Compost Bins

When I grow up I would like to have compost bins like these.

Outside the kitchen at No. 9 is a little plastic bin where daily vegetable and fruit peelings and leavings are deposited, and these make their way into the first of the bins above.

Part of the contents of the little plastic bin are food-processed and given to the worms in their farm in the garden shed. They make worm juice, a potent fertilizer, and turn the scraps and newspapers they feed on into garden-friendly castings.

I'd still like to see some chickens on slug patrol, though...

Public Service Announcement

Taking the dogs to the beach is a lot of fun bar one major drawback.

Dog poo.

I take bags to scoop, and I scoop 4-5 times. It ain't fun. Then we take the bags away with us and deposit them somewhere more acceptable, like a trashcan. Which of course leads to the wrist-sawing discussion of rubbish disposal and the mess the world is in.

But let's stay focused, shall we?

South Africans don't scoop dog poop. Dogs defecate wherever they go. And there it stays. It's horrible. It's barbaric. Swinish. I would like it to stop.

There is one place in Cape Town where I have seen actual Poo Bins - at the penguin colony at Boulders. It is part of Table Mountain National Park, so SAN Parks or Cape Nature must have put in the bins, below.

I'd like more!

I grumble about dog owners in NYC, which is no place for a dog, but they are well trained. They poop, they scoop. Well, 95% of them anyway.

So I was talking to Ben the Black Lab about this the other day, as he is by far the most prolific in his deposits. He considered it for a few minutes, before coming back at me with this.

(Now, Ben's voice, it is helpful to know, is deep, a bass, and he speaks very slowly in a slightly I-might-sound-slow-in-the-head-but-I-mean-well-and am-insightful kind of way. He also has a very thick Afrikaans accent. His full name is Ben Viljoen, who was a brave and disillusioned Boer general in our war with the English early last century - he was a fascinating man. He settled in Mexico. Pic from Wikipedia, he is seated.)

Back to Ben the Black Lab:

I quote, in earnest and ponderous rap:

dogs are great
a congenial species
but the problem with dogs is
they leave a lot of faeces.

this is disgusting
there's no denying that
but if you won't scoop the poop
buy a pussy cat

shovel your sh*t
pick up your poo
don't leave it on the beach:
it's doggy-doo

when the waves wash up
it'll go in the drink
so put it in the bag
or it will stink.

the fish don't like it
the birds are not foul
if you don't want to touch it,
take a *!#*ing trowel!

THE END

Beautiful Bokramstrand

We returned to Bokramstrand twice in the last week with the dogs, whose fun in the water greatly increases our own.

Ben is 11 now and getting old, but he adores the water and fetches kelp, ducking completely underwater to get a good grip.

I love this beach. It has stunning views over Noordhoek Peak (where we hiked weeks ago) and towards Hout Bay, and is usually quite empty. The tides change its layout often and sometimes one has to deal with piles of kelp that have washed up. But the oyster catchers' cries as they skim the blue water remind one quickly that this is an unspoiled beach that remains, for me, the jewel in the sandy crown of the Cape peninsula.

The sea is very cold, but there are pockets of crystalline turquoise water that stay warmer, protected by barriers of rock, and home to nurseries of small fish, and fields of emerald sea weed.

The summer houses are mostly shut up at this time of year, populated, perhaps, at weekends.

Yes, I would like one here. Please.

We packed a picnic and headed here on the day the mercury hit 36'C in the shade of the porch at home. It has never gone that high.

The air was cool here, just 30 minutes away. The rest of the city melted.

Cormorants above and oyster catcher below.

A man and his dog. Or Vince and Ben.

Ben exploring a rock pool.

Whose teeth are these...anyone?

A rare find. The waves that pound this coast do not let sea urchins remain intact, but I think that the gentle rock pools must soften their blows.

There were dozens of these limpet shells, big, and I collected an armful before I realized that they should just stay there and not come to Brooklyn to serve as...as...hors d'oeuvres shells...or...something. So I put them back.

Taking a walk after lunch, dipping into the sea all the way, we came to this big log, one of many that washed up around the peninsula a few years ago. One of the locals appeared, rather patrician, and said that there was a story about the log, and also that Cape clawless otters come here to swim, and also swim in his neighours' pool. This is the second time I've been told about otters in this hood.

He spoke about the francolin, the guinea fowls, how the baboons didn't bother this part of the beach...he made me want to move in at once. I was so entranced by the otter story that I forgot to ask about the story of the log.

