Elephant attack damage control

Funny story from today’s Herald – has this guy never heard of the internet!

ELEPHANT Sanctuary owner Chris Kruger yesterday spent about R5000 and his entire morning buying up every copy of The Herald he could find in Plettenberg Bay and Knysna.

Kruger’s efforts, confirmed by a number of shop owners who recognised him, were apparently an attempt to stop locals from reading the front-page story about an elephant handler who was gored in the chest by an eight-year-old cow at the Elephant Sanctuary in The Crags on Monday.

Although Kruger confirmed the incident in a statement issued to The Herald on Tuesday, he could not be reached yesterday for comment on his Herculean newspaper-buying spree.

The Herald staff found about 1000 copies of the newspaper where Kruger had dumped them at the Plett waste recycling plant early yesterday afternoon.

Workers at the plant said he arrived with his car’s boot full of “fresh” newspapers.

The Herald’s offices were earlier inundated with calls from irate readers who said they had been unable to find any copies of their favourite newspaper, the last daily still serving the region with a dedicated Garden Route edition.

Bemused shop owners laughed when asked what had happened to all the copies.

“You won’t find a Herald anywhere in Plett today. Chris took them all,” said a shop manager who asked to remain anonymous.

Full story

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’.

Secret Life of Builders

Four poles - start of my staircase?

Finally, finally I’ve found a builder to do the B & B renovations. The process seems esoteric and mysterious. Monday he came round and measured, nothing until Wednesday when a pile of cement mix was dumped on the pavement. Thursday morning brought a lot of banging and digging and four poles were planted and cemented into the ground. Friday – nothing.

I’m just taking a zen approach and taking it on faith that I will have a structure that links the ground to the upstairs deck. I’m hoping it looks like a staircase.

Missing Guinea Fowl Eggs

I found two guinea fowl eggs while trimming the lavender this  week-end. The nest has been abandoned and we’ve had a cold spell so I explained to the boys that these were babies that would never roam the garden.

This morning I noticed the eggs were missing. Thomas confessed that he has rescued them, put them somewhere warm, and is waiting for them to hatch. He won’t say where they are as he wants to be the first thing the baby fowls see, the de facto dad resulting from instant imprinting.

I’m going to have to hunt them down before I yank a towel from the linen cupboard or retrieve a jacket next winter, sending rotten guinea eggs hurtling through the air.

Fried Nasturtium Flowers

I’ve been browsing Marlena de Blasi’s A thousand days in Tuscany and there can’t be much to beat that rural Italian cuisine. She fries Zucchini blossoms, but I have replaced them with the peppery Nasturtium flowers that grow like weeds in my herb garden and on the compost heap. Delicious.

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 cup beer

1/4 cup cold water

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 ice cubes

extra virgin olive oil, for frying

In a large bowl, beat together with a fork or balloon whisk the flour, beer, water and sea salt to form a thin, smooth batter. Let the batter rest for an hour or so, covered and at room temperature. Stir in the ice cubes and let the batter rest for an additional half-hour. Stir the batter again. It should now be smooth and have the texture of double cream.

Over a medium heat, heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan to a depth of 1cm (de Blasi says 7.5 cm (!) but my extra-virgin budget doesn’t stretch to that, so I went for shallow frying). The more slowly the oil heats, the more evenly it will heat, helping you to avoid unevenly fried foods. Test the oil by dropping in a cube of bread. If it sizzles and turns golden in a few seconds, the oil is ready.

In small batches, drag the flowers through the batter, shaking off the excess. Place them into the hot oil for half a minute or so, allowing them to take on a good, dark crust. Turn them with tongs, to finish frying, them remove them to absorbent paper towels. Sprinkle with sea salt and eat them pan to hand to mouth.

Thieves, Insurers and Builders

In Sedgefield no one can hear you scream. . . Just turning out to be one of those weeks, thieves stole all our external copper piping, plain ripped it off the walls leaving the water gushing all night. The only way to stop the deluge is to switch the water off at the mains so we have had no running water since Friday, lugging buckets of rain water to flush the toilets gets old pretty quickly.

The insurers are dragging their feet, sending me cryptic sms’s like this one this morning – ’Claim placed on advisor delay until 30 October’ – ranting and raging on the phone makes me feel better but seems to have no impact. I get the feeling they hope that if they delay long enough I’ll just go away.

