To mentor a BlotSprout

I was working in Zurich when they combined the ZB and the ETH university libraries on the computer network. Went ‘live’ the day the new students started. ‘Live’ like watching paint dry. The horror of realising as you hit Enter, that there was a typing misteak, and then waiting, TWICE! Patience ... Stuart is rebuilding Blotanical over the next few months while keeping the system live.

'Blog circle'
Nguni cows and calves

irst, feeds, 
which Christine and I battled with.
Will you Blotanical gurus share
your mentoring BlotSprouts  experiences?

'Two gurus discussing a feed problem'
Let's sleep on it!

I hear and I forget; 

I see and I remember; 

I do and I understand.

by Xun Zi, c.310 BC - 237 BC

Chinese Confucian philosopher 

I read blogs about blogging – Ari Herzog – about the nuts and bolts. There I found ReplyMe – Alistair thought I was taking the piss, but now he has bolted it onto his blog.

'Thirsty for knowledge'
Bees

Ari chose 17 blogs and compared their ways of archiving posts. In his Top 5 is Danny Brown, and in the Other 12 with Chris Brogan is a garden blog.

From South Africa O═════<() ♪ ♫ ♪ nogal! 

Two minutes into his YouTube video is Elephant's Eye. 

econd, comments. 
Chris Brogan's Social media etiquette and
Melissa Ford's How to be a better commenter.

Esther you will get lost in the threaded comments on Ari's 17 post, 
just follow my avatar with its patch of sky blue.

Ari - I am currently teaching a continuing education course on social media marketing at a community college, and one of my students owns a garden store. As she is seeking to learn ways to market her business online and improve her Facebook page, etc., your blog is a place I’m about to share with her.

Diana - If, you have an archive on your blog, have it first because you use it yourself. And second, set it up the way you would use it, if you were visiting a new blog.

Ari - That’s a model for anything on your blog — or in life, for that matter. Introduce yourself to someone if you want to meet that person, and tailor your speech based upon how you’d want that person to talk to you.

hird. Blotanists use your post title as a handle to pick yours with. That is why this box says title Diana! Even if your post is Just a picture, remember a post title, caption, or a few words, first! Alt text if you are tech savvy. To the search engine an image is Just a hole. Remember the littlest girl in the sound of Music – But it doesn't MEAN anything! And Julie Andrews/Maria – So we put in words! James wins all the prizes for OTP memorable titles. Parallax on The 17:22 from Paddington. Your blog is new to us – so we don’t yet know what you are about – we have only the title of your post to hook us.

'Interlocking blog circles'

Insect Hotel by Arup Associates 
inspired by the pattern on a dragonfly's wing
Photo from British Land  

ourth, follow your own blog – as you follow the others.
Your own should be there, so you can observe it.
As if it was – just another blog.

'To mentor, or not?'
Aragon

To the Karoo, I took the laptop, but only to download photos. No internet access. For each hour preparing posts, I spend two or three reading blogs and networking. I have 50 blogs on Blotanical, and 50 more in my Google Reader. I have to edit that down, to what I can read in a day. There are always new ones on my list, so others have to be given the Chelsea Chop.

'Fledged'
Feather cloud

 Before I blogged, I was in the new garden, or reading, 

then spent a couple of hours on the computer. 

I am going to find the balance between blogging, gardening and a life. 

Wish me luck as you find your own balance?

ust to remind you, 
the dropcaps come from 
Jessica Hische's 
dailydropcap see-everything.

Pictures by Jurg and Diana,

words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, 
near Cape Town in South Africa   

   

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links)

February’s wildflowers

When I woke there was autumn’s morning mist, burnt off a few hours later. The summer is still hot, but mid thirties rather than pushing 40 C. This year I will be using Gail at ClayandLimestone's Wildflower-Wednesday meme for  indigenous/native/wild flowers  blooming this month in our garden. For me that means indigenous to South Africa, and working on avoiding the summer rainfall plants from the far side of our country. The ones that hang their heads and whisper, it is h o t here … and need as much watering in summer as any commonorgarden exotic foreign plant!  Somewhat intimidated by Californian discussions about planting the right cultivar for My Watershed. In this First/Third world country … I’d be certified insane if I asked the nursery, but is it from Porterville, adapted to the Swartland summer?

Mid-month I will round up the exotics, especially the roses, which are beginning to sprout for their autumn flush. What is most visible in the garden now is blue. Blue sage and Plumbago in drifts.

Blue sage
Plumbago

If you want to join, in the spirit of Gail’s meme, she would like a plant portrait of one wildflower in your garden. Or one you met on a walk. Your weeds, the Ungardener’s freespirited plants. Dwarf Papyrus and restio are planted, the others are spontaneous gifts from nature.

Wild grasses
Bottom right dwarf Papyrus

Olifantsriet 

Bauhinia is one of those kind, unmistakeable plants, easy to ID by their butterfly leaves.

