When the dog barked

Gale force winds are not unusual in South Africa, especially the Western Cape coastline, and into the Eastern Cape. These winds are a feature of summer and winter, with the winter storms accounting for the Cape’s original appellation as the Cape of Storms.

We’ve had more than our fair share this year and wind, in combination with fire, can wreak havoc. As it did two years ago on the Garden Route, and as it does every year in the townships of Cape Town, leaving thousands with just the clothes on their backs. Eighteen months ago, a school friend, now living in the Garden Route area, had to evacuate her home. She, her husband and their pets lived in their vehicles for days, fighting the fire around their home. As I write, not far from their home, six fires are raging and one has destroyed more than 85,000 hectares of vegetation – much of it in the mountains. According to this report, the plume of smoke is visible from space and the biggest fire has left a scar four times the size of that left by the 2017 fire. Eight lives have been lost.

In my home town, Grahamstown, I heard that people were also being evacuated this morning, but mercifully, during the course of the day, there has been heavy and good rain, which has doused the fire – for the moment. I remember, when I was about eight or nine, my father, then superintendent of the botanical gardens, joining the firefighters to fight a fire that raged for days – over those same hills. I remember the constant smell of smoke and ash falling gently from the sky over the town and his red-eyed exhaustion.

I have had the privilege to work with firefighters; one of whom was Fire Chief during that 2017 Garden Route fire. Their courage, skill, knowledge and dedication in the worst of circumstances, is not to be underestimated, whether of wild, veld fires, house fires, or of those tragic fires in informal settlements, not to mention industrial and mine fires.

Until one has had one’s own brush with fire, one has little concept of how unpredictable and how terrifying it is. Especially when the wind blows.

Two years ago this month, I had an unexpected request to work in a spot that meant a road trip and The Husband happily came along for the ride. Well, actually, he did the driving. I pointed the camera at various things.FionaCameraNov2016

Here follows one of my now not unusual digressions: notwithstanding the drought, work and taking an almost-wrong-turning, it was a pleasant and pretty trip; spectacular in places.TreeWheatFieldNov2016

A lone tree standing out against the golden stubble of harvested wheat.

WheatlandsHayNov2016The bales of hay for much-needed fodder, waiting to be collected and stacked.
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There are wind farms everywhere: on every road and virtually around every bend. I can’t make up my mind if they’re fascinating, benignly waving their arms at one, or a blight on the landscape. The turbines are huge. In the bottom, left photograph in the collage above, you will see a turbine blade on the ground, bookended by the portable toilet and the picnic gazebo, which give one a sense of how long it must be: turbines can have a diameter of 40 – 90 metres.

Our destination was the seaside, mostly holiday, village of Paternoster.PaternosterNov2016

The sea was brilliant; the colours, exquisite, but the wind howled. The apparently calm sea was very deceiving.

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Then, the morning we were to return home, a dog barked. At 4 am. It was a very agitated bark. Neither of us went back to sleep, so an hour later we resolved to get up, pack and hit the road.

Good thing, too, because an hour or so after we were back in McGregor, we were fighting fires. Literally.

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The Husband, Jan Boer, and a few other locals monitored the fire that was across the road from our house. As I was taking this picture and the one below, the wind suddenly changed direction and the fire jumped the road and the fence. Into our plot and vegetable garden.

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I turned tail and ran back home and unceremoniously dumped the camera. Friends and neighbours arrived from everywhere, including friends en route to a wedding, not caring that they would be.

Our two hose pipes were already in use, dousing the flames across the road, so every bucket and hole-free receptacle was dragooned into service. Cool boxes, catering equipment and dustbins were passed from hand to hand, and every available tap was used to fill them.

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An hour and a half later (which felt like the longest day) after it jumped the road, the fire was under control, the fire service was on the scene, and the camera was retrieved from the tree.

The hose pipes came back blistered and burnt. Small price.

The aftermath: incinerated telephone lines, charred, smoked vegetables and homes unscathed. Mercifully. Dust, ash and moonscapes.

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 Within a week, even though no rain fell, the reeds in the vlei across the road, were sprouting.

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Thanks to that barking dog, we had been home to fight that fire. A day I shall never forget.

Two years later, the drought has broken, but it’s dry again. It’s the wind, that dries things out and as we have a Mediterranean climate, rain after October is rare, leaving the vegetation tinder-dry, not helped by unseasonally hot temperatures.

Eighteen months later, these photographs that I took in late winter, show not just the recovery from the fire, but also the drought.

