The heavens have opened

After a long, dry summer, suddenly a cut-off low pressure developed over the country and has brought deluges and floods to much of South Africa, including the parched and desperate Karoo. With reports of over 100mm in less than a day from many areas, and rivers that haven't flowed in years bursting their banks, one can only wonder whether the old weather pattern of cold fronts and north-westerly gales is in the past and this will be the future climate. I don't think anyone knows. Weather experts are currently baffled by the tropical cyclone ping-ponging between Madagascar and Mozambique, which has developed into a Category 4 in a matter of hours. Keep those people in your thoughts that they may survive this cyclone.
Here in Cape Town and particularly in Kommetjie which mostly gets the least rain as first landfall, we have had a minimum of 35mm in the last day, a much-needed relief for the dry, dry earth. Only yesterday I was lugging bottles of water from the tanks around the garden to try and keep the trees, let alone the pot plants, alive for a few more days. I needn't have bothered, as the Norwegians were again spot on with their forecast (in fact, a little conservative) and I think I can safely say I won't be watering for a week.
I hope to report within days that new leaves are sprouting on bare branches and that the fiddlewood has not died - I fear for it. Of course, some plants have had too much of a good thing, and my George lilies are now flooded as the drainage was insufficient in their new home. They will have to be whipped out and a repotting done. I also discovered those dreadful curl grubs in the soil and have placed them strategically for eating by birds. None have taken the offering yet, and I am currently looking to domesticate a hadedah as a pest controller!

Waterlogged!

Yuck!

One of my favourite cloud formations

Wraiths over Chappies

Barefoot and loving it!

I've never been one for wearing shoes. They have always been an inconvenient necessity, something you need to wear to keep your feet warm in winter, or to go with the business suit or evening dress you are wearing. But I'm one of those who kicks her shoes off at the door, usually before I step over the threshold. It might have something to do with living in a wooden house with wooden floors, but that is really just to avoid the noise factor. There is something about walking barefoot on wood that gives you a connection to the earth even when you are three metres above it, and walking outside in the garden without shoes is an absolute must. The best part of summer is not having to wear shoes.

I'm sure I must be a source of great amusement to the neighbours if they ever observe me making my way up the driveway at the end of the day to put the porcupine food under the hedge. The gravel driveway stretches for 60 feet and I hobble along, knees bent, looking for the smoothest patches to put a foot and sometimes going more sideways than forwards. I also have this idea that if I move as fast as possible, the discomfort of the sharpish stones will be less noticeable. The alternative is to walk on the grass, but a crop of thorns has exceeded all previous years, due to the lawn not being cut regularly enough to halt the development of the seeds of the thorn plants.They are starting to dry now and are losing their soft greenness. So it's a toss-up between stones and thorns.

I have winter feet and summer feet. Winter feet are soft and smooth and pretty clean, having been ensconced in soft socks for many months. Summer feet have a hard ridge with cracks that require a good scrubbing with sandpaper after soaking in a footbath of very hot water and bubble bath to soften them up and rid them of the day's dirt. While this may sound absolutely revolting to someone who never goes barefoot, I can assure you that I exaggerate, and that I know many people who could do with a smoothing from an electric sander!

Copious layers of heel balm follow, which attracts every dog and cat hair between the bathroom and the bed, and I can tell you that despite the blurb in the advertising, it doesn't work. The only solution to cracked heels is to wear socks and shoes. Fixed in three days.

Our garage is very well used and a great deal of grinding and planing and wire-brushing goes on in there. All this is extremely hazardous to the bare foot, and there is no way of avoiding the area, as the washing machine is kept in the garage - an excellent way to avoid flooding in the house (after 36 years here, I am still waiting for the washing machine to flood, but at least I know it won't happen upstairs). I'm always pulling bits of metal out of my feet and have taken to sweeping the area with a giant magnet every so often to pick up errant metal fragments. Glass is a bit more difficult to track.

You might ask why I don't just wear shoes. The simple answer is, I just hate wearing them. I'm sure some psychologist would say it's rebellion against the restriction of the freedom we had when we first appeared on earth - that's good enough for me!

