A wonderful setting for a wedding

It puts the fear of God into any father.  His precious little princess wants to move her devotion to another man.  Five minutes ago she was running into your arms to be swung around, but now her arms are around someone else.

Keely fell in love with the garden, but more importantly, she fell in love with a wonderful, caring young man who proposed to her under the elm.

So, of course, the wedding was going to be in the garden.  We weren't sure how it would turn out - would it be wet, what flowers would be out, what if there was a bushfire, would the bees attack people... we covered all the bases.

It was a lot of hard work, with jobs for every weekend listed on the fridge and dutifully crossed off.  We re-tanked the fish pond, cleared the ugly creeper west of the elm and replanted with oak-leaf hydrangeas, rhododendron, roses, japanese maples, azaleas, spireas and a bartlettina sordida. I still have nightmares about how much mulch we shifted - thankfully, a helping hand was not far away. And the re-planted lawn is still lovingly caressed.

Badgers Wood shone in all its glory, however, as the bride walked through the rose petals to her young man waiting under the elm, it took a back seat to a beautiful couple starting their own adventure together.