MOPGAT - our First World garbage problem

(finding a “local is lekker” solution)

Reduce, reuse, recycle

in that order

First let’s reduce, because everything we use costs the earth in natural resources, in water, in energy, in pollution. Do I really need it, or just want it?! Step out of our materialistic society. Live simply, that others may simply live.

First we need to reduce the garbage we generate. About 80% of domestic refuse is compostable – garden waste, leftover food, what the municipality clears from the gutters and lops off the trees. First choice would be to compost our own waste in our garden with a worm farm. Or is there an entrepreneur in Porterville who will start a community compost business? We gardeners do buy bags of compost now. If we are going to truck our garbage to the relay station at Piketberg, and then on to Langebaan, 4 out of 5 truckloads could have been composted at source (this means you and I!) And it is going to hit our pockets for the municipality will have to charge us for the extra service. There is no such thing as a FREE garbage bag; we pay a monthly fee for garbage disposal. Remember?

Hazardous waste – used engine or cooking oil, old batteries, toxic chemicals urgently need to be disposed of safely, and legally.

Secondly let’s reuse, because then the price the earth paid will be halved.

At the very least let us recycle, because it is the least we can put back into our children’s future.

If you say – it is not worth it, I can’t be bothered, no time, why should I? Hold your breath for a moment, as long as you can. And when you are forced to breathe in again, remember nature doesn’t care if you are gone. But you cannot take even one breath, from the very first to the last, without nature. The oxygen you use in the air you breathe comes from plants. You know, it is green, it is nasty, “maak skoon”, take it away! And the carbon dioxide you breathe out would have been used by the tree you cut down, because it sheds leaves, makes a mess! Hold your breath. . . . And remember. . . . Why?

(FYI There are plans to close our local garbage dump. Piketberg is 20 to 30 minutes drive, and Langebaan is 90 minutes away. "mopgat" is a rubbish dump, "skoon maak" is make clean, "lekker" is lovely or delicious, you get the idea!.)

June's flowers - Lachenalia

Our garden year begins, after the plants have rested, struggled through, or finally given up the ghost and the battle – after a long, hot summer. That is temperatures pushing 40 C, with a few nights during which the heat smoulders right through 24 hours. Hard to remember as I sit here in three layers with a wood stove going.

We wait with longing for winter rain, which did start in May, BUT, the blog was born on 19^th June. No more trudging around with a two legged grey water system, and both sets of legs get v-e-r-r-y t-i-r-e-d.

I love our indigenous bulbs – and the first to come through is usually this vibrant purple/pink/red Lachenalia rubida

This year the turquoise Lachenalia viridiflora was first, perhaps because I repotted them last year? This is the colour of a mermaid’s tail, don’t you agree. No wonder it is fast disappearing in the wild

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Lachenalias come in all the colours you can think of (red, yellow, orange, white, pink and purple), some you didn’t expect (turquoise, green, almost blue, fierce salmon pink), and even combinations of both! Deep orange, yellow, with green tips and inner petals yellow with purple tips – and that is all on ONE flower. My Mickey Mouse Lachenalia aloides. (will post picture when they flower again)

I keep mine in pots, so I can find them again, but they seed and hybridise freely and multiply rapidly. They are adapted to our climate, so pots make it easy to store them cool and dry in the shade.

The leaves are usually spotted, or lime with the yellow flowers, purple with the darker flowers, and I have had one with striped leaves (somehow it managed to blend its spots together?)

Remember to go to www.plantzafrika.com for more info about the South African plants I love. Where I have just discovered they are part of the Hyacinth family, that, explains the fragrance!

(June's weather. 23rd - snow on mountains. Minimum 5 C. Maximum 23 C. 155 mm rain.)

Black stork IN garden

(This one is for you, Claire)

Yesterday, out walking, we saw a large black bird, with a red beak, across the field. No binoculars, no zoom lens, what is it?

This morning sitting in (our) paradise (/rose garden), I’m peacefully eating my breakfast bowl of muesli, and chatting to the Ungardener, enjoying the morning sun. Out of the sky comes a great, dark, shape; scoops a frog out of our pond and climbs onto the island. It is a very little island, about the size of a bathtub. (The Ungardener says it is 3 x 3 metres.)

A black stork! Please excuse the soggy chest feathers. He tidies himself up, waits, graciously, while the Ungardener fetches his camera. Poses, left profile, right profile, OK? And flies away. My heart is still going pit-a-pat.

Chocolat and Aragon thought it was a-MAZ-ing. Never seen anything like it in their life. Curiously, although he stands about a metre high, both cats went to investigate. I mean, did you SEE that? If I didn’t have the picture to prove it, I wouldn’t believe it myself!

You make your choices in life, some with deliberation, and some are just, oh but I never realised that the goldfish would eat the frogs! We wanted frogs, so NO fish. And do we ever have frogs. Even a stork passing overhead can see that. When I call out “last orders – the kitchen is about to close” to Chocolat before I go to bed, in season, the frogs fire back the whole 1812 overture – from the chirping reed frogs, all the way down to the oompah brass.

All shall be well

And all shall be well

And all manner of things shall be well

- Mother Julian of Norwich

PS Sorry can't resist this.

Old lady asks young man at zoo: What is that?

He: It's a stork, ma'am

She, testily: I can SEE it is a stalk, but what is that thing on top of it?

