Constantia Spring

I took these last September, and I was silly not to take a lot more. I hadn't seen spring in Cape Town since...I really don't know when. Maybe not since 1993. That's shattering, in a way. Seasons are so important, and I realize how much I have changed when I realize that I automatically know that September is Fall, April Spring. So it was very important for me to go home and see the spring again. It is so different to what I have become used to. Of course you need to have known the wet winter to understand spring, too. The poplar trees whose frayed branches stay grey, the white arum lilies, green gradually punctuated and relieved by other colours. The air is fragile, the mountain thinner.

This was lunch on my first day, on the patio. Smoked salmon, brown bread and butter and lemon, and Champagne. Spook got very excited. So did I. Notice her position through the pictures! Poor Spooky, she's nearly eighteen... and still beautiful. I remember when we went to fetch her from The Old Lady who bred her. Three kittens, little white bundles of fluff on an armchair. I think we got the runt, as we "only" wanted her as a pet. She used to sleep on my pillow in bed, a small white cat in my long red hair. That was before the Terrible Stripies arrived and began to terrorize her.

Hmmm, Spooky getting closer, because she knows Pa will feed her. The lachenalias, in the pot on the table, were so gorgeous, and very much part of a Cape spring.

Aaaah. Victory!

And next Tuesday I will fall asleep at #9.