We lost our little Olympus point-and-shoot a couple weeks back so I haven't any photos to share of our progress on the weekend. Just think of this post as an exercise in developing your imagination.

Re: the camera - I'm not too worried about it (although it was a present for Deb a few years back) as it will now bring the purchase of my DSLR forward a few months - fingers crossed. The P&amp;S; was helpful for the family snaps but when it came to great flower pics it was fairly ordinary, at best. If the breeze were lighter than a whisper and the sun was almost at its zenith you might get an okay image. But any variation on those two elements would automatically signal a doomed photo.

Anyway, enough of the camera.

The weekend was pretty busy sitting in front of the computer for most of Saturday plowing through my blog directory update (stay tuned). By Sunday arvo I was itching to get out into the garden and connect with something a little more natural, and my garden has been begging for this result over the past few weeks.

After coaching my eldest son's soccer team, they all put in and bought me a $50 voucher to one of our local hardware/nurseries. So I headed down with grand expectations. Now, any gardener knows it doesn't take long to blow fifty bucks on plants but after walking around this store for a half hour I was scratching for ways to part with it.

Most of the plants were overpriced, or struggling, or both. And the flowering annuals weren't much better. Marigolds, petunias, alyssum, hearts-ease and pansies - blah!! This was actually becoming a chore and it's only the start of spring.

So, I headed for the seed rack and picked up a few more interesting morsels. Rudbeckias, salvias, echinacea and honesty are all a few trials that should make it into the neglected front cottage garden this season. I also picked up two propagator packs and some seed-raising mix to get the little beauties underway.

Once sown into their trays, I turned my attention on propagating a few more plants from the garden. Deb had bought home a few agave pups from a friends house so they were potted up and also some semi-hardwood cuttings from my delicious correas. And before ripping out my 'no-name' silver foliage plant I took a few soft-tip cuttings to keep for later.

Finally, I headed back out into the garden to plant some potted beauties that were screaming for release. A yellow leucadendron, a few bromeliads and a tillandsia had spent more than enough time in isolation and you could almost hear them sigh as I tugged their root ball from their containers.

I even had a spare 20 minutes to tidy up one of the garden beds and remove a heap of weeds. It almost looks good enough to photograph again.

Now, where is that camera....?