Our garden is greener and the vegetable garden has crops in the ground. The sad remainder of an orange tree that succumbed in the drought, though, is a reminder f the drought. On the other hand, the vlei across the road, which had been denuded, was awash – not just with water, but the most magnificent showing of arum lilies that I have ever seen in my time in the village.

The power of nature to recover is not to be under estimated.

Nor though, is fire.

There it is – until next time

Fiona
The Sandbag House
McGregor, South Africa

Photo: Selma

Tremendous Trees – II

In 2016, The Husband did a bit of work for the friends of the local nature reserve, Vrolijkheid.  He moved the visitor’s kiosk from one spot to another and generally refurbished it.  During the course of the job, the concrete slab had to be damped down twice daily.  One Saturday afternoon, I went along with him.  Camera in hand.

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The dry, hot summer had taken its toll. The veld was tinder dry and the mountains clear in the afternoon distance.

This magnificent Karee provides shade from the baking sun in the car park.  Notwithstanding my fascination with all trees, the thorn trees in the shady picnic area attracted my particular attention that afternoon.  Vrolikheid

First, the lichen invited a closer inspection.  Received understanding is that lichen is a good indicator of the prevailing winds because it grows on the leeward side of the trees.  Not so, in the heart of this grove, where it grows on the inside of each nest of acacia tree trunks.  Away from any weather.

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Wandering between the trees, these acacias captured me.

Back to Vrolijkheid and Acacia Karroo.  These trees are beautifully old and they drip with resin which, as children, we used to eat.  As I recall, it had a tangy sort of pine flavour and was soft and sticky;  a bit like toffee.  Besides the acacia being a legume with all the benefits of nitrogen-fixing for the soil, it turns out that the Sweet Thorn does have nutritional and medicinal qualities (leaves and pods on which animals browse). The resin was at one point, exported as “Cape Gum” for use in confectionary.*

The colours of the dripping gum are beautiful.  It forms the most magnificent stalactites that deposit resin onto mounds of wannabe stalagmites on the ground below. Unless you are looking for them, though, the gummy piles are well camouflaged.

The deep colour of the weeping bark contrasts with the silver-grey lichen and reminded me of amber.  It made me wonder whether, perhaps, this oozing red gold might be how it starts out.  It might be.

After The Husband had finished the job, he wanted to show me his handiwork, so late one blustery Sunday afternoon, we trundled down to have a look.

As we left, the sun was setting and the southeaster was pouring over the mountains.

* For more about Acacia Karro, growing habit and uses

Until next time, be well
Fiona
The Sandbag House
McGregor, South Africa

Photo: Selma

Post Script

  • First posted in April 2016 and now with updated photographs.
  • I’m participating in blogpal @tracyork’s April challenge of sharing a post every day during April – on the Hive blockchain. I succeeded last year – on Steemit from which the new blockchain “hived off”…
  • It seems a good way to constructively use the time during a compulsory lock down, right? For more about this initiative, please check out Traci’s post.

  • If you’d also like to both join the challenge and post from the WordPress platform to the Hive blockchain, sign up here.
  • I’m still blogging on Steem and more recently share my burbling on Uptrennd.

 

From drab, dull and mostly grey to astonishing colour

It often amazes me how out of things seemingly unsightly, dull and ugly, beauty emerges. I have mentioned a spot we often visit and which is home not just to a fabulous spot for eating lunch, but is also the working gallery and home to a glassblower and his artist wife.

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Outside his barn studio, hangs this copper kettle

An artist’s place of work is one of contrasts:  apparently untidy, seemingly uninspiring, but very organised.

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The “rowing” chair on which the artist sits and works with the molten glass, painstakingly forming it into the shape it ought to be
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The long, metal rods resting in the water
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One of three furnaces
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The glass that falls off as they work.  This tray is on the floor next to the chair, three photos up.

On one of our recent visits, we had the privilege of watching the master and his team at work.  These are just three examples:

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Outside the barn door, in the elements
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In a deep window
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On a glass shelf

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A word about the photos of the interior of barn

Visitors to the barn are not permitted far into the barn where David Reade and his team work, so all of these photographs were taken from a distance, and using the quite limited zoom of my camera.  I was struck by the dominance of black, white and grey in that space, in contrast with the colours that eventually emerge.  Consequently, I thought that those photographs would be and interesting entry into Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge.

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I will share more of David Reade and his team at work in another post.

Post Script

Having entered this challenge, I was delighted that Fiona’s Favourites and this post was selected as one of Cee’s featured bloggers.

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© Fiona’s Favourites 2016

Odds and ends – I

Sometimes life overtakes us.

