Life, magnified.

Our garden always has a skink or two. This is the dark baby I've spotted a few times, basking in the sun. (Through the eyes of a tall man, whom I have convinced to join Instagram - you can see more of his incredible images here)

Life is busy right now... I find myself neglecting important things - like this place of mine. Blog posts take time.

I've written a thousand in my head, but right now

I'm finding it much easier to post a photograph now and then.

They are HERE.

I'm moving on to other things and it may be that the time has come to say so long... I've loved every second.

💔

Soetpatat.

A few years ago, the tall man planted a sprouting sweet potato in our garden. It made a vine and after a year we dug up three or four tubers. One must have stayed behind, as a new year brought another vine and this time it flowered...

... betraying it's Morning Glory roots.

Yesterday's crop was somewhat of a revelation.

Missing from the picture is the largest one - which we cooked last night, wrapped in foil and nestled in the coals of our supper fire.

With melted butter, salt and pepper, it was fluffy and nutty and utterly yummy.

Provenance.

Sugar peas (early bush) reads one of the hand-painted labels on the little drawers below.

Telegraph Cucumbers, American Wonder Peas, Marrow Peas.

Each bag is equipped with the Mauthner name, his best seeds.

BEWARE OF IMITATIONS.

My friend Henri (who owns my favourite shop on this planet - Koöperasie Stories) was on one of his Eastern European buying trips when he sent me an image of this beautiful old shop display cabinet.

I didn't dream then that I would one day own it,

but life's full of surprises.

I started to do some research and fell down many a fascinating wormhole.

Meet Mauthner Odon - agronomist and entrepreneur,

born in 1848 in Budapest, Hungary.

After studies applied to seed breeding at the Magyaróvár college and abroad, he founded a large company and experimental station, employing 800 workers. He received merits from the Hungarian nobility.

He was president of the Hungarian National Association of Grain Traders, editor of The Horticultural Papers and The Garden.

The sprawling factory in Budapest still exists - it was converted to apartments and though listed, is falling into disrepair.

There is a seed wholesale building, a customs house, a granary for sorting and cleaning. A vast courtyard. There was once a garden.

I found labels, seed packets and letters.

I found his crumbling villa in Budakeszi Road.

I found his grave in the National Cemetery.

Only then did I discover his first name.

It was

Jánoshegyi.

Fame is a fickle food, upon a shifting plate.

I want to dispel a myth. The film industry is not glamorous. At least not from over here where I'm standing it's not.

Oft asked question: Who's in it that's famous? See my heart sink.

Sure, I've brushed shoulders with famous people. But you avert your eyes and do your job.

(I broke this rule once only: on the last day of a film, I told the wonderfully deadpan Bob Newhart how much he had made me laugh as a teenager. He's a lovely and gracious man.)

I have crossed paths with many glamorous people. (It doesn't brush off.) I've ironed countless sheets for these people, I've fluffed their pillows, polished their shoes and taken up their hems. I've cooked for some famous people too -

which brings me to my next point. The film industry in South Africa used to be known for it's extremely delicious on-set lunches. That has changed dramatically in the last few years. It's very dispiriting - after hours of slog, to be greeted by chafing dishes of steaming grey meat, wilted salads, the vegetarian option of mushrooms and patty pans adrift in brown water. Five litres of melted ice-cream to follow.

Thankfully the majority of my work days are not spent on set. I drive and I search and I glean. Lunches are eaten on the hoof, leaning against my car in parking lots, sometimes while I'm driving.

What a treat to finally have a lunchbox from my friend Ammy's Food Maker Merchant in Observatory. I was tootling down Nelson Road when I spotted her tiny shop - a window in a wall, a yellow awning.

Let me explain: that is a cardboard container - completely recyclable. Those are arancini, which I last ate in Rome. They made me swoon - those crispy, melt-in-the-mouth balls of deep fried, tomato-ey risotto with mozzarella centres. Not a trace of oil. Alongside a zingy pesto - so green the herbs must have been growing still, mere minutes ago.