From SASOL Birds of Southern Africa by Sinclair, Hockey and Tarboton. 2nd ed. 1997 Distiguished by red bill and legs. Juvenile is browner. Feeds in streams and ponds. Uncommon resident. Nests solitarily on cliff ledges.

Another PS just in case you find "paradise" OTT - I told that story in-Persian-garden

Ma-a, he's LOOKing at me again!

Under the Elephant's Eye

There is a farm looking across to Porterville, on the Piketberg road - which is called Olifantskop (that is Elephant Head). The Ungardener was quite disappointed. On one of our early journeys here, he suddenly said - look at the mountains, there's an elephant!

But still the locals sometimes look at me blankly and say - what

elephant? And our visitors say - so tell me again, where is this elephant?

It was serendipity that I took that photo around the shortest day of the year, when the shadows are at their longest. There is a cave which forms a shadow that opens the elephant's eye. Throughout the long hot summer he dozes with his eyes closed. (Even the Ungardener asked if I enhanced the photo.)

Today we have one of those glorious winter days, with a clear blue sky. Walking past vineyards, naartjie and pomegranate orchards this morning we were observed all the way by the watchful eye of the elephant. And there was snow last week!

(Note to self. Photo in header with eye, was taken 18 June around noon. Mid-winter. Midday.)

Pani's Falls

The Ungardener is responsible for the hard landscaping - waterfalls, pond, brick edged paths, grey water, storm water, and planting trees!

Before we came to Porterville the Coop burnt down. They broke up the reinforced concrete floor and dumped the bits on a farm we passed to and from Wellington. So the Ungardener began plotting and planning.

He collected one Land Rover load at a time, just a few pieces, to build each layer of the waterfall.

The heavy labour was done by Pani, Rasta man, whose Sanskrit name means hand, so Pani’s Falls – hand made, fait de main (it sounds better in French!)

Finally he tucked plants into the holes – Peace in the home, creeping Jenny, an unhappy Asparagus fern, and a happily self planted fern.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

in that order

First reduce, because everything you use costs the earth in natural resources, in water, in energy, in pollution. Do you really need it, or just want it?! Step out of our materialistic society. Live simply, that others may simply live.

Secondly reuse, because then the price the earth paid will be halved. So instead of using gravel chips for mulch (somewhere a quarry is destroying plants, animals and natural beauty; replacing them with a spoil heap, a rubbish dump in familiar words), we could use crushed concrete or roof tiles. We could, if we could get them!

At the very least recycle, because it is the least you can put back into the future.

For whom the bell tolls?

Ernest Hemingway found his title in a poem by John Donne (1572-1631).

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. Meditation 17

From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Donne

I am reading a novel set just after the First World War. A picture is worth 1,000 words, and I’d rather have the thousand words. She handles her words with the same genius and craftsman’s skill as the painter, sculptor and wood engraver in her story.

“He watched them all, pulling the ropes as for years they had swung haybales up in a barn, baled up the straw and stacked it up for the winter, as he had done for years with his father. Rhythmical, graceful, the handstroke and backstroke, and the bells alive and pealing, calling, out through the churchyard, out across the fields, ringing through Kent, through earth and heaven.” extract from Earth & Heaven by Sue Gee

Her book is illustrated with wood engravings by Simon Brett. http://www.simonbrett-woodengraver.co.uk/illustrations.htm

Porterville is a small town, so when the bell tolls, it might be the lady who used to live down the road …

PS and Donne's words ring out again Copenhagen-bells  

Cats

Friendly warning.

This is a cat friendly site.

I know it conflicts with wildlife, but hey, that is our life.

As Victoria’s backyard http://www.victoriasbackyard.blogspot.com/ says, “Every blog should have a cat”. We have two. Chocolat (on the right) who is a Porterville pavement special, born in Church Street, so his name starts with Ch. And Aragon (on the left) who came with us from Camps Bay, and started life as an SPCA special.

WEEDS?

(those are the Ungardener's free-spirited plants!)

(Deus est vita – God is life – motto of Berg river municipality)

Weeds are pioneer plants. If you clear the weeds, then leave the soil bare, the next crop of weeds will come, again and again. For which we are profoundly grateful, for when you have eliminated the last weed seed, there will be no crops, no food …

What is it with everything must be SKOON! Yes, invasive aliens like Port Jackson and Black wattle are a fire hazard, but the verges don’t need to be scrubbed like a kitchen sink! Why not plant Bulbinella or plakkies or Agapanthus around the street trees?

In these “moeilike ekonomiese tye” how much does Porterville municipality spend on spraying poison on the weeds along the verges? Wake up and smell the coffee. That poison is in the air – making asthma, hay fever and sinusitis worse. It is in the soil contaminating plants and crops. It is in that “kwaliteit” water which you drink and wash yourself with.

Win the battle against weeds in your garden by planting something which likes the climate and the soil. Your chosen plants will then compete by smothering and shading out the weeds. Or use a thick layer of mulch – like the autumn leaves, which will help to improve the soil and give wildlife some food and shelter.

Look at something like suring or gousblom with a tourist’s eyes – as part of nature’s beauty and bounty. (for non South Africans - suring is Oxalis pes-caprae, and gousblom is Arctotis sp.)

Last August ...