Share Your World – August 27 2018


I don’t really have a favourite time of year – all seasons have their beauty and appeal – but one of the things I love most about August is the smells.

In our back yard we have 33 citrus trees and at the moment the oranges are in flower. As evening approaches the intensity seems to increase until all I am aware of is the exquisite, sweet, heady orange blossom aroma – you can almost taste it.

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In this week’s Share Your World, Cee has asked three questions, with a bonus fourth added on.

First she asks if I prefer eating food with nuts or without nuts.

We are peanut farmers, so I get more than my fair share of nut-eating at harvest time but I wouldn’t say I would choose to eat peanuts if there was something else on offer.  When our Spanish partner visits he always brings a bag of almonds, which he roasts with salt in the evenings for tapas and those are always yummy. However, if I was to choose a favourite nut it would be the pistachio; there’s so much work involved cleaning and de-shelling them that I never feel that I have eaten too many.

The next thing Cee asked is if I sleep with the closet door open or closed.

As I child I was convinced monsters lurked in the cupboard in my bedroom at night and the door HAD to be firmly shut. It was part of our night time ritual that after story-reading I would always ask my Mum to check that the door was closed tight, and if there was a key she would have to lock the door. I could not and would not go to sleep if I could see even the tiniest open gap.

Although I no longer believe there are monsters in my cupboard this habit of closing bedroom cupboard doors before bed time still persists to this day, although luckily now our walk-in cupboard is not in the bedroom, so I can’t see the door. It is actually more like a small room anyway so the door being open doesn’t bother me at all, and it mostly stays open.

The next question is am I usually early, late or on time and that’s a loaded question in this house.

Piet complains that I have no sense of time and he usually starts chivvying me up hours before it is time to leave for any function in the hopes that we might, one day, be early. This seldom works. However, around here there’s seldom an occasion where we have to be anywhere at a specific time so it’s not really a serious problem.

Finally, what did I appreciate or what made me smile this week?

This cute boy.

 

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And this little family.

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Not so Neighbourly


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We are now on the warmer side of winter; nights are not as cold and days are getting longer. There is not long to go until the wheat starts to senesce and we begin preparing for harvest.

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We have not had any rainfall since March and it’s pretty dry, so until the drying out period for the wheat begins it’s important that we keep on top of our irrigation program.

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Power outages are normal around here. They happen almost daily and although we usually receive notification in advance, they can be quite disruptive to farming operations. When we woke up to no electricity this morning – with no prior warning – Piet contacted our local electricity supply company (ZESCO) who told him that power was out for maintenance. He then posted a question on the WhatsApp ZESCO chat group and got this response:

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Which was quickly amended to:

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Having elephants as neighbours can be rather trying at times!

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Shadows


When I first decided to take part in the Daily Post Shadow photo challenge I thought any pictures I used would have to be limited to those taken either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when shadows are long and dramatic.

Then I came across this picture I took of these little guys, soaking up the mid-day sun on Boulders Beach in Cape Town.

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Last year I was invited to write a small story about Walking With Rhinos in a local publication.

Although the walk I was on sets off early in the morning, I was lucky it was mid winter – by 07.00am it was already pretty hot.

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Now back to Cape Town, where wedding guests play a genteel game of croquet while waiting for the bride and groom to appear after family photographs

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Walking back to the car one evening, after an extended Sunday lunch at The Brass Bell, we came across a micro pig playing with a dog in a children’s play ground.

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Happy, hot dogs take respite from the glaring sun.

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Our shadows briefly rest on the Zimbabwe bank of the Zambezi River, a fleeting reminder that this used to be home.

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