Restoring the Old Girl

Piglets and dragons
We had an unexpectedly animal-filled day today.
Firstly, we visited the Roma Street Parklands which are looking superb. There we saw a mother duck and her ducklings. Unfortunately, she wouldn't come out of the shadows for me to photograph them well enough.
We saw hundreds of these water dragons,  and every single one game me a shiver up my spine.  I'm not big on reptiles.

A city isn't a proper city without a pretty garden amongst the concrete.

Then we visited my husband's old workplace, which is a boy's boarding school. They have a very good set up there with farm animals, so the country boys can do agricultural studies and they don't get too homesick.
These calves are a year old and have all been taken away from their mothers in the last week.

We also got to see these cherubs. Born two weeks ago. This little one below was the runt. He was desperately trying to get a drink from his mother, while his bigger brothers feasted at the more well endowed end. Look at that big boy at the bottom of the photo who has had his fill and conked out. I wanted to wrap one (probably the runt) in a blanket and bring it home.

Spare a thought for mother pig next time you're buying pork sausages. That's where she's off to soon. She's produced about 60 piglets during her life time. She's a lovely girl who weighs in at about 250kg.
It's good to occasionally spare a thought for the animal on your dinner plate. It's easy to think, after a while in the city, that our meat is just conjured up at the supermarket, fresh from the meat machine, and wrapped in plastic.

It's my husband's birthday on Friday. Here we go again....