Blogger’s Block

I’ve been very slack about posting lately, just seems that real life keeps intruding on my virtual world!

Gavin is leaving Abu Dhabi for good tonight and we’ll be back to being a family of four from tomorrow on.

I’m still nowhere on starting the B & B. The stairs are done and I’ve bought the linen, but the upstairs bathroom water isn’t as hot as it should be and our old plumbing is making horribly expensive groaning noises. I’ve been ignoring it until Gavin’s return, but sooner or later, probably sooner, something will have to be done. And it will have to be done before we have guests.

I’m having a bit of a crisis of confidence about the entire guest thing. People holidaying upstairs while we live like trolls downstairs trying to keep two noisy kids quiet!

But, needs must, and we are going to have to give it a bash. It might be fun. How bad could it really be?

Update on desalination plant

The season is over and Sedgefield belongs to the locals again. Yay!

The village was packed over the holidays and water consumption almost doubled at times, but the desalination plant came up trumps. According to the local paper there were a couple of minor problems – a leaking pipe and one of the brine discharge points wasn’t working correctly – but overall the plant functioned very smoothly and kept the town taps flowing.

I went down to the beach this morning and there is no evidence on the shore of any activity, it’s all perfectly hidden. Workers were busy on what I presume was the leaking pipe, but otherwise the sea side is as flawlessly beautiful as ever.

Marine specialists have been taking daily samples of sea water and marine life in the vicinity of the water intake areas as well as at the brine discharge points. Amongst other things, they are checking the temperature and salinity of the samples.

Data collection started two weeks before the plant was commissioned and it is still continuing. The info collected will be summarised and the resulting reports will be made available to anyone who wants to see them. The raw data will also be on hand for those interested, keeping the conspiracy theorists happy!

The plant, in the far corner of the Myoli parking lot, is pretty inconspicuous. It’s right next to the public toilets so it’s not as if it has marred  a local beauty spot.

Desalination plant in Myoli parking lot

Ice Cream Maker

Stawberry ice cream - blissful taste of frozen stawberries and cream.

My mom got me an ice cream maker for Christmas. I’m always a bit leery of gadget-y appliances, they tend to sit unused in cupboards, but this one is a gem.

It’s a basic Krups model and uses pretty simple technology. You have to freeze the metal-lined mixing bowl for 24 hours before using it, I just keep mine constantly in the freezer so I don’t have to plan ahead. You make your ice-cream mix 12 hours ahead of time and refrigerate it. Pour the mixture into the icy bowl and start the machine – basically a stirring paddle that churns the mixture around the frozen bowl. I put it on as we sit down to eat and you have divine, home-made ice cream in 20 to 30 minutes.

It comes with a great recipe book, the methods are really simple, and the results are fantastic. I’ve made chocolate and fresh strawberry ice cream so far – both superb.

I’m going to buy yoghurts too and freeze those for a quick healthy-ish pudding. The possibilities are really endless, I’m sure I’m going to go crazy with experimenting for a while before settling down to a few favourites.

Cool gadget - Krups ice cream maker.

Tagging Tortoises

We call this one blue dot. . .

This summer has seen a tortoise population explosion in the garden. I’m not sure if  it’s due to all the indigenous vegetation we have planted, or if Bob is simply an exceptionally fecund reptile.

So far we’ve counted 7 babies, they all look identical so to avoid recounting we have tagged each one with a dot of poster paint. It will wash off after a few rains (and we could do with those), but in the meantime we can keep count and follow the critters movements around the property.

. . . and this one Mulberry.

Cupboard Living

I’m one of those annoying people who loves Christmas – the kitschier and more over the top the better. We’ve had a great one this year, apart from missing Gavin, and I’ve just seen the last stray relative off to the airport.

We’re surrounded by neighbours for the only time during the year and feel under siege. Thomas said yesterday ‘they’re invading our property’, and I do sometimes feel the entire street belongs to us.

It’s good practice for when the mythical guests arrive at the B & B because, God knows, we’re a noisy family. With no one around to hear us we live at a volume that would not be possible in a city.

I did a few experiments with the boys to see how sound traveled upstairs to the guest quarters and the results were not encouraging. The only time I couldn’t hear them was when they were in their bedroom with the door shut, and with all the interleading kitchen and passage doors closed too.

They have, as usual, taken the exercise to extremes, and are planning to move into a large old cupboard in their room. Jake ate breakfast there this morning.

Cupboard living  has two distinct advantages – the guests won’t be disturbed and it will give him great material for his Mommie Dearest / My Name is Dave future ‘mother from hell’ bestseller.

Mosaic Steps

The back garden stairs leading to the pump house screamed for a drastic overhaul. Thinking that we’d have to sell the property I couldn’t bring myself to make the schlep commitment needed to spruce them up.

Now that we’ve decided to hang on to the house for as long as we can, the boys and I got to work. We’ve turned something drab and brown into a gorgeous riot of ceramic colour.

From this. . . .

. . . . to this!

The project took about 3 week-ends from start to finish. We used a selection of tiles, some from my gran (the delft ones), some from Abu Dhabi, and some bought in Knysna. The treads we did with pebbles collected from the beach at the end of the road – a few hours collecting.