So it has been for me in the last ten days.  The day job and the project on which I’ve been working, seems to be taking an eternity to come to an end, have taken me to Johannesburg and back.  I’ve been at my desk for ten or so hours a day.

I’m not getting to many of my favourite things, including Fiona’s Favourites and blogging.  Quite a few things are falling through the cracks.  Bear with me.

In the meantime, here is a selection of some  photographs that don’t fit into any particular theme, but which I rather like.

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A black and white bee-eater on the back of a wrought iron chair in our garden.

SAM_5740.JPGBlossoms from a tree collecting in the agave underneath it.  I loved the clean, sharp lines of the leaves and the textures in this photograph.

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One of my favourite decorations for the Christmas tree;  it’s handmade and I bought it, along with a few similar ones from a craft market about ten years ago.

If you were waiting for me to share the passata recipe, I’m sorry.  The passata’s done, and so am I.  Tomorrow’s another day, and next weekend is a holiday weekend.  Let’s see how things unfold:  watch this space!

© Fiona’s Favourites 2016

The Dad’s journey to Africa: the beginning

Last week, had he still been around, we’d have celebrated my Dad’s 90th birthday.  This year, for some reason, his birthday was an emotional day for me.  Nineteen years ago, we celebrated his birthday with him.  It was the day The Husband met him.  They struck up a firm friendship.  Instantly.  Little did we imagine, then, that it would be his last birthday.

This is a little of his story.  I plan to write a second installment, but it’s taking a while.  Not sure why, but probably because I have to be in the right space.  In my head, heart and soul.

James Donaldson Cameron, known as Jim, was born at home, in Auldburn Road, Glasgow, the fifth of five children, in a house like the one below.  He told many stories of the things that happened in the kitchen, including having his tonsils taken out and, somewhere along the line, a gland was removed from his neck.  TB, he said, and that procedure was also performed in the kitchen, on the table.  It left him with a scar and a depression (we called it a hole) just below his ear that in adulthood would inevitably fill with shaving soap sometimes missed in the face-drying process.  Much to the delight of his children.

Back to Jim’s childhood and the allotment.  He worked there with his father and his brother, George:  tilling the land, growing  vegetables, getting frozen hands and fingers picking, among other things, Brussels Sprouts, peas and beans, pulling and eating fresh neeps* and carrots straight from the earth before hurling newly-dug tatties** into the coals of a fire they had built to make a billy can of tea.  The allotments must have given way to the green belt across the road, and were where the seeds of decisions he was to take as a young man were sown.

George, the first-born, of John and Mary Cameron, was followed by three girls, Ruby, May and Belle (not necessarily in that order).  The Dad would laughingly tell that he was lucky to have been born a boy:  the new bairn*** if another girl, was to have received the same treatment as unwanted kittens.  Drowning was averted:  James Donaldson arrived at 1.05pm on March 16th, 1929.

Ten years later, war broke out and, as I’ve mentioned before, the young Jim was evacuated to a poultry farm where they reared broilers.  A very unhappy time in his life:  he was a wee boy with small hands.  It was his job to draw the slaughtered chickens.  Although he ended up being sent home after about six months, it had an indelible impact on the youngster.  Roast chicken – actually chicken of any description – rarely featured on menus I remember from my childhood.  He only ever ate chicken when he had to, and to be polite.

After finishing school, Jim was conscripted and went to Egypt as a member of the Royal Airforce (signals).  Returning home, he didn’t know what he wanted to do and spent some time working in gardens or parks in Glasgow.  I’m not sure.  I wish I’d paid more attention, but I do remember his telling me that one of the men with whom he’d worked, encouraged him to study horticulture.  The Dad was concerned that he’d be much older than his fellow students.

Jim described himself as a late bloomer:  eventually, he was persuaded to follow his dream, and in 1951, at the ripe old age of 22, he headed to London to start his apprenticeship at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

By all accounts, he did well.

The writer of that reference goes on to describe The Dad as “a hard worker with a quiet personality”.  Jim’s own telling of his youthful antics belied this, evidenced by one of the few photographs I’ve managed to find of his time at Kew.  I another, which I’m still looking for, was of him in a pond in one of the hothouses, tending to giant water lilies with leaves that must have been a metre in diameter.

Who knows what was in that barrel.  Beer, I am sure is what they want us to think, forgetting about the bucket of something sure to be unsavoury, about to be dumped over the poor sod!  That said, The Dad was a good sport and game for anything and rarely shying away from a challenge.  I wish I’d been able to ask him about this picture.

To finish his apprenticeship, in late 1953, the 24-year old Jim headed north of London to the Essex city of Colchester where he worked in the municipal parks and gardens.  His favourite story of that time was of his local pub, also frequented by a shepherd and his dog.  The publican, with nary a prompting, would always draw a pint for the shepherd and a half pint for the working hound!

