BONTEBOK NATIONAL PARK II

What a joy it is to see so many beautiful flowering plants this spring! The Bontebok National Park did not disappoint. There were many examples of the strangely shaped leaves of the Melianthus major (Cape honey flower). I will feature this plant and its flowers in a later post:

The Cape Sweetpeas (Podalyria calyptrata) nodded in the breeze all over the park:

One cannot help admiring the eye-catching Heliophila africana (Sunflax) growing close to the roads:

Then there are the beautiful purple patches of this Erics spp.:

There are swathes of the bright common sunshine conebush (Leucadendron salignum):

I will leave you with this carpet of attractive white African daisies:

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MY GARDEN THEN AND NOW

Google Photos reminded me of flowers I had photographed with my cell phone on this day last year. Given the drought, changes in temperature, some unexpected rain, and the general wear and tear of my garden that does not have the luxury of being watered, I thought it would be interesting to compare the 2021 images with those taken exactly a year later. The first is one of the many Osteospermum spp. commonly known as an African daisy. Last year this was newly planted:

Over the past year this daisy bush has come close to dying from heat and a serious lack of water. I have poured buckets of water over it to revive it and it has held on bravely. It has grown in size, but is regularly flattened by the doves – and especially the speckled pigeons – that trample over it in their quest for seeds that fall on the ground from the hanging feeders.

Last year the indigenous Crassula multicava, widely known as fairy crassula, added both beauty and much-needed ground cover during even the driest months.

Some light rain over the past month has given this hardy plant a boost and it is growing thickly all over the garden. This photograph is of the same bank of flowers as the previous one.

The clivias growing along our front garden path came into bloom, providing bright spots of colour in an otherwise shady part of the garden.

This year the flowers have opened more fully earlier – also there are many more buds in various stages of opening than we had in 2021.

CAPE MARGUERITE

These beautiful white daisies are also known as African daisy and Van Staden’s River daisy among others. I tend to refer to them as ‘farm daisies’ for my mother used to grow them (Osteospermum ecklonis)  in the front garden of our family farm in the then Eastern Transvaal. These ones growing in my garden in the Eastern Cape come from root stock I collected there when I left the farm for the last time.

The Van Staden’s River daisy is a hardy, evergreen, drought-resistant, bushy perennial with a rounded, spreading shape and bright-green, slightly-succulent leaves. These ones are growing in their natural habitat along the Tsitsikamma coast.

The flowers characteristically show a blueish centre.

What I enjoy about these pretty flowers is that they attract many butterflies and insects – and especially bees – to the garden.

Sometimes the flowers show darker purple streaks around the eye.

I also have this copper-coloured version (bought from a nursery) growing in my garden.

 

I VALUE MY GARDEN

I am in awe of beautiful gardens with carefully landscaped paths leading through various ‘rooms’, some of which may have a water feature or a focus on flowers in a particular palette of colours. In these water-wise days there are also gardens featuring aloes, cacti and a wide variety of succulents. I read about gardeners bringing in truckloads of soil, or even hiring earth-moving equipment to reshape the landscape; of bringing in – or removing – large rocks; and of installing elaborate irrigation systems. I see diagrams of gardening plans to be followed throughout the year. Gardens like these featured in magazines always look beautiful.  In my garden a mixture of indigenous flower seeds – such as these African daisies and cosmos – scattered in a bed bring me joy.

While most visitors enthuse over my ‘wild’ garden, others openly declare it to be ‘messy’ and ‘overgrown’. Some express an itch to cut down the trees – many of which we planted decades ago – and to prune the hedges. This is understandable for my garden tends to be ‘wildly creative’ rather than ordered into shape. For example, I let the canary creeper grow and flower where it pleases before trimming it back so that the weight of it won’t break other plants.

There are many practical reasons for this: the garden is too large for me to manage in an orderly fashion on my own; we are – and have several times before – experiencing a prolonged drought and so there is no water with which to maintain lush flower beds and a prolifically productive vegetable garden; and, until I retired a few years ago, I was seldom home for long enough to mow the lawn, never mind prune, weed, dig and plant. This is a section of what I call the ‘secret garden’, where nature takes it course.

I have always valued my garden for what it is: a place for solitude and relaxation if I need it, and a haven for birds – such as the Village Weaver below – as well as insects and any other creatures that require a home within our suburb. Over the years I have recorded 107 different species of birds seen either in or from our garden; have come across several snakes, a variety of butterflies, spiders and moths; observed bats, beetles, praying mantids, lizards and geckos; there have been swarms of bees, several frogs and toads, mole rats, a mongoose and even a couple of tortoises. We once even found a terrapin in our swimming pool – and still don’t know how it got there.

It is easy to tell why I value my garden for its tranquillity and its diversity. Never has this been truer than since the arrival of COVID-19 and the hard lock-down that came in its wake. For over three decades I have watched the garden evolve from a gravel and cactus ‘desert’ to a forest of trees and shrubs; from a hot and shade less place to a haven of shade and dappled sunlight’; from a habitat birds would rather fly over to one where many have chosen to nest and to seek food for their offspring.

Thanks to all of these visitors, I value my garden for the bird song that begins before sunrise to the haunting sounds of the Fiery-necked Nightjars late at night. I have enjoyed seeing an Olive Thrush pulling up a long earthworm from a crack in the old kitchen steps; watching a Fork-tailed Drongo swooping down to catch a caterpillar unearthed while I am weeding; observing a flock of Cape White-eyes splashing about in the bird bath; and have thrilled to the light touch of a Common Fiscal as it perches on my hand or foot to receive a tiny offering of food.

I garden for peace. I garden for the therapeutic quality of my hands connecting with the soil. I garden for the excitement of watching bright yellow flowers taking on the form of a butternut or a gem squash; for the joy of transplanting seedlings that have sprouted in the compost; and for the pleasure of finding self-seeded flowers or herbs growing in a place of their own choosing.

My sentiments about gardening echo those of the essayist and poet, Joseph Addison (1672-1719), who has been quoted as saying I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

SEPTEMBER 2020 GARDEN

The postage stamp size garden I am endeavouring to maintain with far too little water has yielded great pleasure in terms of colour. Especially pleasing are the Namaqualand / African daisies. I planted a packet of out-of-date seeds in the bare, dry ground with great faith and have watched them anxiously from the first tiny shoots to the orange and yellow flowers that open with the sun and wave merrily in the breezes.

Growing plants from seeds in a drought is a risky affair and so I caved in once our local nursery opened and bought calendula seedlings. These have survived being chomped by several locusts to produce pretty blooms, such as this one.

The miniature marigolds were also purchased as seedlings, but very few have survived the onslaught of snails.

This Van Stadens River Daisy (Dimorphotheca ecklonis) originates from plants my late mother grew on our farm in the now Mpumalanga.

To my considerable joy, several self-sown cosmos have grown up from last year’s crop.

A very strange thing I have discovered since the COVID-19 lockdown began is that there are no flower seeds for sale in the supermarkets. At first they weren’t allowed to sell any seeds (don’t ask) and now only have vegetable seeds on offer!