Bauhinia natalensis

Remember Deborah of KilbourneGrove, now in Barbados? Her Bauhinia is a tree, as planted along the streets of our town. A popular garden plant is the huge sprawling shrub, Pride of De Kaap. Not the Cape, as in Cape Town, but from up north, south of Nelspruit. My Bauhinia natalensis is from Natal, surprisingly able to withstand our heat. Tiny butterfly leaves, and quiet white flowers, not the orange nasturtium monstrosities of De Kaap.

Bauhinia natalensis

Pink, purple and red. Cheating with macros and collages makes the garden appear very different to the predominantly green and brown impression it makes as a whole.

Wild flax, Ruttyruspolia Phyllis van Heerden
Pelargonium, Oxalis

Freylinia, Jasminum angulare
Dimorphotheca jucunda (formerly Osteospermum), Tulbaghia

Bulbinella, brakvygie
Kalanchoe (from Madagascar, in that country called Africa), Pelargonium

This wild olive began life as a seedling, planted by birds in our Camps Bay garden. Tiny olives. Drove me mad yesterday, trying to photograph them, the breeze, blurred every shot. Then I remembered the macro in a Mason jar technique. No breeze, the olives lie quietly instead of dancing gaily, and the camera, resting on the rim of the jar, doesn't move with me …

Wild olive

Mandela’s Gold Strelitzia is preparing the next bud. Look at these wondrous stripes.

Strelitzia Mandela's Gold

If I want to pick, it must be the odd rose, caught precisely, between tight bud, and toasted and chewed. Or playing with the varied foliage which I enjoy collecting!

Pictures and words 

by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, 
near Cape Town in South Africa   

   

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links)

Nguni and Stylish award meme

His Nguni cattle pictures are the most popular downloads from this blog. Nguni-cattle and Name-that-cow. Today’s pictures combine full use of his new zoom lens, with him standing right AT the barbed wire. Making the calves stand up and say – Mum, what’s that man doing, why is he clicking at me? When he moved along the fence to take another group – Mum got up too and glared at him – You leave my baby alone!

Nguni cattle

Nguni

Biobabbler how-to-bake-a-blog first pointed me at Mainly Mongoose, by a biologist, working in the lowveld of NE South Africa. She has a gift for sharing hard facts about animal behaviour, for writing enchanting essays around those facts, and is one of the blogs I favour which let me step into her life for a few minutes. Crying-out-loud and Castanets-at-50-paces.

Nguni cattle

Nguni

The blog award I treasure is Blotanical's-2009-awards when my shiny new blog was voted best in Africa. We missed out on Blotanical awards in 2010 as Stuart was travelling Australia. Most blog ‘awards’ are memes, today’s chain letter.

Mention me,

pass the meme on,

or your ears will fall off!

Blog memes are about links.

The About Me bit is the filling in the sandwich. It is not  All About Me. The first slice – is a gift, from a good friend, she has chosen your blog for this award. To Donna at  gardenseyeview and Patsi at  Garden Endeavors, thank you, I appreciate the thought, the links, and the extra visitors.

Nguni

Nguni

But, if you don’t want to come across as one sandwich short of a picnic, you must give us the second slice. I hate when bloggers say thank you, but I couldn’t possibly … choose blogs to promote. You have taken the carefully chosen gift for you, and you give us, that box of chocolates from the Christmas before last, oozing filling, a bit white from the heat, and anyway you don’t like ginger. No one is requiring you to say – Ta Da – these are the ten best blogs ever!! What we hope for, is, these are 10 blogs I enjoy reading, some old, some new, some new to me, some gardening, some from the wider world beyond and around gardening, maybe some in a language which is not English ... And please link to a post you enjoyed, don’t just throw me at the blog.

Nguni cow and calf

Nguni

Memed-out? These memes go around and come around again. If you are memed out, I promise your ears won’t fall off. I’ve still got mine! Remember it is about links, say thank you to your awarder by linking back to her. And link back to your own posts as Gail of Wildflower-Wednesday (remember the 23rd February ...) suggested, making it harder for blog scrapers. If you are writing about … and you have an earlier post with good links, link back to it. I might not have been reading you back then.  If you find a blog post that ties in with what you are writing about, link to hers. It works for both of you.  

First response to the next round of Stylish Awards is from Stacy in the Q (Albuquerque, New Mexico) who writes essays  In praise of helpers OR Heavy lifting

Pictures by Jurg,

words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, 
near Cape Town in South Africa   

   

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links)

Searsia trees, which we once knew as Rhus

The Anacardiaceae family – with mango, cashew, American sumac and poison ivy, South Africa’s marula and Harpephyllum which bears TINY mangoes, your Rhus and our Searsia.

Said I wanted fruit for birds. Reading the Western i.e. dry edition, of Bring Nature back to Your Garden by Charles and Julia Botha, I look back to realise I first fell in love with the ‘Rhus family’ because it makes fruit for birds. After carefully reading that bit again, went out with the camera, and found fruit. Looks delectable, no? Sadly it is only the size of a lentil!

Searsia lancea fruit

First choice – bergkaree Searsia leptodictya – delicate lime green leaves. Fragrant when crushed. Graceful arching habit, like a willow tree. Corky bark. Rest at peace, against a tree which has grown strong enough, to be a shoulder to lean on. At one with the universe, accepting the gift of the present, that moment of joy, being in the here and now. Did I say, I LOVE this tree!