We'll have to go back and wait for him and his dogs to come by again, and hear it.

Picnic at the Beach

Above: the packed picnic.

A pause before we return to Camping Tales:

I'd always wanted to share a picnic at Clifton with my parents, who'd never indulged in one on any of Clifton's four beaches, which are the most cosmopolitan of Cape Town's many, many strands, with a backdrop of an LA-meets-Monaco hybrid of urban-suburban architecture and geography.

Despite its context and high-traffic, Clifton remains beautiful. It's the only place outside of the tropics where I can tolerate a palm tree.

The sand is the softest on the peninsula, and squeaks when you walk barefoot on it. On a Tuesday evening in March, 3rd Beach was quiet, with just three other small groups of people picnicking. We popped our champagne as sedately as possible.

Phhht.

                                            Mother and husband:

The menu: tramezzini with prosciutto or cucumber and butter...

...chicken liver pate with brown seed bread; garlicky shrimp in olive oil; herb and lemon roasted chicken; tomato wedges with green onions from the garden. And tiramisu.

My father joined us straight from work but first spent 10 minutes in the car, at the top of all the 3rd Beach stairs, working on a new brief that he'd just been given.

A sailing ship chartered for sundowners came to visit and then wobbled off again.

This is the beach of our wedding picnic a deux.

Muffled in the shawls and sweaters we'd brought we packed up by candlelight and drove back to the other, less flashy side of the mountain.

Tomorrow I will post about Bokramstrand. An entirely different sort of beach. And with which I am completely in love.

The toasted sandwich

Above: the toasted cheese and tomato sandwich at the Matjiesfontein coffee shop. Made on the bread baked at the Lord Milner Hotel next door ("Phyllida's Bread", which my mother made famous in one of her food editorials in House and Leisure, back in the day). R28 or $3.70.

Most South Africans, if asked about their national heritage in food, will talk about braaivleis. About lamb, about boerewors. About bobotie, bredie.

How many will mention the toasted sandwich?

If you stop in almost any roadside cafe, coffee shop, petrol station, dive, anywhere...there will be toasted sandwiches on the menu. And they will always be good. White or wholewheat bread. Butter (or margarine, I'm sure), shop made or home made brown* bread or soft white loaf, melted, yellow, please, cheese. I know cheese is not meant to be yellow. But yellow cheese belongs on a toasted sandwich.

You can even eat them in Constantia. Before we left on our trip Guy and Jay invited us over for a braai and Guy toasted four white, cheese, tomato and onion-laden sandwiches over the fire. They were heavenly.

*Brown bread. Odd, but South Africa has the best brown bread, period. Heavy, but not leaden, full of seeds or wholewheat. Moist, nutty-smelling, and ubiquitous. Superb fresh and excellent toasted. You can buy it almost anywhere. Bread for which they charge boutique bakery prices in New York is on the shelf of every supermarket and cafe (cafe is the equivalent of a New York bodega; corner store, elsewhere).

To counteract my upbeat promotion of all things South African, we can talk about everyday security, next.

Mwahahahahaha.

Dawn to dusk

After a night which cooled dramatically in the wee hours, we got up early, packed our coffee and rusks, and headed out for a 45km loop drive (all the national parks seem to have 'loops') to see if we might find animals. Night drives are not permitted in the Karoo National Park unless booked in the park's vehicle, with guide, and we hoped, in this inbetween hour, to chance upon a nocturnal animal on its way to bed soon after sunrise.

We saw a beautiful dawn as well as zebra, gemsbok, kudu, rhebok and a band of shy vervet monkeys at our breakfast stop in a grove of acacias. But we were too late or unlucky for an aardvark or small cat of some kind...

It grew hot fast and in the parched distance, wisps of rain tried to fall from clouds but hardly ever made it to the dry ground, absorbed we thought, by the moistureless air.

The only flower I found, an unidentified succulent in bloom beside the road.

Klipspringer Pass, below, yielded a vast view as well as some rhebok and hartebeest, but no klipspringer. Vince was hoping for rhino or cheetah, but if they were there, they were well hidden.

Back at camp we unpacked some lunch...

...and watched the butter melt.

After a swim in the shockingly freezing, surprisingly clean and tropically turquoise pool - for the use of campers and chalet guests (we were the only ones in it for some reason) - we emerged into the hot dry wind and headed back to camp for another drive.