*  neeps – turnips
**  tatties – potatoes
*** bairn – baby
**** Wee Granny – Little Granny:  My paternal granny was always known as Wee Granny because she was short, and my maternal grandmother, Big Granny.

Next:  The Dad goes to Africa

© Fiona’s Favourites 2018

 

 

Magic Melon III

There is something magic about a clear night sky, the moon and stars.  Just after last year’s winter solstice, the sky was a cold, crisp and clear with a crescent moon; Venus and Jupiter very, very close by.

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The north-west night sky

Then there is the magic of dawn and the equal splendour of light associated with heavy rain showers.  We had both, together.

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From the porch looking towards o the driveway
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View, up, to the west, whence the rain had come – in buckets

Even Melon wasn’t going to miss the magic!

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A closing comment:  Since acquiring my new camera, I’ve been learning how to use it.  The only one of these pictures that was somewhat “doctored”, other than the odd crop, was the one of Melon.

Postscript

Updated as an entry to “Hugh’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Week 15 – “Under” because when I read the topic of this week’s challenge, this old post came to mind – the sky, the trees and, of course, melon under the table!

© Fiona’s Favourites 2016

Tremendous Trees – I

I love trees, and trees are central to so many things in our lives, from paper to picnics.  They bring people together and drive them apart.  As humanity becomes more and more concerned about its future, trees become contentious and no more so than around our village, including when they (or bits of them have) to make way for the ubiquitous telephone and power lines.

Eucalypts are not indigenous to South Africa and, actually, few trees are indigenous to the Western Cape of South Africa, and particularly the biome in which we live.  Other than along river courses, where one sees beautiful, shady Karees, have no significant native trees occur in the  Cape Floristic region.  As a consequence, and for timber (furniture, fencing, firewood, etc.), Eucalypts were introduced from Australia.  They are magnificent, but in a region with young soils and little rain, they literally drain the earth of its lifeblood, water.  They have also become invasive, complicated by the fact that they release chemicals that change the soil profile and “scare” away indigenous flora.

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The gum trees opposite our house through which I watch the clouds that herald the summer southeaster and the winter snow. The cold winter’s day that I took this photograph, we expected snow out of those dark clouds.

As some of you may have noticed, many of the photographs taken from The Sandbag House feature power and telephone lines.  The view through those gums, into the village, is no exception.

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The view (…through the lines…), past our house, on another balmy, misty, early winter evening.  On the right is an avenue of Karees, also known as the “Karoo Wilge” (willow).

So, back to the controversy.  Early in 2015, there was a hue and cry:  the gums along the river that we cross on the way to the village were being removed.  Now, here’s the conundrum:  the earth and humanity need trees.  Lots of them.  I know that the earth is under threat.  But that doesn’t mean that every tree, as beautiful as it might be, should be allowed to wreak havoc on the indigenous flora and the natural water courses.  Those gum trees along the river had, over the years, choked out the Karees and the reeds, destroying the natural habitat for the local fauna and flora.  Little grew under them;  they also sucked up litres and litres of water that should have been staying in the earth, feeding the groundwater system.  It is the groundwater that the river and boreholes rely on during summer, and with the storage dams are essential for irrigation:  no irrigation and agriculture suffers which has another series of knock-on effects and which I shall not belabour.

All of that said, mature gum trees are beautiful, and there’s a favourite spot where, on the way home from Cape Town, The Husband and I enjoy a shady lunch and a glass of wine.  One of the trees is this magnificent gum.

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Pathways and passages – I

February is a significant month:  I first published on Fiona’s Favourites this month, two years ago.  So after browsing through the photographs of my 1999 trip to Spain, for my last post, and thinking about time, I thought it useful to look back on what was, in some ways, was a rite of passage for me.

At the time, a few months before I met The Husband, I was in a very weird space.  That stay in Palma de Mallorca was the first real three-week holiday of my working life.  It was also a time of reflection and resolve.  When I looked at the photographs, last week, I realised that they were, in their own way, full of pathways and passages.

All were taken with (I think) a 35mm point and click camera which had been lent to me.  However, I’ve not scanned them either from the originals, or from the negatives (don’t exactly know where those are), rather I photographed them with my current camera and then tidied them up a little.  Very little – a lot less than I thought I’d have to.

Plaça del Banc de l’Oli, on the way to Carrer de l’Oli, where I stayed.

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Hostal Peru, I was told, was a house of ill-repute.