Searsia leptodictya leaf

Searsia leptodictya

Second choice the witkaree Searsia lancea, karee meaning Karoo - or mead in the Khoi language, as Native Americans in turn used sumac berries. This is very like the first tree, but it tends to grow enthusiastically UP. We were planning on using three trees at Rest and Be Thankful to make a green and shady growing bower. A place to rest and enjoy the balm of shade on a hot sunny day, while looking out across the pond. ‘Cool water for a thirsty land’.

Searsia lancea bark

Searsia lancea flowers and fruit

Searsia lancea

Third choice is Searsia crenata the dune crowberry which has tiny leaves. A more filigree lacy effect.

Searsia crenata shrub

Searsia lucida is a vigorous shrub with glossy leaves, this claimed half of our Camps Bay garden.

Searsia lucida large shrub

Searsia refracta has softer crumpled leaves. Looks more like a fruit bearing bush.

Searsia refracta shrub

We always knew these plants with their trifoliate leaves as Rhus. But they have been moved to Searsia. The books and websites say this is still being sorted out. The South African plants hybridise freely, and the leaf shape of any ‘given species’ varies, making it difficult for me to identify all of these accurately. But the true Rhus will ultimately include the American Sumac and poison ivy ... 

We are planning to remove two of the inherited plums. One is looking not long for this world, the other managed a couple of plums. At the entrance to the rose garden it would be delightful to walk thru an arch formed by two bergkaree. This would frame a view across to the waterfall and a glimpse of our mountain, looking out, and draw you in to the rose garden first, and give an extra layer of shade and privacy to the exposed end of the verandah. Will have to wait for rain, and softer soil, to dig the roots out.

The poll on my sidebar runs to the 26th February. 

Of 36 voting readers of my blog, only one solitary person favours daily posts, 

but then you would be mostly disappointed here, 

except for the Twelve Days of Christmas. 

Daily posts make blogging a chore, 

and I can see the links were not followed up, so ... 

Seven voted to write when they want to, and read as posts are published. 

But 31, the vast majority, want 1 to 3 posts a week, which is what they find here. 

If you DON'T agree, vote please!

Pictures and words 

by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, 
near Cape Town in South Africa   

   

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links)

Birds at the mouth of the Berg River

Our dentist has moved to Saldanha, a one and a half hour drive away. We travel via Velddrif, where the road crosses the mouth of the Berg River on a long low bridge like a causeway. To the mountain side and home is a wide salt marsh with reed beds and mud flats, teeming with birds and there is a bird hide. To the sea side many flat pans where brine is evaporated in the sun to harvest salt. And the flamingoes take their harvest there too. Salt-of-the-earth from Marie Theron, an artist who lives nearby.

We are – always in a hurry, busy busy busy, things to do, appointments to keep. So we have passed this bird hide a dozen times. Last week when we had half an hour we stopped. He took pictures. I was somewhat daunted, not a dedicated birder. I looked out and saw birds. Every one seemed to be different, and all unknown. Flamingoes in a huge flock across the river. Almost close enough to touch, near the bird hide, blacksmith plovers. For the rest, I have picked out the better pictures and ploughed thru my birdie books. Who are you? Waders and migrants … 

There was a pied kingfisher, 29 cm, black and white, hovering patiently, diving for lunch, then returning to its favoured tree stump. Where it ‘beats the fish to death before eating it’. And back to hovering over the next likely patch of water. Resting on the bank, a white breasted cormorant, but he had his back turned to us, and was having a quiet nap.

Little? stint or a grey plover?

Rednecked (but not in breeding plumage) or little stint? Such appealing names, not! If it was ‘little’ it is the smallest of the waders and the smallest of the migrants. Flying all the way to Russia and Iran. Or a grey plover?? Head down, it feeds busily, on crustaceans, mosquitoes and larvae.

Greenshank

Greenshank – too far way to actually see if his shanks were green, but the shape is right, the wing colour and the long, tip tilted bill. Migrating from the Palaearctic. Eating insects, molluscs and crustaceans – from the surface, or wading right in and probing the sand.

Blacksmith lapwing

Blacksmith lapwing

Blacksmith lapwing

Blacksmith plover, one of those distinctive birds, which even I can identify with a sigh of relief. But, he is now a lapwing, a blacksmith lapwing! Black and white on long legs. Related to the wirebird, national bird of the island of St Helena. This bird eats insects and worms. It likes damp marshy places and is a newcomer (in my 1982 book) to the South Western Cape.

Flamingoes

Flamingoes

Flamingoes

Flamingoes

Flamingoes earn a big sigh of relief. Along Life's Highway and the Yard Art Game with her pink plastic version knows a flamingo. These are Greater flamingoes with black tipped beaks, and flashing scarlet and black wings in flight. 

Flamingoes in flight

Bird books – Joy Frandsen’s Birds of the South Western Cape 1982.  

Sasol Birds of southern Africa by Sinclair Hockey and Tarboton 1998.

Pictures by Jurg

words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, 
near Cape Town in South Africa   

   

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links)