More promising cumulus clouds started to proceed from horizon to horizon.

...and isolated rain squalls touched down.

A passing car wound down its window in a signal that it wished to speak, and the driver, with his thick Cape Flats accent, asked us how far along on the loop they were, as the gates closed at 7pm and they didn't want to be locked out. We advised them to turn back, as they had far to go on a bumpy road in a sedan, and his daughter in the backseat urged him, in an unmistakably Australian twang, to heed our friendly advice. I wondered about their story as they drove on, this increasingly typical South African family split by continents and adopted culture.

In camp it started to patter with fat drops while I set up for dinner, and Vince stalked into the bush behind camp to catch some landscape shots in the mingled light of wet and dry.

Yet more chops. Lamb (in South Africa) is a vegetable, you realize, and I can hardly get enough of it. I adore braaied lamb chops. It is ubiquitous and comparatively cheap, when held up against US prices. A pack of 6 rib or loin chops like these costs about R30 or about $4.50. I think it would be about quadrupled, Stateside.

Vince came back happy. He had seen zebra up close while he was on foot, and the sky and hills were gorgeous in pinks and oranges and pale greens. I photographed the patch above my head, inbetween the acacia branches.

In the night it poured. Hard rain on the thin tent roof drumming above our heads and streaming down the sides. In the morning the dust had settled, calmed by moisture.

We did not realize then that this first rain would set the tone for the rest of the trip. This was the last dry place we saw.

Tortoises at the Karoo National Park

Above: another tortoise making for the shade

One of the first things you'll read about the Karoo National Park is that is that it has the highest concentration of tortoises in the world. Five species.

One of the first things we noticed when we drove into the campground at the Karoo National Park was the huge tortoises munching on the short green grass of the first few stands. They were unafraid and quite mobile, and we watched them for a while, noticing that one slightly smaller one had had its shell crushed at the top by what must have been a car.

We had pulled into an empty stand on our right, wide and green but shadeless, and in the intense heat Vince soon went to explore for a more shady site. Tents become saunas if left in the sun.

Because the campground was very full with more people arriving in the late afternoon he stayed at the new spot while I got back into the car to drive our household over. Before getting in, though, I stretched flat on the ground and looked quickly under the car, in case a tortoise had moved in under it. It seemed clear.

I got in, pulled forward slowly, turned the wheel and felt, then heard, a sickening crunch. I swore. I knew at once what it was. In a split second of panic I was not sure what to do. I pulled a little more forward, but the tortoise was still there. I had been afraid to back up over it again, but I had to, to get off. Our new neighbour across the road was waving and yelling. I swore more. I cleared the tortoise with the huge wheels of the Landcruiser and leapt out.

There it was with shell cracked and bleeding deep red, thick blood. It was the same animal whose shell had been cracked before, but this was much worse. Vince moved the car for me, as we were still over the poor thing, and I was terrified of hurting it more. Then I drove to the reception as fast as I could to get a ranger. Even now I'm crying.

At reception I told them what I'd done and they said someone would be dispatched at once.

Back at the camp I had little hope. Apart from the crushed upper part of the shell, the apron of the shell was split all the way to above the back right foot and you could see the naked hurt body inside. The neighbour's girlfriend was in their tent, crying. When I waved hello to her a day later she ignored me. I kept saying sorry. Nicky arrived and loaded the tortoise up, saying he would take him to the head ranger, Johan de Klerk. They often crept under cars, he said. I kept repeating that I'd looked underneath and not seen him. He must have been right next to the front wheel, in the shadow, so that my turning back wheel found him.

So. I squashed a very big, possibly very old tortoise. It was horrible.

Later the 'honorary rangers' that look after the campsite drove around to check on the watering of some grass, and I re-confessed. They had not been told and oddly, did not seem overly concerned, and said that that particular tortoise always headed straight for the shade of cars. They said it happens all the time. At reception the next day the same girl had no idea what had become of the tortoise.

?

So. To the parks staff:

PLEASE post signs in the campsite. There are signs warning about not feeding baboons, but no signs warning about the tortoises under cars. I know it seems obvious, and I know it's my fault, but there are so many, and they move faster than we think. It's the proverbial matter of time before another one is hurt or killed.

The next evening, walking in the bush near the site at sunset, I found these two. She was remarkably uninvolved. He hissed at me.

At least they are making more.