Grated beets and pears. Mustardy, vinegary chunks of potato. Pear and walnut salad. Roasted butternut with black beans and pepitas. The surprising little bursts of flavour - lemon rind, flecks of parsley and mint. Such a fine lunch I have not had in many a long moon.

What else can I say? Ammy offered a fork. I said I'd wait till home. Then I ate most of it before I started the car. I drove away with beet-stained, dill-infused fingers, sniffing them appreciatively at traffic lights. At home I licked the container.

The call of objects.

I had some nice little lily pads in the city, back when I was a single woman. Most of my possessions have been packed away for almost three years now, but one day I will unpack my crates and gasp. Sometimes, at night when I lie awake, I walk through those places - peering into cupboards and drawers - wondering if I still have that bent spoon, or the postcard from Japan that was written in spirals.

Of course, as I suffer from degenerate collecting disease, I bring things home all the time.

This week has been a doozy.

 The plate is tilted only because I was not paying attention. I love old porcelain maker's marks.

I popped into Randall Hare's shop in Wynberg. He is one of the last true gentlemen in town. A wonderful collection of old Cape furniture and Boer War pieces. He restores everything himself, beautifully.

The shop smells wonderful: resin, beeswax, wood shavings.

This wee bird box from the early 1900's drew me in an irresistible way.

If I were to stay at home and garden and cook, surely I would want less. But alas, I am working on a huge commercial for a small chocolate bar. The work depresses me and I seek rewards. 

A few weeks ago, on a hot, hot day, I met my friend Niki in town. We sat at Café Mozart, under the trees. Niki remembers those trees when they were small. When he was my lecturer at university, he was younger than I am now.

That's me in my rockabilly dress. I never told him about the black beast who lives next door, but there he is! Zorro the chihuahua.

A few nights later, as the tall man and I sat down to dinner, a bat zoomed by in the garden..

The painting was a Christmas gift from me to the tall man. My friend Mrs Owl gave a loo revamp to Mr Owl for Christmas. I've been meaning to ask her how she kept it a secret.

Bird of passage.

The usual suspects arrived.

A scruffy Karoo Robin and his wife had daily baths
in the ashes from our fires.

The flamingoes were never silent. Do they ever sleep?
In the mornings pelicans came sailing past on the lagoon.
After breakfast one day, I was startled by some mouse birds who came to inspect the crumbs. I had always thought that they were shy.
My heart almost stopped from happiness!

So graceful in flight, with their long long tails. So awkward on land, scuttling about on their little pink elbows.

You what?

Every night a fat orange moon rose over the water. The Bethlehem stars shone very bright.

In our absence, back at home, a new orchid shook out her
party skirts.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

It's poetry. So rich in metaphor that I have to stop after each paragraph to reflect.

A single nightjar wing, and the imprint it left upon a muddy track in Ethiopia.

At Babylonstoren, in one of the walled gardens, there is a weeping mulberry and thickets of Leonotus Leonurus. Lion's Tails - minty and furry. Wilde Dagga.

Amongst the hanging trails of mulberry leaves are two man-made weaver's nests. To get inside, you climb a little iron ladder. I could stay there for hours, with a blanket and a book. The weavers are in the tree around you, busy with their particular hullabaloo.

Tiny red leaves fiddled their way to the floor, floating slowly, pellucid and pretty, while gravity seemed to push them back up to the sky.

Afterwards, the consolation of fresh pressed juice without having to wash the many parts of the juicer.

And a beetroot cupcake, made with the pulp.

The fowl are shiny and fat and the donkeys are fed sweet chopped herbs.

Back at home, a robin hovers over the mirror of the old Land Rover on the grass. He pecks and flutters, scaring intruders away day after day. For this garden belongs to him and his mate

and that is good to know.

Tomorrow there will be fresh bread,

with the promise of a crumb or two.