Grafton trip, wedding, gardens

G'Day,
Today is the last day of my 2 weeks annual leave. I that time I've been to my niece's wedding in Grafton and visited the Hunter Valley Gardens in Pokolbin near Cessnock. When I got home I arranged the annual curry night food for the Potter's club. Thank god that's over for another year. It must be someone else's turn next year to do the organising. I never can get the amount of food right and we always end up with too much.
Anyway I took some good pics while I was around and about. The pic at the top is at the gardens and is of a male water fowl, I know them as coots but I don't know what their proper name is.

This is my great niece Ivory. She is a gruby faced angel in this picture. She is now 14 months old.
This is a double pink hibiscus flower in my sister's front yard.
It rained all the while we were in Grafton. This shows the Jacaranda trees in flower, for which Grafton is famous. They were past their best because of the rain but were still beautiful, forming a carpet across the road and footpaths. The car is David's Commodore coated in fallen flowers.
A jacaranda dam in the gutter out the front of my sister's.
This is a sculpture that I loved in the Hunter valley gardens. It is a tribute to grandmothers and is situated in the centre of the rose garden.
These are called water poppies. I hadn't seen them before. Very delicate, aren't they pretty.
At the gardens again. Taken about half way up the man made water fall.
The gardens were divided up into themed areas. This area is the indian area. The doors behind my Mum are antique elephant doors inported from india and are about 150 yrs old, made of solid teak. The guide bloke said that if elephant statues have their trunks pointing up and one foot forward and raised it is a sign of good luck.
This is part of the beautiful detail on the Indian tea house. All hand carved, it is also very old and solid teak and over looks a good sized dam.
I love this pic of a magnolia grandiflora bloom . Please click on it to get a closer look. There are several bees busy working on it. The little fallen bits on one of the petals are bits off the stamen. You see lots of these trees around the parks in Sydney. They grow huge and the flowers are about 20cm across. They don't grow in my area. Not that I have seen anyway.
This is a huge antique cast iron urn imported from spain. It had to be set in place by 2 big cranes when it arrived at the gardens. I wanted to take it home but it wouldn't fit in the car, it was a bit heavy too. The gardens are owned and run by the Roche company and are only 5 yrs old.
A baby coot. There were a lot of these around the gardens.
Me being silly. I'm not a big swimmer. The water thing was a carved piece of granite.
The centre bit with the grandmother sculpture in the rose garden. There was a rose extravaganza on at the gardens while I was there but the rain they had had had spoiled most of the blooms. But I got the idea. (Had in triplicate)
My threee metal heads dressed for the wedding. Right to left, David, Annie and Michael. At the wedding Dave got up after much coaxing and had a dance with us all. He even danced to an Abba song which I thouht was hilarious considering his musical tastes and I took a picture to prove it too. I told him he was never going to live that down. Lol.
The bride and groom with my mob. Who is that fat lady?
Genevieve (Cassies 1/2 sister) with the bride Cassie and Ivory.
My youngest neice Tatham. She is 17. We call her Tato or Tatie, with her boyfriend Lee. She was the chief bridesmaid. All my babies are grown up. Ohhhhh!
Below is a pic taken of my 2 beautiful neices, Cassie and Tato. The headpeice she is wearing was handmade by her husband Guy's step grandmother. She used 27 foot of solid silver wire and treaded garnets and crystals throughout it. Something worth keeping eh!