I’ve spent 3 weeks trying to get a price for the B & B/Loft renovations and am still waiting for some resolution. I’ve now had nearly every builder in the area have a look, so hopefully I’ll get somewhere soon. Despite the recession no one seems all that keen on a small job and I’m just hoping someone will get tired of me haranguing them for never materialising quotes.

Beach Front Monstrosities

I’m not a total Luddite or averse to property development in coastal areas – Lord knows we survived for five years by flipping three houses – but there’s a part of Sedgefield that just depresses me.

The Old Village, where we live, is the original cluster of houses around the lagoon you can see in my masthead pic. A lot of the early shacks and cottages have been renovated and some of the houses are massive. It’s still (mostly) aesthetically pleasing and real effort has been made by owners to keep trees and indigenous plant life.

About a decade ago the council decided to develop a stretch of beach front on the outskirts of the village. Named Myoli Beach, it took a while to get going, but boy, when it took off it exploded. Mansion after concrete mansion erupted, and each was bigger and more ostentatious than the last. Check out the pics below:

This is called Eagles-Rest-On-Sea - detail of name and, er, eagle below.

 

No, you're not in Tuscany. Yes, this is a small village on the African beachfront.

The house on the right is 2000 square metres, has a home theatre and heated pool - and just in case the power goes off and your pool cools there is also a 6 cyliner Diesel generator. It's for sale for ZAR14 million (about US$2m).

To put it all in context, Myoli borders on the Goukamma Nature Reserve, pictured below. When you see this wild beach, just what exactly makes you think of building a vast concrete monolith?

Sad Seahorse Story

Knysna Seahorse

The Sedgefield and Knysna lagoons are home to the rarest seahorse on earth, Hippocampus capensis. The only known estuarine seahorse, capensis has the most limited distribution and is listed as the most threatened seahorse species in the world.

The story below, from the Independent OnLine, is quite heartbreaking – poor faithful little pregnant man.

A single father of two is having to come to terms with the fact that there will be no more romance in his life after he and his partner were separated earlier.

The gent in question, a Knysna seahorse, was removed from the Garden Route town’s lagoon earlier this year by a concerned member of the public who found him floating, exhausted and barely able to swim.

The seahorse was taken to a National Parks (SANParks) aquarium, where he recovered well and where, less than a month later, he gave birth to a brood of babies.

Male seahorses have incubation pouches and give birth.

Two of the seahorse’s brood flourished and are nearly fully grown – but, says Francois Joubert of Garden Route Aquariums, it’s likely the small steed will not have any more young.

That’s because seahorses mate for life, and the seahorse’s female partner was left behind in the lagoon.

“In this light, we ask that people not make too hasty a judgement if they come across creatures who appear to be struggling in the wild,” Joubert said.

“Our actions, although well intentioned, may have drastic negative implications in the long run. If any animal clearly is in trouble the appropriate authorities should be consulted before intervening.”

The Knysna seahorse, or Hippocampus capensis, is one of 30 species of seahorses found worldwide, Joubert said.

This seahorse is endemic to the Knysna region and can only be found from Keurbooms River in Plettenberg Bay throughout the Knysna lagoon and up to Swartvlei in Sedgefield.

Selling Basil

The library had an exhibition of photos from old Sedgefield last week. There was our house, one of four or five cottages dotted on a roadless hill, in a picture taken in the late 40s. I could only tell it was our house by the position, the white shack in the photo bears no resemblance to the big hodge-podge of a house it is today.

Every owner has added on a room here, a second level there, a loft in the roof – every time the family grew they built an extra room, and I’m sure there was no planning permission – we have an outside bathroom, an outside bedroom and a strange brick and glass  structure next to the front door we euphemistically call the Sun Room.

Until now the place been a dumping ground for bikes and boards but it’s become my basil growing room. With abundant warmth and light the basil has gone berserk, every seed has germinated and flourished – even if we ate pasta and pesto every night for months we would never work through it.

My mom was bragging about it to the woman who owns the local health shop, telling her how its grown in organic compost and watered only with rain water. Upshot is that the health shop will buy as much basil as I can sell, so I’m now in the herb business.

It’s not going to make my fortune and having just finished watching all the seasons of Weeds I’m wondering if my grow room couldn’t be put to more effective use and help pay my crippling mortgage. . .

Transplanting basil from the grow room into the herb garden.