RED IS THE COLOUR OF THE FESTIVE SEASON II

There are splashes of red in most decorations at this time of the year – a cheerful colour both in the chilly northern winter and the southern summer. I keep finding pictures featuring red and have gathered some different ones to wish all my readers a joyful festive season in whatever way you choose to celebrate this time of the year. It is a time of giving and what could be more pleasant than some interesting chocolates:

These flavours all look delicious to try. Note the Cinnamon and Chilli. These days we find chilli in all sorts of products, including the well-known Bovril spread, in soups, crisps and in these cupboard staples:

Corned meat and baked beans! The latter is also infused with a wors flavour. I have often wondered if this country occasionally grows a surfeit of chillies, for such products are not available throughout the year.  While on the topic of supermarkets, look at this fun sign:

Walking around our back garden during winter, we frequently come across lucky beans, the seeds of the Erythrina caffra:

Even a small number of homegrown tomatoes are better than none:

These amaryllis flowers are very popular at this time of the year:

GREEN GREEN II

The Christy Minstrels sang:

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

I have spent several weeks of this year looking at the far side of the hill, catching up with family in Norway, where the green hills, trees and grass are such a striking contrast to the more sombre colours we are used to. Here is a Norwegian house we passed on one of our trips in that country:

Then there was this amazing crop of courgettes picked in a UK garden:

Once home in South Africa, I appreciate the green bark of fever trees (Vachellia xanthophloea) with their characteristic, almost luminous, lime green to greenish-yellow bark. While these trees are familiar to me from my youth spent in the Lowveld region, they have become popular trees to plant in public gardens and parking lots all over the country. Rudyard Kipling has one of his characters in The Elephant’s Child, tell the Elephant’s Child where he must go in order to find out what the Crocodile eats for dinner as: Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, ‘Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.’

It is good to return after a two-week sojourn in the Western Cape to see the aloes in our garden growing well, their spiky leaves swelling with maturity:

Even though the String of Pearls succulent (Curio rowleyanus) – a gift from a friend – is relatively drought tolerant, it is a relief to note that it is thriving despite my neglect:

An even greater surprise – and relief – is to find that over 65mm rain fell during our absence. There were still droplets on the nasturtium leaves:

ANOTHER ARRAY OF PATTERNS

It strikes me that if you look at anything close enough and for long enough, a pattern will emerge. Take this cauliflower for example:

I seldom get an opportunity to walk along the beach and when I do, apart from the waves, shells and seabirds, I am mesmerised by the patterns made by ripples in the shallow water:

I admire images of centuries old stone bridges as well as more modern concrete and steel bridges from abroad. Sometimes in this part of the world we have to make do with something more humble, like this flat wooden bridge:

For several years we had an angulate tortoise living in our garden – until he decided the time was right to seek a mate and he wandered off:

I also enjoy patterns seen in weathered rocks:

Lastly, this one may take you by surprise:

It was sent to me by a family member several years ago.

OLD PHOTOGRAPHS

Look what happens when you look at old photographs … you get transported right back to your childhood and a host of memories come rushing in, blowing away the cobwebs of time … not that I date back to 1924 or thereabouts! This McCormick-Deering tractor was my eldest brother’s pride and joy for he lovingly restored it, and garaged it alongside the more modern ones my Dad used for the farm.

That is him driving it with me standing between my other brothers on our farm in the Lowveld. These tractors were manufactured by the International Harvester Company.

Several things strike me when I look at this photograph: the water tank on the high tank stand in the background was probably still fairly new then. It was filled from a borehole and provided the water we needed for the farm house. It was a real challenge to climb to the top of this tank, which had a marker to show when the water level was reaching the point when it would have to be filled again. A bulk fuel tank is in the background. A sharp eye will help you pick out the Pegasus logo of the Mobil Company stencilled on it.

The productive vegetable garden in in the background.  Here my Mother is watering the cabbage patch.

Behind her are beans – we always had a variety of fresh vegetables from that garden: tomatoes, carrots, beetroot, leeks, turnips as well as pumpkins and spinach. I loved being sent to pull carrots from the garden for a meal and rinsing them under the tap of the rainwater tank outside the kitchen. I remember the crisp snap of fresh green beans – and still prefer eating them raw so that the juice ‘explodes’ in my mouth as I bite into one. I prefer raw tomatoes for the same reason: imagine finding a shady place to sit in the Lowveld heat with several freshly picked tomatoes and a salt cellar … sheer bliss!

This must be a later photograph for here you can see two bulk fuel tanks for the farm vehicles and just glimpse one section of our farmhouse.

Looking at these pictures reminds me of the heat, the ants that scurried about on the gravel as well as the smell of diesel. It brings home to me how comforting it was to be part of such a wonderful family and how blessed we children were to have the freedom to climb trees, roam the veld and to just ‘be’.

ONION FACES