Mother's Day at the Filoli Estate

I got to spend a lovely Mother's Day at Filoli. For those of you who haven't had a chance to pop by, Filoli is a large mansion from the early 1900's with an equally amazing estate garden. And it a prime Mother's Day destination. After the crowds thinned out, I got a few shots of the house and garden.

There was a floral show happening the same weekend so we got to enjoy some amazing arrangements. Some of my favorite were the miniature ones - they must have been 2" tall max. And of course the house is breathtaking with beautiful details from the murals to the "rustic" wood floors.

It was a great family day for everyone!

The highlight for Parker must have been when the (baby?) gopher got up on the entry courtyard and couldn't get past the edging and back into the lawn. We first saw it when a woman screamed as the gopher ran between her legs. This quickly caught the attention of all the children in the vicinity, who chased the poor thing around for about 10 minutes.

Every now and then the gopher would turn around facing his young tormentors, stand on his hind legs and give his most vicious gopher snarl. Of course the kids loved that! Parker kept trying to feed him one of his crackers and getting his face inches away from him until I would pull him away. The poor thing finally found his way out of the courtyard into some shrubbery. Oh well, I don't feel too bad about all the chasing after all the gopher damage I've had to deal with at clients' gardens!