George lilies respond to a shower

And on cue, the first sprinkling of March rain has brought the George lilies into bloom. It happens every year without fail, and last year was the most rewarding for my little tub of heirloom bulbs as 54 flowered simultaneously, bringing a splash of coral red to the corner of the deck. They have been very happy in their semi-shaded position over many years, ever since Mom passed on some of the excess bulbs she was given by her mother-in-law some 40 years before, but after last year's blooming, the growth of bulbs in the tub was so strong that it split in two and I had to take everything out and start again. Imagine my amazement when I found that the bulbs had multiplied downwards to the very bottom of the tub, completely white from having never seen the sun nor developed leaves. Mom told me that they liked to be crowded, but I never imagined it would be to this extent.
There must have been 200 bulbs - there was certainly no soil - and I had to replant them into 8 new tubs, as well as give away what didn't fit. It was a terrible shock to their system to be separated in this way and they have struggled through the heat of summer with daily watering from me; many have remained leafless and lifeless, and I have despaired of my precious stock of Granny's beautiful lilies. But we had a little rain recently which caused a sudden bloom to emerge from one strong bulb and I have been hoping for a reprieve. Thursday's rain has once more wrought the miracle, with even the leafless, lifeless bulbs pushing out a bud!
 The interesting thing about the George lily (and probably most lilies) is that you can almost watch the flower grow. Within two days of rain, the bud will appear, and during the day you can check it from time to time and it will have grown some more, and sometimes it's in full bloom before you even noticed the bud! I find them very exciting plants to observe and so rewarding when well established.
For now, they need to multiply and crowd themselves in again before they are truly happy, and I look forward to that time, in remembrance of those dear to me.

In better days!

The hills of Groot Constantia

A fresh southeaster blew into town today, giving us cloud cover over the slopes of Constantiaberg and Vlakkenberg. The latter looms over the oldest wine farm at the Cape, Groot Constantia, where the vineyards now stretch high up into the hills overlooking the old manor house and cellars. There were many school outings to the estate when I was in primary school and I haven't been inside in years, but I doubt they would have changed the furniture or repainted! New buildings dot the estate to accommodate the commercial side of a wine farm - restaurants, wine tasting rooms, etc., but the old buildings still maintain the character and charm of the Cape Dutch architecture, and the avenue of oaks remains to let us recall the days when access to the farm was by horse-drawn carriage.
We took a different route to make it a longer walk today, and started off with a windy walk through verdant vineyards, the vines still heavy with bunches of tightly packed, tiny black grapes on the lower third, while the upper fruit has already been harvested. A surreptitious tasting revealed that these were fine grapes indeed, sweet with large pips and thick skin - wine grapes, definitely not for the table. We saw them everywhere, except for a section on the upper slopes where the grapes where white and slightly larger, but as sweet. At the bottom of the hill, there was a sign admonishing us not to handle the grapes! But they were good.
Our different route took us up a steep track that rose relentlessly with a total elevation over the whole route of 250m, so plenty of cardio there for everyone! The vineyards at the top are still young and the area was windswept and unprotected from the fierce southeaster, so I presume they have planted for a special result in the cellar in years to come - perhaps a whiff of salt air in the nose!
From time to time we came across a sugarbush with beautiful blooms to admire, and a lone Erica peeked out from behind some scrubby bushes, but in the main it was vines (of course). It will be a magnificent sight once autumn sets in and the leaves turn to burnt orange, umber and gold - I saw a single vine in the rows that was ahead of its time and took a photo to capture its lone statement that it was time to turn.
A lovely cool walk of just over 6km with endless views.

Watching the ducks feeding in the pond

A smile at last

Slowly up the hills - a wonderful bunch!

Anybody home?

Loitering

A very, very steep hill!

Wanderlust

Wanderlust is a strong desire to explore and travel the world. Not everyone experiences wanderlust, but as I get closer and closer to shuffling off this mortal coil, I feel the need to be somewhere else while I am still able to travel. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? To me, a life less lived is no life at all and we are here to experience the good things of this world, and yet my adage is: For every thing there is a season. I know that when I have travelled it has been the right time, and soon it will be that time again.

Everything I am working on is with the aim of going back to places I have loved - I have done the reconnaisance trips and I have a basis for planning a journey, rather than randomly hoping to chance upon something interesting. Invaluable advice on pitfalls and pleasures can be found in the blogs and websites of a multitude of talented and entertaining travelbugs at the click of a mouse. Much pain and drama can be avoided by heeding the words of these seasoned travellers, and if they say don't eat at certain places or take a particular mode of transport, there is a reason for it.

