged, and emitting a series of bowel-loosening nasal honks that sounded like he was being gutted from the inside out. 

Now I don't know if you know this, but your average goose isn't a particularly tall animal so when this kerfuffle started, I didn't know exactly where to look at first. It wasn't my instinct to look down, so I didn't see the mad bugger until he was a few feet away from me. 

I'm quite attuned to the needs of hungry animals. After all, I am vegetarian. So in the space of 3 nano seconds I weighed up my options: attack first, stand and defend, or run away. 

Running away is when I discovered that the gardens were actually created on a hill side!

​Anyway, here's some leafy stuff:

And some other stuff, also a bit leafy:

And last but not least, this orchid - which is actually in my backyard:

No, I didn't steal it

Shall we run a competition on how long it takes me to kill it??!!