What a day! It started off at 12.30 in the middle of the night, when I woke up in a fright to find HWCFA opening the bedroom windows because he said it was too hot. It was a rude awakening out of a deep sleep, and after that I stayed awake the whole night until 5.00am when, as I started to doze, the first birds chirped in the branches outside the now open windows! In no time, the sky was brightening and the first rays of sunlight were tingeing the Back Table - it was time to get up and take my now expected early morning picture. I have to mention that this is not going to happen in winter! The whole point is that it will be a greeting of the dawn, so fortunately I will be able to lie in a bit in the middle of the year.
After a sleepless night, I was looking forward to a quiet braai followed by a snooze on the mattress under the trees, but this was not to be. No sooner had we cleared the plates than friends arrived with 5 lively children under the age of 8 in tow and the braai was started all over again. Not being used to small children in the home, or any type of children really, it became quite stressful as they ran all over the garden - I have lots of dangerous, spiky plants - and up and down the stairs which have a large gap between the treads and I had visions of them all falling through. In the end, it was the largest child who fell, so no harm was done except to my nerves!
They fished a dead mole out of the disused fish pond, another item not suitable for small children, and proudly brought it to show us. The last thing I wanted to see was a rotting corpse, so I told the child to swat it over into the neighbour's spare plot, which he did with glee. That disposed of that. The next game was to tie one of the smaller boys to various trees and posts around the garden, which he was quite willing to allow, but caused a bit of stress as I'm not used to having my plants abused. In the end I decided it was best to just let them get on with it and let the plants take their chances.
While they amused themselves, things deteriorated slightly at the adult end of the garden and eventually there was snoozing all round! I continued to feed and water the children and ensure that they remained in one piece before being returned home. I think that I am now going to have to put them all in my car and take the whole lot home. And it's Monday tomorrow.
I still haven't had more than 2 hours sleep since yesterday morning, and Robert wants to play Scrabble when I get home from my trip across the Peninsula. I hope I make it.
No comments:
Post a Comment