b&b accommodation
Spring in Magaliesburg is somewhat extraordinary! For one thing – it doesn’t honour dates. That’s right – 1 September is official Spring Day in South Africa, but the willows next to our b&b accommodation have already had leaves for a fortnight and peach blossoms have come and gone! That doesn’t mean we didn’t have a hard winter by our conference venue, we did. The frost was hard from May and a late black coldness in August messed up quite a number of plants that then had to be shortened right back or removed whole. But on the sure side, the daybreak temperatures have been over zero for all of August and the lawn that we dressed and watered as an experiment in the beginning week of August had to be shortened by the 31st because the grass was so tall and thickly. This morning I saw a dormouse pulling out grass and feeding the roots that were watered yesterday. Only a few metres away, a duo of orioles was pecking at the grass. Hopefully they were finding insects and not menacing the grass. I tried to tell myself they were nature’s way of scarifying the lawn for new development, but I don’t feel too sure. Since early August we have watered the gardens using stream water copious in natural nutrients and this has paid off in a host of iris and magnolia buds just waiting to explode into bloom during the next week. That’s if the mousebirds and bulbuls don’t wolf them all up first. The birds require the buds nutrients to get them into select procreation shape and regard our garden as a handy health bar! The mousebirds descended in a flock just a week ago and razed hundreds of succulent rock roses that had survived the iciness and were just passing into flower. The argument now is whether or not to allow the stems to recover or just to extract out and toss the rest. Ah, the joys of Spring. After the first thrill of beholding new growth comes the understanding that we are about to battle lush growth and the battle to keep our parkland-like Magaliesburg garden from turning into an African jungle! Bring it on!