Return to Groot Winterhoek

Walking with me, the Ungardener is limited to about two hours. With FREQUENT stops for yet another flower. And I me myself, like to walk, on the level, on the jeep track, so I can look at bugs and flowers. He would like to go further, along the river, a full day hike. Andre our Computer Man had never been up to the Wilderness Area. Last Monday, Computer Man and Ungardener hiked towards De Tronk along the river, returning via a very steep uphill slog on my jeep track.

Hiking in the Groot Winterhoek in August

For Wildflower Wednesday

We have the long promised rain. Most of these pictures were taken on Sunday, ahead of the – promising snow on the mountains – cold front. All are in our garden, this August. Were you with me, for  August daisy chain walk last year?

Blue Felicia, yellow
and purple Dimorphotheca jucunda,
cream and brown eyed Gazania

Sunshine bush after the fire

Last Friday I picked out the raisins. To share that, sometimes overwhelming feeling amongst the diversity in fynbos. Every which way you turn, at a second glance, that is so too, a different species. Today I'm caught in the first impression. The Who Needs ho hum flowers, if your fresh ‘spring’ leaves are this flamboyant??

Depending on the season, what you notice as you cross the invisible line from whatever to fynbos – is clumps of restios. Their form quite distinctly revealing that invisible boundary. Time it right and what you are hit with – is bushes – flaming in lime gold and neon burgundy. In the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness Area. Up on the mountain we look out at from our garden.

Looking across to the Piketberg

August Bloom day in Porterville

Today I choose to bring the foreign exotic commonorgarden flowers. Around the 25th will be the wildflowers growing in my garden.

What is most visible now, more so since the pecan is down, is the Japanese flowering quince. A flaming coral torch that takes my breath away, as it startles me, every time I see it.

Japanese flowering quince 

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

Became a book title for Chinua Achebe. From a poem by William Butler Yeats. On Tuesday I needed to get images of London Is Burning out of my mind. From 6-things-bloggers-can-learn-from-dr-seuss. I'm too old to have read Dr Seuss as a child, and childless, so I missed his books both ways. A really good, classic, quotable ‘child’s’ book – is not childish. It crystallises wisdom down to its simple essence, to truth.

Dr. Seuss

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

Euryops sp. growing tall
The centre, cannot hold, and scatters seeds

Pecan down

Long lived the pecan. Forty years, five with us. This tree was always too big, reaching its great arms into our view of the Olifantsberg ridge. I had always wanted it cut back, feathered, so the line between earth and sky was unbroken. Five years pass. Looking at Nell Jean’s fallen pecan makes me nervous. They do have a bad habit of discarding HUGE dead branches, and there are many telephone lines in the flight path.

Pecan tree