How can something so cute..

be so cruel. Our tabby cat Tammy has been part of our family for around nine years now. She is very camera shy and won't pose for photos. As soon as she so much as sees the camera she is off. Which is a shame because she was the cutest kitten and is an even cuter older matron.

When she was a kitten she would love nothing better than to hide under bushes and chase butterflies.And she was very social, inviting local cats into the house , through the cat door, while everyone was at work. No joking, honestly, she did. Tammy was Sam's (our daughter) cat to start off with, and one day Sam came home from work to find Tammy and 2 x friends asleep in all the nice sunny warm spots of the house. Needless to say that only happened once. The cat door was locked to prevent it happening again.

When Sam moved house we inherited Tammy and she has been with us for the past 5 years. She loves living the rural life, and is a great mouser. Very important at this time of the year as the surrounding paddocks are full of mice. Now don't get me wrong this is not a bad thing, the mice need to be caught, what I don't like is what she does once she has got a mouse. She is CRUEL!!

Last night she caught the first of the field mice so far this Spring, and as is the norm spent the best part of half an hour playing cat and mouse. I managed to get her in a photo as she was waiting patiently for the mouse to make it's move before she pounced.

Like I said previously, I don't know why she has to be so cruel.

Spring has Sprung....

Our garden is showing the signs of Spring, flowers are popping up all over the place, and there is an abundance of Bluebells and Irises...not to mention my Tulips.

What is happening in your garden? Has Autumn arrived or is Spring doing it's best to show-off?

You know you are getting older when...

you visit a museum and find yourself saying "I remember that, " or "we had one of those". This happened to me over the weekend when we visited MOTAT ( Museum of Transport and Technology) over the weekend.

The first car I ever owned was one of these, Morris Minor  or " Morrie Minor", mine was a 1952 model..

Mr. Four Square, this was THE corner store, the good old Four Square Store, we got our groceries at our local store before we had supermarkets. The owner of our Four Square Store was Mr. Barton, a lovely man...

What a memory, the wringer washing machine, took all day to do the washing....

New Zealand icon, Crown Lynn pottery manufacutred all sorts of dinner plates, the design above is exactly what my Dad had, in fact I think one of my girls has the little milk jug from this set...

Bedford Truck, my dad had a truck like this , he worked building the motorway (freeway) in Auckland in the 1960's.

Still around now, Choysa Tea, another Kiwi icon, you would collect the coupons in the packet and get a cash discount on your next packet of tea....

Kiwi nugget, every Sunday night we would  polish our school shoes using Kiwi polish, under Dad's watchful eye. Before we polished them to a shine we would spit on them and then polish with a soft cloth. A throw back from the army days when the soldiers used "Spit and Polish" to shine their boots.

This old bus is exactly like the bus I used to get to and from work when I was just sixteen years old.

It was a fun day, and well worth the memories.

Shadow Shot Sunday..

My shadow shots this week were taken while on holiday in Salt Lake City. My daughter, Evette, took me on a photowalk to the Great Salt Lake. The particular place that we went to is a favourite place for photographers to use, it is what I would call "Rural Grunge" with an old rusted railway carriage that has been used as a canvas for graffiti artists. I captured these shadows while there..

Go over to Tracy at Hey Harriet to see other shadow chasers from around the world.....