Lathams News: A DAY WITH MY FRIEND KATHY

Thursday is Sarah's Uni day, it is also a day that Max goes to Daycare so thought it was the perfect opportunity for me to catch up with my good friend Kathy and spend the day with her...'

We had planned to spend quite a bit of time together this year as we had two overseas trips booked together but with COVID all our plans have gone down the gurgler...

So from planning to spend quite a bit of time together this year we had gone to pretty much not seeing each other..]

Kathy and I met up at Springwood and headed to Koorong Book Shop for morning tea. We both love books so this seemed a logical choice for us... We got to browse through some books we were interested in reading and we also able to have a drink and snack in the little cafe there....

Enjoying a lovely citrus tart with our hot drink...

After enjoying our morning tea we both ended up buying a new book to read..... Since retirement, I am enjoying reading again and so picked up a book by one of my favourite authors "Karen Kingsby". She has quite a few books out that I am yet to read so took photos of the books I want to read over the next few months..

I am building quite a stash of books to read now... I already have half a dozen at home still to be read, so I didn't want to buy too many. Thought I would take photos of the books I want to read so that when I have read the ones I already have at home, I can work my way through picking up some of these...

We left Koorong around 11.30am and Kathy decided to take me to this lovely nursery that Ian and her enjoy visiting... It actually has a cafe that served lovely breakfasts and light lunches so we decided to have lunch here...

Neilsen's Native Nursery specialises in Australian Native plants but also has so many more varieties of everyday garden flowers, fruit trees, succulents and much more. These we would explore after we had our lunch.

Right from the moment we pulled into the car park, the flowering natives were a sight to behold. So many different grevillias all out in bloo,

We had a bit of a look around the gift section of the nursery and at some of the water plants which were just outside the cafe. There were quite a few novelty garden ornaments that quite took my fancy and some beautiful flowering plants. They obviously had a very friendly cockateal who was happy to sit on a perch in the gift shop and chat to the customers... We found him quite amusing....

Quite a friendly bird...

Some beautiful flowering bromelaids...

I thought these possum houses would delight my grandson Max

A mass of colour...

Loved this crocodile garden ornament... would look good near a water feature

It wasn't too busy and as it was close to noon we decided to see if we could get a table and have lunch first before it got to busy...

The meals were quite large, and as it had only been a couple of hours since we had enjoyed a really nice morning tea, neither of us felt like a big meal so in the end we settled on toasted sandwiches. Kathy ordered some Chicken, cheese and avocado toasted sandwiches on grain bread, whilst I ordered the ham, cheese and pineapple toasted sandwiches on grain bread. They were lovely, not too much, quite tasty. In fact I enjoyed them so much that it has inspired me to make them at home a little more regularly in future...

We would have sat and chatted for a good hour before deciding to wander through the rest of the nursery..

It is a good thing that I am flying home otherwise I might have been tempted to buy quite a few plants. As it is, I took photos of the plant tags of some of the plants I would love to get for my own garden...

They also had a great range of ceramic pots.... I could have got tempted with these also, as I would really love to have a couple of big pots full of colourful flowering perennials.

I absolutely love these African daisies and I could have bought several different varieties of these to take home. I will serve at home though and see if they have some in the nurseries back home...

They had some amazing petunias. So many varieties, so beautiful the one below would have been another one I would have bought to take home. I have never seen colours like this one and I probably won't be able to find it again...

Totally love the colour of this petunia...

There was lots of lovely flowering lavendar, and we thought this was a great opportunity for us to have a photo shot taken together...

We found some of the lovely flowering NZ Christmas bushes. They were all flowering at the moment and looked lovely. This is another plant that I would love to see in our garden. I cannot get carried away with my garden at the moment. My one goal is to do one garden and do it well and to make sure I can maintain it before I get carried away with doing all our gardens...

I have never been a gardener, Steve is more the gardener than I am but I do love and appreciate a good garden and think that I would like to have a garden myself...

New Zealand Christmas Bush

We enjoyed our time at the nursery... so much so that next time we are down with Ian and Kathy we are thinking of bringing the men and having breakfast here....

It was mid afternoon before we left the nursery. Kathy had got a phone call from Ian to let her know that the service of their car had been completed and he needed a lift to got pick it up, so we headed back to their place.

I decided to wait at home whilst she ran him to the garage as it meant she would have had to take out baby seats from the back of the car and that is such a tedious job that I really didn't want to put her through that ordeal...

Instead I decided to take a wander through their gardens. Ian has spent a lot of time in the garden of late and it was a good chance for me to have a wander through it whilst she was gone...

Just love these colourful strippy petunias..

Once she got back she took me for a walk up to her back garden to how me the stunning orchid display she has flowering in her terraced garden up the back...