Cape Point in late May

I am still not used to this weather of clouds unraveling and knitting up again within minutes, and rainshowers so dense the roads disappear, and then skeins of mist parting so that you see the spine of the peninsula again in receding and paling grey. It is wonderful.

At Cape Point today we walked in fine mist and picnicked in the car, looking out at the calmest water we have seen on False Bay. Ibis and ducks and cormorants sat on the smooth beach. A seal rolled in the turquoise water. Baboon handprints were pressed into the sand.

Near Olifantsbos the restios grew thickly. In the black aftermath of a controlled burn on the other side of the road green bracken fronds were already pushing up above the still-smoky and damp soil. Two ostriches pecked their way delicately through here, snapping up the fiddleheads with each step.

In the unblooming landscape a stream of welcome white flowers appeared. Swamp daisies, apparently, Osmitopsis asteriscoides.

It is all very green, and this is just the tip of the emerald iceberg. The rain only started two days ago, after dry, warm weeks. Waterfalls have not yet filled, the soil is still absorbing. But every excursion from the car brought the sweet clicking of the small, invisible frogs, scattered like a minutely planned but apparently artless soundscape from one end of the city to the other

The sun sets just after five. It still feels strange to me, as my Cape Town life is very unbalanced, bringing me into intimate contact only with summer. I know long, light evenings, birdfilled and leisurely.

By six this evening, we were gathered indoors around a fire, in a house wrapped in darkness.