Around Porterville in April

Walking towards the mountain last Sunday morning, to the dam on Houdconstant farm. Pomegranates, oranges, grapes. Where we disturbed a small flock of dark spurwinged geese. As we tried to get closer for a photo, they took off, in bunches, circled and settled, elsewhere. One of the few dams that still has water, after the summer, harvesting what drains down from the mountain. The nearby Voelvlei dam supplies the city of Cape Town with water.

Houdconstant farm dam

Wildflower Week in April

Yesterday I harvested this month’s native / indigenous /  wild flowers for Gail's meme. Our weather forecast for Malmesbury includes a white slab with irregular edge. Frost pockets. They also promise snow on our mountains. We almost had a Western Cape Easter with snow. Carolyn - our snowdrops should feel more comfortable – if they didn’t get cooked to death in the summer.

Bulbinella

Life returns to Ungardening Pond

Little by little we are refilling the pond, after relining it. And how immediately life returns. The frogs have been with us, their lives lived out hunting crickets in the mulch layer we try to cover the garden in. A blur of movement, and a frog emerges as the watering can shower disturbs him. We heard reed frogs clicking in the afternoon, frogs croaking and raucous toads bellowing at night. Now there are tadpoles, drawing back our kingfishers (waiting on better pictures, but the birds are back at long last)

Ungardening Pond in autumn

April flowers, not from around here

As I walk the garden, I know whether that plant is commonorgarden / exotic / alien / foreign. Those are the plants I look at for this mid-month garden walk. 

Aeonium 'Moroccan rose'

Spirulino our rescued sparrow and friends

EDITED January 2014

by Diana Studer
- gardening for biodiversity

Found at the recycling depot in January 2010. The Ungardener has been helping to sort at the town’s fledgling recycling project. There he saw a little bird hopping around. He brought him food and water. But he sees there is something wrong with his wing. He cannot fly. When the door was open, out he hopped to the open field.  Not sure if the wing is broken. Or something attacked and injured him. He brought him home. He is a commonorgarden house sparrow. Invasive from Europe. Our bird book says they were first seen in Piketberg in 1962.

Spirulino's home