Kirstenbosch in Garden Design

The fruits of Gardenia lutea.

My piece about Kirstenbosch for Garden Design went live recently. Fresh pictures, new stories. More reasons to visit Cape Town!

2/7/11 -Disclaimer: there are no skunks in the Conservatory at Kirstenbosch! I read the piece hurriedly before our trip and discovered several typos, especially the one about skunks, which ought to have been skinks. While I am perfectly capable, ahem, of manufacturing my own typos in blog posts,  I tend to go over copy for paying concerns with a fine tooth comb. So until these glitches are corrected, and they have not been, yet, please take my word for it: Skunks are NOT performing natural pest control in the glass house. That role falls to the far less furry, and far better scented, skink.

Windowboxes

 

In downtown Cape Town someone with a sense of humanity built a block of flats.

And someone grew something...

Logging

After an aborted climb up the mountain (thick mist, wind, cold, turn back) above Constantia Neck, we walked down the jeep track through the recently felled plantations.

Initially I had been sad to think of the big trees being chopped down, but after thinking about it for two minutes I realized that the fynbos returning is a far better thing. It cannot grow under the pines and eucalyptus that were planted here, and the water the exotic trees sucked up belongs better to the plants that make this part of the country, and world, unique. Already on the felled slopes lobelia, pelargoniums, gnidia and struthiola were growing and blooming...

2/12/11 - for an educated view of the complication of felled forest + fynbos, read Marijke's post at her Biodiversity Blog and more specifically her comment to my question, there.

African monarch

...probably. Other butterflies mimic it very successfully in order to fool their predators into thinking that they taste just as awful as the African Monarch does. The butterfly is feeding on Linaria purpureum. Whose seeds are in my possession...

This blog may go dark till early next week unless Blogger's scheduling glitch is resolved. If it is fixed there will be a picture a day till we return from the land where the Internet does not shine.

We hope to find runaway horses to ride and thermals to fly and a river to float on, and birds and flowers and an endless beach. We will bring back stories.

Mrs Jaffar's samosas

Mrs Jaffar cooks her samosas at the back of her stall behind the stone cottages at the Kirstenbosch Craft Market. Her daughter Taybah works front of house, doing the selling. But she also makes them to order and delivers from her Wynberg home, if you need these delicious triangles for a party or lunch or...rugby match?

There is a choice of fillings: gently spicy curried beef, finely chopped chicken, cheese, or mixed vegetables. At the market the other day we bought half a dozen of each as well as some flaky little beef pies. The samosas were still hot (my mom and I could not wait till we got home), because this shy lady cooks them on site, right there.  The fillings are moist and light, the pastry crisp. Delicious. I recommend them highly.

Mrs Jaffar's Samosas, custom orders: 021-761-2209, or 083-457-5338.

Or catch her at the Kirstenbosch Craft Market, last Sunday of each month, Jan. - May, Sept. - Nov.
Corner of Kirstenbosch Drive and Rhodes Drive.

Botany Photo of the Day

The University of British Columbia's Botany Photo of the Day yesterday featured the Mimetes fimbriifolius I photographed last week above Muizenberg. Read more about the plant there.

Previous Botany Photos of the Day:

Astrantia major - Battery Park Conservancy, Manhattan
Diospyros virginiana (persimmon)  - Prospect Park, Brooklyn

Motivation

Have mug.

Will travel.

For G&T's.