A weekend drawer rummage turned up small black-and-white proof photographs, from 1932 to the 1950s, of my Scots-born gardener-grandmother Jean neé Monro and the garden she made with my grandfather George Lyons – always known as ‘Bert’ – on ‘Inverary’, their farm at Tarrawingee in Victoria’s North East.

One – trellising sweet peas; two to five – the garden surrounding their farmhouse; six – greeting the prized border collie sheepdogs by the stable (love gran’s hat!); seven – near the iris, she’s dressed for town; and eight…wow! I think this must be one of my great aunts in hat with hound and caged bird in the garden at ‘Strathavon’, Corienbob, in the eastern Riverina, where Bert and Jean farmed from 1923 to 1932. Now that’s a picture!