Living as I do in one of the most award-winning-for-beauty-and-all-things-tourism cities, Cape Town, you might think I'd grown accustomed to my surroundings, but for that very reason I have embarked on a journey of being a tourist myself, and occasionally blog my excursions with, hopefully, a foreigner's outlook on value for money, friendliness, service and the whole experience. I hope to build it up to become a site of value to visitors to Cape Town, in the way that other travel writers have contributed to millions around the world enjoying a trip away from home, even if it has just been as an armchair traveller.

De Hel or De Paradijs?

One of Cape Town's best kept secrets is the trail that circles a deep ravine at the foot of Constantia Nek. Named De Hel, probably because of the steep sloping sides and the heavy shade of the forest canopy, it should really be called De Paradijs. We started our hike in the Bel Ombre Meadow in the heart of Constantia's green belt and climbed steadily upwards through pleasant woodland, crossing a number of busy roads that link up to Rhodes Drive, but staying cool in the shade on a lovely early autumn morning. Trail bikers sped past, both up and down, and although foot travellers have right of way, we prefer to step off the path and offer words of encouragement to those who seem in need - I don't think I will ever progress to cycling as a form of exercise unless a seat is invented that resembles that of a tractor.
De Hel is a conservation area where you can feel lost in a forest miles from civilisation, when in fact you are within about 100 metres of one of the busiest roads. The towering trees of all varieties are a fantastic muffler for the traffic noise, and only a strident siren gave away our true position. A stream runs through the ravine, as streams do, and wooden bridges are strategically placed for crossing easily in winter when the stream becomes a tumbling torrent and heads down to the sea as the Diep River. The silence of the forest was broken by the jarring cacophony of multiple chain saws as we exited and began our descent down Southern Cross Drive. A plot clearing was taking place and huge pine trees were being sacrificed at the altar of residential development. We watched in fascination as a section of trunk weighing possibly 2.5 tons was separated from its life source and lifted by a crane looking like a gigantic giraffe, reaching fully extended and almost directly upwards to ensure that the crane didn't tip. That would have been something exciting to watch if it did (haven't we all laughed at videos of boat launches where the crane follows the boat into the water?). Some impressive planks will come from that trunk and hopefully be used in the manufacture of something almost as beautiful as the tree.
This is a trail that could be walked frequently for the pleasure of its peaceful surroundings and is an easy walk for all ages.

Guarantees - do they mean anything?

As I pushed my trolley out of the Hyperama today, my eye was caught by a poster advertising Bushbaby camping equipment. I have bought a number of items from their camping department, as I mostly pitch a tent for a Star Party. The advert said the tent was guaranteed for one year, and it got me thinking about guarantees and how they might apply to different items.
Assuming I use my tent for 8 days in a year, is the guarantee implying that I can expect 8 days' use without a seam failure before the guarantee expires, or can I camp for 365 days before a zip breaks? One would hope the latter, as sometimes a year goes by without me even attempting to pitch a tent - the snow factor must be taken into account! This would mean a lifetime guarantee, as I doubt whether I could camp enough over the rest of my life to make up a year. But in reality, the manufacturer will assume that a calendar year is all it needs to allow, and it's your problem if you didn't use your tent enough. It is effectively no guarantee at all.
A car manufacturer will give you three years on the assumption that you use it every day, so they obviously have great confidence in their product. It's good to know that it will be three years before something goes wrong with one of our major purchases, but Murphy's Law dictates that on the day after the three years is up, it will be a very important part that gives up the ghost and makes a huge dent in your wallet.
Similarly, a kettle has a year's guarantee and I use mine at least 10 times a day. But the cost of a kettle is pretty low and the manufacturer knows that we are more likely to send it to the dump than attempt a refund should the kettle fail to boil one morning.
Some things are so badly made that they don't work the first time you use it, and that is the time when you really will make use of the guarantee period. The secret with these (usually household) items is to check the box they come in. If it has been obviously opened and resealed, it is likely that you are getting an item that has already been returned by a previous purchaser or (horrors) it was used by the staff to see whether they would like to buy one themselves. Not unheard of.
Guarantees are just a thumb-suck number of days and don't relate to the amount of usage. It's meant to make you think the manufacturer cares. What do you think?