AT MY FEET

As I am still not as steady on my feet as I would like to be, I have to look down – and often sit down – when I am walking outdoors. I have been doing quite a lot of both since my knee operation. Slowing down also means noticing more in my surroundings. None of the photographs in this post are new, but each one represents some of the recent sights I have seen (all sans camera) in recent weeks. I will begin with an Olive Thrush. These are interesting birds to observe in the garden: cautious at first, yet very sharp-eyed, they scuttle towards any food that lands on the ground below the feeding tray. One perched right next to where I was sitting the other day and eyed me for almost a minute before snatching a tiny morsel of cheese and making off with it.

I have featured this puffadder before. It was on our neighbour’s driveway and the gardener called us in a panic. Of course, I had to photograph it before we managed to manoeuvre it into a cardboard box in order to remove it. The gardener was adamant that we couldn’t release it in the bush over the road and kept a beady eye on us as we carried it over the road leading into our town and opened the box for it to slither out into the grass there. We need to keep a close eye out for snakes at this time of the year – and an ear for the alarm calls of birds in the garden when they become aware of the presence of one. There was a snake in our kitchen hedge not so long ago.

Something we often come across at this time of the year – more especially after a rush of strong wind – are eggshells or even whole eggs that have fallen out of birds’ nests high in the trees.

Literally at my feet were these freshly caught fish at the harbour in Arniston, a small town in the Western Cape.

Much more familiar in my home territory are donkeys. These two had been rolling around in the dirt on this dry, almost grassless verge.

Lastly – and because it is so beautiful – is this butterfly that landed on the tar.

 

FEELING

There is touch and there is feeling. According to dictionaries, feeling is an emotional state or reaction to something. Apparently, there are eight primary feelings that form the basis of a plethora of others, these are joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation. It is not surprising then that, according to Rumi, the world exists as you perceive it.  It is not what you see, but how you see it.  It is not what you hear, but how you hear it.  It is not what you feel, but how you feel it. [Thank you Graham for this timely quotation!]

Living in a fairly dry country, as I do, I feel a surge of joy when the first rain falls. I love walking around the garden smelling the damp soil and seeing raindrops sparkling in the sun. The rain brings with it a sense of anticipation of growth and the satisfaction of seeing flowers and vegetables maturing in the future.

I occasionally feel overwhelmed (still) with a sense of sadness that my children and grandchildren live so far away from us. Sketches like the one below are no longer drawn in our lounge, but must be seen from afar through social media. There are no more chats over tea or a popping in for a glass of wine … no more sitting together to cheer our rugby players on; instead, we share the scores with either a laugh or a frown.

There is an acceptance that our grandchildren will grow older without us seeing them nearly as often as we would like to. How grateful I am that we see regular photographs of them, chat to them via WhatsApp and can pick up where we left off when we do get together!

I cannot help feeling disgust along with disappointment whenever the carefully built mud nest of the Lesser-striped Swallows comes tumbling down – often because of the interference by White-rumped Swifts or Fork-tailed Drongos.

While I have often referred to what I call the Urban Herd, when they graze on the verge of the very busy road leading into the town, I cannot help a frisson of fear both for their safety and that of the drivers. There have been collisions in the past – not happy for anyone!

The owners of the cattle should know better. Not so creatures of the wild such as tortoises and snakes. I feel anger when motorists deliberately drive over them – yes, some do!

Then, there is the delightful – and always welcome – surprise when someone gifts me a tea I have either not seen before or have run out of!

A DAY IN MY GARDEN

Yesterday was a beautiful day in my garden: the sun was shining brightly, picking out the different hues of green as well as highlighting the yellowing leaves of the Cape Chestnut as well as some of the leaves falling from the Kei Apple. This picture was taken before the lawn was mowed:

As I was going up the garden steps near that green water storage tank you can see in the distance, I noticed that there were several Crocosmia plants threading their way through a tangle of weeds, Canary Creeper and wild grass that has grown up since my last attempt to keep the jungle at bay in December. These must have arrived courtesy of the birds, for I have not planted them there – and they are just coming into bloom. As you will soon see, it is fortunate that I weeded around them when I did:

Why was I fortunate? Well, while the gardener was trimming the hedge outside the kitchen, he disturbed a Night Adder (Causus rhombeatus) entwined in the Tecoma capensis. The snake moved off rapidly and disappeared in a pile of junk in the back garden. Photo opportunity lost. Oh well. He called us later as the adder had now moved from there and was about to disappear between the Crocosmia into the aforementioned tangle! Night Adders (actually more active during the day) are known to eat frogs. Their venom is cytotoxic and so (for adults at least) their bite is not necessarily that serious, apart from causing pain and swelling. That may be so, but it is going to be a while before I again tackle the weeds in that part of the garden:

Much more benign is the brightly coloured orange bracket fungi that caught my attention growing out of the stem of an aloe elsewhere in the garden:

As I rounded the corner to enter the kitchen from those steps I mentioned, I noticed this hornet’s nest built under the outer window sill of the downstairs bathroom. It was a case of look, snap and move on:

GREEN, GREEN

It is St. Patrick’s Day after all, so what about a song from The New Christy Minstrels?

Green, green, it’s green they say

On the far side of the hill

Green, green, I’m goin’ away

To where the grass is greener still …

We will stick with green, even though autumn is waiting in the wings, and begin  with the counting out rhyme

A little green snake

Ate too much cake,

And now he’s got

A belly-ache!

This green snake, found on the lawn at Royal Natal National Park, didn’t get a belly-ache but had its head neatly chopped off – probably by one of the gardeners.

Several streets of the town I live in are lined with oak trees. Here are new leaves shining in the sunlight.

While prickly pears are not indigenous to this country, they have spread everywhere.

Known abroad as the jade plant for some reason, the Crassula ovata is indigenous here and we have several of them growing in our garden. This one is almost ready to show off its lovely flowers.

Spekboom is also indigenous to the Eastern Cape and grows very easily in my garden.

Lastly, these pods of the Weeping Boerbean (Schotia brachypetala) caught my eye.

CAPE COBRA … ACTUALLY IT’S A RINKHALS!

“Stop!” I called upon sighting a snake crossing the dirt road ahead of us. Out I hopped, camera in hand to see what it was. The shape of this sinuous creature indicated that it was definitely a cobra. The first Cape Cobra I ever saw was a rich yellow colour, which is why I did not recognise this one at first. To business: photograph it to identify later if necessary and then admire it a little before resuming our journey. Cape Cobras can actually vary in colour from the yellow I have fixed in my mind to copper, various shades of brown, and even black. They can also be speckled with shades of brown and orange. Actually … as Luke has so kindly pointed out below, this is not a Cape Cobra but a Rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus). He points out the scales on this snake are keeled (have a ridge down each scale) whereas cobras have smooth scales.

I made sure to stand well behind the snake as I watched it cross the road. The tighter curves seemed to indicate that it was not particularly pleased with my presence. It also lifted its head slightly and began to spread its neck into a broader ‘hood’, which are typical warning signs.

You will forgive me for not waiting around too long to get everything in focus, but this is was its broad hood looked like.

The snake expressed its displeasure by lifting its head off the ground. The warning signs were clear and I heeded them.

I let it continue on its way across the road, feeling delighted to have come across it so unexpectedly.