Tuesday, September 29, 2015

West Coast Days.

From the tiniest little pinprick of a flower...


To the big, bright and showy:

The West Coast is abloom.
Just in case you thought a brown flower can't be pretty:

And of course, there's always something more weird, more wonderful.

That's Hydnora Africana - a parasitic plant the size of a chicken egg. It has three very suggestive openings and will eventually open up completely, like a starfish. For pollination, it lures dung beetles, so you can imagine the smell...


A starfish of a different sort, Ferraria Crispa - a member of the iris family. I couldn't stop sniffing this beauty - burnt sugar, amber, vanilla. Wonderful.


We stayed in one of the oldest cottages in Churchaven. The walls are all skew, the doorways low. Hot running water and a tiny bathtub - almost unheard of in these parts. I was utterly charmed.

If you look closely, you'll spot our very vocal guest.

She came every day, along with three fussy guinea fowl and all the others. The birds are very busy - it's nesting time. Soft grasses, feathers and twigs are airborne.

At night we fell asleep to the hooting of the owls and the shirrr of something else, over and over again.

4 comments:

dinahmow said...

This makes me smile. Reconnecting with open spaces is so important, isn't it?

the sourcerer said...

YES! :-)

Marie said...

Gorgeous, gorgeous house. And you found jakkalskos!!!

the sourcerer said...

Yes! The other one they also call Jakkalskos (Harveya Squamosa) or "katnaels"does not, as far as I can gather, have an underground "fruit". So this is the one Louis Leipoldt made souffle with. You used to be able to buy it at Greenmarket Square - imagine! People say it's like guava, like medlar, like potato...
I'd love to taste it. The plants have to be 2 years old to harvest, but I don't know how to tell the age - maybe I'll just have to go back to this patch in two years time. They are not on the endangered list, but I have trepidation....