I stuck the tiles and pebbles on with something called Tile-On, a cement like substance that worked really well and is available from any DIY store. I then grouted between the tiles to neaten up some of the flaws made by the boys (ok, and me.) Overall, it’s not perfect but it has great charm and was massive fun to do. A simple creative project for the family with a big impact.

The kids loved breaking up the old tiles - protective gear is a must (he should be wearing gloves too!)

Final result - the pebbles give you a reflexology treatment as a bonus.

Stairs built, Job quit

I can get from the ground to the deck using my newly built stairs, all they need is another coat of paint and a top-rail. The contractors have done a great job – a cheerful crew who have also taken all my old downstairs bathroom fittings.

I don’t know who was more pleased, me to get rid of a garage crammed with a basin, bath and toilet or the guy who can install a free bathroom in his newly built house. Perfect recycling.

Gavin handed in his notice on December 1st in a terrifying, liberating moment. A  long life only comprises 650 000 hours – there’s a  limit to how many of those you want to spend wishing you were doing something  else. He’ll be home by the end of January, we’ll get the downstairs (our) bathroom to a level of basic hygienic functionality, and be ready to house guests sometime in February.

Apricot Wars

My ripening apricots

The baking sun has given the apricots their orange bloom and visions of sticky jam and creamy smoothies keep the boys and I on high alert for the softening signs of ripeness.

We’re not the only ones.

The mousebirds are gathering in ever increasing numbers, perched in that distinctive vertically suspended way, with their widely splayed feet held apart at chest level (see pic below). We want our jam and they want their fruit straight up and fresh from the tree.

Mousebirds are an ancient group of small arboreal birds in Africa. They are so unique in morphological peculiarities that they were proposed as a separate order of birds as long ago as 1872. They are the only order restricted to sub-Saharan Africa.

That makes mousebirds kind of special, having an entire order to themselves and being totally unrelated to anything else alive today. They are as different from other birds as primates are from bats or crocodiles from tortoises.

The mousebirds take their name from their appearance and habits – creeping through leaves and undergrowth with short rounded bodies and long tails.They feed mainly on fruit, buds and leaves and are frequently seen sunning themselves – using the hot sun to warm their abdomens, which helps their digestive system break down the large amounts of cellulose they ingest (steal).

I might not have my own order or a hair style from the early 80s, but it is my tree – and those damn rodent birds are just going to have to share.

Feet splayed and cool hairstyle on view

Mousebird pic and info from Bird File, John Isom, 2007 Edition 3, and Bird Families of the World.

Drought and Desalination

Seems as if the drought we suffered last summer was just the beginning. My November garden looks like the usual February garden, only the indigenous plants and bougainvilleas are holding up.

The worst drought in the Southern Cape in 132 years has seen local dams drop to below 30% capacity and we are on stringent water restrictions. With our tourist season hitting it’s peaks over December the pressure for water is going to increase. It doesn’t help that everything still looks lush and vegetated, visitors to the area don’t grasp how serious the situation is – as Cape Nature Conservation put it, we are in a chronic ‘green drought’, it all looks okay but it isn’t.

The building of the biggest seawater desalination plant in South Africa on the Sedgefield beachfront will go some way to getting us through the holiday season. Contractors are busy on the 12m by 12m plant which  consists of two desalination units capable of producing 1500kl of water per day. The average water consumption for Sedgefield during last month was 1150kl/day.

The desalination plant will be fixed into three shipping containers placed in a ‘u’ shape at the back on the Myoli beach car park, with six large plastic water tanks in the middle. Salt water will be drawn from eight or nine “beach wells” – boreholes under the sand – four of which would always be on standby.

The by-product of desalination – concentrated seawater called brine – will be injected into discharge wells on the beach about 400m away from the intake water. No works will be visible on the beach as everything will be buried deep below the sand.

The Control Officer for the project told the local paper that the area is a closed off construction site, saying residents should “fight any desire to pop down and see what’s going on”.

If I lose that fight, which I probably will soon, I’ll post a pic of the work in progress.

Boomslang shed

Swallow's nest, boomslang bait.

The garden shed in summer is a lethal and frightening place. A pair of swallows make the annual return to their coastal residence in the eaves above our shed door. Their chirping and fluttering is a siren call to the resident boomslang – retrieving a spade or wheelbarrow is a scary task.

A few years ago I marched into the shed straight past a gently swaying head poking out of the nest. It took me a few second to register what I had seen and my shamefully girly shrieking bought Gavin and the boys running. Wielding the broom, Gavin gently prodded the reptile until it moved next door.

This isn’t as un-neighbourly as it sounds. The adjacent house is unoccupied except for a few weeks over Christmas, and a snake in the garden will make their holiday that much more eventful.

Of course, snakes don’t stay where you put them and the lure of the swallows nest has kept the boomslang way too interested in the shed. I never go in there now, even in winter, without scanning the top of the door from a safe distance.

In summer, I plan ahead, get what I need for a day in the garden, and am in and out of there before you can say ‘anti-venom’.