Checking the plaça out on Google Maps, the building is still there, with its curtained windows, sans the sign, and the square looks a little more respectable than it did seventeen years ago.

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Carrer de l’Oli

The street, in the Old City of Palma:  the building in which I stayed (on the fourth floor). The flower shop below is reflected in the windows across the way.  It was in a little spice shop down that road, to the left and up Carrer del Sindicat, that I bought my spices.

This was the view from the room in which I slept.

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This old Roman house is where I had my first (of many a) cup of café con leche (coffee with milk), and which I passed regularly on my way to the Mercat de L’Olivar.

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Gran Café Cappuccino, Carrer de Sant Miquel, Palma de Mallorca

Valdemossa fascinated me for a range of reasons:

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The cobbled roads and the colours of neat homes with front doors that open directly on to the streets, each flanked with happy pots of flowers including geraniums which are, incidentally, indigenous to South Africa.

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How long have these homes been here, I wondered, with their brilliant colours – the stones, wood, paint work, and more so, the fossils embedded in those walls?

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The balcony gardens that one looks down on as one walks where Chopin and his lover, French writer George Sand did when they had sojourned in then vacant Carthusian Monastery.

CarthusianMonasteryGardenI was there in April, into May, so the beautiful monastery gardens were only just beginning to come into their own.

Equally fascinating was the trip from the village to its eponymous port.

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The Virgin Mary watches over travellers between the village and the harbour;  she is perched so high up in the mountainside, I’d have missed her had I not been a passenger.

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At the end of that precipitous road is the Mediterranean Sea and Valdemossa’s harbour with its boathouses carved into the cliffs.

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Bunalbufar intrigued me, not just because, like Valdemossa, the village is perched atop the cliffs and it’s a proverbial day’s journey its the port below, but because of the terraces:  built by the Moor conquerors and not merely in evidence but still maintained and cultivated with citrus, olives and vines. From the deck of a bistro, aptly named Bella Vista, one can just glimpse the port at the bottom of the valley below.

Part of the answer to my question about the age of buildings, I discovered after trudging up the hill to Castell de Bellver.  This is the site of the island’s main fortress, and home to the ancient kings of Mallorca.   Elements of the building date back to before the birth of Christ, and like buildings on South Africa’s Robben Island, it has an interesting history, having served among other things, both as a royal residence, as well as a prison for royal and political prisoners.

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This deep, tiny window looks from a room that might well have been a cell, down the battlements to the Mediterranean.

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Another South African link: I was surprised, on my regular walks to the nearest Internet cafe, to pass this shop:  Biggie Best, an iconic South African home design company.

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This 2000-year old olive tree in pride of place in the plaça, outside the post office and which, I think, had once been a court:  another sense of life, then and now.

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I walked along many pathways and passages in Palma and around Mallorca.  At the bottom of the last hill that I climbed in Mallorca ….

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this field of spring flowers.

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© Fiona’s Favourites 2016

Shades of winter

We live in the most diverse floristic kingdom in the world which has a Mediterranean climate.  The contrast between our part of South Africa and the Highveld struck me again as I flew between Cape Town and Johannesburg last week.  The latter, which has had rain, is lush and green.  In our part of the world, except for cultivated land: the vineyards, orchards and domestic gardens, the veld (countryside), is drab and brown but with its own beauty.

Then, as I was browsing through my photographs, looking for something else, I found these.

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All of these grew (some naturally occurring, some cultivated) and were picked on the mountains above our village, and all except the Banksia, are indigenous and natural (i.e. not dyed).

Our mountains after a hot summer, before the winter rain.

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A closer look at the colours to which we look forward each winter.

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Not all are as vibrant.  The aptly-named blushing bride is delicate and ethereal.

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In 40°C+ (100°F+) heat, winter cold is hard to contemplate.  I hate winter.  The flowers are the best thing about it, especially as they are at their best when the weather’s the coldest and just before spring.

Postscript

Having seen Hugh’s post about this week’s WordPress Daily post photo challenge, and this week’s theme, “vibrant”, this is my entry.

© Fiona’s Favourites 2016

The Streets where I Live – I

When I travel on business, like I am this week, this is some of what I miss:  the streets where I live.

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Our street: left from the gate
And right from the gate
And right from the gate
The long view - past the gate
The long view – past the gate
Some of the traffic
Some of the traffic…
...as they pass...
…as they pass…
...others stop to snack...
…others stop to snack…
Moods around the corner
Moods around the corner
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A little further down the same road
Looking down the main road from our corner
Looking down the main road from our corner
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Looking up towards the Road to Nowhere and our house…

© Fiona’s Favourites 2016