Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Gardens and parks in her eleventh month, 9 March - 9 April, 2010

Sparrow loves our garden at home, though I have to keep my eye on her very closely now. She wants to eat everything, especially the dirt. While some dirt is good for a growing girl, there are limits - especially given the amount of refinery dust we have around here. Being able to stand now means that she can try to get stuff out of the pots, and I have a running battle with her over not pulling all of my straw mulch from the pots and throwing it away.

Outside the bakery in Cranbourne. She was equally fascinated by the flapping door things and the step. We stopped here for a quick early lunch after the long drive across town. She happily shared our meat pie and sausage roll. She tried chewing on the end of Daddy's Fanta bottle, which she liked because it was cold. He offered her some of the actual Fanta, poured into a bottle cap for her convenience, and she promptly spat it all over him. It just happens that Fanta tastes exactly like the medicine she hated having to take the week before. James got such a reproachful look for trying to fool a poor little baby into taking more of that awful medicine. Now give me that bottle back, the plastic tasted much better.

Off to explore the main street of Cranbourne now that lunch is over. She doesn't know what's in store yet this afternoon.

It's the Australia Garden, at Cranbourne Botanic Gardens. It's been open almost five years and I hadn't been to it yet. I kept putting it off as it looked a little, well, undergrown.

But actually it's pretty well organised and established. There are lots of little mini-gardens around the big open space (which is more of an artistic statement and photo opportunity), and this is one minigarden that shows examples of urban gardens in different decades. James and Sparrow are standing in the 1970's native garden, and you can see the orange and green thing from the 2000's "TV-blitz-reno-show" section behind them.

The 1950's suburban lawn moment, on our way up the path into the 1910 formal garden and 1990 courtyard.

The playground garden.

It's a Giant Baby! Oh noes! Look out, Tokyo! She loves to hold onto things and climb her way to standing now. This is just a brilliant game. She hasn't got the hang of standing with both feet flat yet though, there's often one that's raised up a little, and she'll often go up and down on her toes. We're having a short break in the shade before returning to the car - James and I are both a bit tired, it's a surprisingly warm and sunny day. You can see the Botanic Gardens entry sticker stuck to Sparrow's hat there.

It was nice to have a break in the shade because our afternoon was spent out on the grass at Casey Fields in Cranbourne. It's no accident that Sparrow's in blue and yellow - we're here to watch the Eagles play Melbourne in a scratch match. Sparrow's first football game.

We did start by sitting in the shade, and that was nice for her and me. As you can see our view wasn't spectacular, but that was all right for us. We had cuddles and lunch and drink while Daddy stood at the boundary line and cheered wildly for Nic Naitanui. But the shade moved and the stands were pretty crowded, so we took to the grass. Next time I think I'll look into a beach umbrella or similar as the shade was really nice.

At half time the crowd get to wander onto the oval for a bit of a kickabout. Here's a happy daddy and happy daughter enjoying the people and the activity.

Look, I got a mark!

A different weekend, a different set of gardens and fields. We've come to Petty's Orchard, a heritage apple orchard owned by Vic Parks and run by volunteers from the Heritage Fruit Group. Once a year in March they hold an open day where you can come, tour the orchard, see samples of all the heritage apples and taste-test some. You can see the display table behind us. There were a lot of people there this time, maybe four or five times as many as were there when James and I went two years ago. I think it got mentioned in the paper. Sparrow was surprisingly patient with the long lines.

We finally got to the end of the line. This is my view of events.

And this is Sparrow's view. Never mind the eighty kinds of apple on top of the table, the cool stuff is down here, Mum! Check this out!

She'd not had fresh apple before this, particularly - with only two teeth it was still a bit too hard to deal with, and it was only a month into the new season. So it was new. She chewed on lots of apple as we went along the tasting table. It was cute though, every time I picked up a new bit of apple she'd spit out the one she had so that she could grab the next one from me. It was almost like wine tasting, where you never swallow. But then we were done with the main apples bit and went to look at everything else. They always have other farm-ish things around plus a little market, so we went and sat quietly at some haybales and let Sparrow climb around and explore a bit.

One-legged baby! Speaking of climbing. If there's anything she can try and get a foot up onto, she wants to climb it.

On our way home we stopped at an open garden. It's inside this warehouse. See the tiny bit of plant sticking up from between the roof peaks?

That's your only clue that this is what's inside. It's a fairly decent-sized garden, partly shaded, with at least seven different sections including water ponds and the big vertical suspended steel fountain sculpture in the middle there.

There are some gorgeous jungle effects. Sparrow was completely fascinated by the water sculpture. She really likes moving water.

The garden is built around the remnants of the warehouse's former industrial life. The owners saw the artistic value in beams, big steel vents and hanging chains and planted in and around them to give an effect of nature reclaiming. Sparrow certainly saw the play value in these chains.