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.

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.

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.

Keeping our house; Making money

Our house is no longer for sale (we’ll never be able to afford to replace it) and we are going to do whatever crazy money making schemes it takes to meet the monthly payments. So long as they don’t include Gavin spending the rest of his earning life living alone in the Middle East.

Watching the ocean and drinking great Cape champagne (I know we are not supposed to call it that but the EU can sue me) is a great combo for birthing ideas – hopefully some good ones.

Gavin is going to use his last few months over there to take trips to Iran and Pakistan, only a two hour flight from Abu Dhabi, source beautiful things and arrange shipping to Cape Town. We are going to transport everything in the gorgeous trunks pictured below.

They come from rural Pakistan and migrant labourers store their lives in them while living 10 to a room in oil rich countries. The inside lid even has a built in photo frame, reminding you of your distant loved ones every time retrieve something. They come in three colours – pink like ours, blue and green – and we will sell them once they are emptied.

We will also sell whatever we can pack inside, wholesale or retail, we’re not sure yet – Middle East merchants based in Sedgefield.

Plan number two is to turn our upstairs loft into a B & B – it’s spacious, light and has a big deck with stunning views of both the sea and the lagoon. It needs very minor conversion to turn it into a bijou dwelling for two.

Lagoon view from right hand side of the loft.

Dude looks like a Lady

Our compost heap tortoise Bob is more of a Babs.  This tiny reptile crawled out from under a banana skin a few days ago, still soft-shelled it must have just cracked its way out of the egg.

Son of Bob

Idle blogger

Gavin arrived home this week-end for a months holiday. He’s going back to Abu Dhabi in October to resign and work out his notice, so this will be our last paid leave for a long time.

Spring is well and truly in the air, the sun is on the deck, the sea is blue and the champagne is cold and abundant. I have a few pics and posts in mind, but can’t seem to drag myself from the lounger to the screen. Next rainy day, I’ll update.  Til then – cheers!

Bee Story

A hive has set up residence in the back shed and with American Foul Brood disease making every bee more precious than usual, I got the bee guy in.

Gordon, the bee guy, loves bees and is obsessed with their ways, which are pretty fascinating. If one bee finds a hole in his protective suit and gets in, the rest of the swarm follow in seconds – masters of mass communication, they signal vital information to each other and move as one.

Like most things involving critters, the process has not been simple. As he was moving the hive two nights ago, the queen fell down through a gap in the wood-siding of the shed, resulting in complete bee mayhem.  The mission was abandoned and the bees went crazy, we had to lock ourselves in the house with all windows sealed for a couple of hours until they settled down.

Gordon came back last night and dismantled the side of the shed, retrieving the queen and putting her into the new hive (a portable wooden box). They all seem to have moved in there with her and tonight Gordon will come and take them out to a farm in the hills behind Sedgefield.

Dismantled shed and new portable bee home.