Good Times, Skyhigh

The garden where we'll do the CBC interview next week. I went up there with (gardener) Joe at lunchtime today to check it out, to see what might need tweaking, and to take some pictures. Very little tweaking needed, he's done a superb job looking after it. It was a little misty, with some drizzle, still humid, but you kind of had the sense of an approaching Fall up there. September is nearly upon us.

I. Can't. Wait.

Buddliea, one of the best-scented flowering shrubs around. Restricted to pots it's fine, but can become an invasive pest, here. Whoah. I'm confusing blogs. I'm thinking this is the Holly, Wood and Vine blog. Nope. It's mine. Oh. It's still one of the best-scented shrubs around! When I was little in Bloemfontein, I picked a flowerhead from an overhanging buddleia bush on Paul Roux Street, to take to my mother as a present, and was chased by a very irate lady, to whom my mother, the recipient of the gift, was not very sympathetic. Now in Constantia my mom has the species buddliea, with much more modest, but more heavily scented, cream flowers, at the bottom of the garden overhanging a birdbath. I don't think she appreciated the uplimbing/pruning job I did last year. Sorry Mommy...I still think it looks, um, elegant.

A 75 year old bonsai Ficus. Very happy. It is taken indoors every winter. I really like it. I wonder what it would think of the 30 foot Ficus growig next to the Guy and Jay's driveway in the cul-de-sac in Cape Town? At night you can hearing little clicking sounds as those small fruit drop onto the bricks, and intruders are (hopefully) given away by the scrunching of the tiny dried figs underfoot...

Crappy view. Someone has to look at it.

Texas

Jeff's idea of posing for a picture. Actually, it's my idea of posing for a picture too. The more things to hide behind, the better. I had the best intentions of having my annual beer with Jeff and then moving on to a Booze Cruise around Manhattan, listening to Nick (who works part-time at Holly, Wood and Vine)'s band Jollyship the Whizzbang (it really is good). But I wussed out after my support group wussed out. None of us was brave enough to embark at 7 and stay on board, surrounded by supremely drunk people, till 11. And I definitely wasn't going to do it on my own. So Jeff and I had another beer, at Zum Schneider.

We talked about family, and the Tolstoyan axiom. We talked about Cyberspace, and who you meet, walking there. We talked about Texas, where Jeff's from, and Big Bend State Park, and camping. And he told a wonderful story about cycling last week in Toronto, at the blue lake full of herons and night herons (he does a very good night heron impersonation, all hunched over); about the yellow jackets in the money jar where people are encouraged to leave a dollar for the maintenance of the bike trail; about the stick he picked up to get rid of the yellow jackets, and the little chikadees that flitted around him and sat on his stick. He does a very good impersonation of a chikadee hopping up a stick, sideways, too. And about the man who came up close and said to him quietly, Uh, hi, are you Up or Down? I raised my eyebrow at him: that's what he said? I asked ...Yeah, Jeff said. Up or Down. Wasn't it maybe Top or Bottom?? A light goes on in Jeff's eyes...Yeah...

Later Jeff tips the yellow jackets out of the money jar just as two Japanese tourists ride up on their bikes in full lycra riding regalia. So Jeff, pursued by angry yellow jackets, yells at them in his best Texan, Y'all better hustle, 'cos I just messed up a yellow jacket nest! He's not sure if they understood or got away or not because he was running in the opposite direction.

Blame Canada!

I've been negotiating a potential interview for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) - they caught the NBC interview with my weird accent and wanted to include Holly, Wood and Vine in a show called Garden Confidential, for their Confidential series described as "a cultural anthology for the modern age, each featuring a cultural obsession."

An Obsession? they should ask me about picnics. Or...Canadians. Dudes, I'll show you obsession.

Anyway, it's been a challenge to find the right garden. Of course I was an idiot and showed them pictures of one with a money shot of the Empire State Building, so of course they would look no further, despite some others where the gardens are actually more minutely detailed and special. So, money shot it is.

Now what do I do about the rug that is my hair?

E-mail From Marijke to Mama

Logistics for our little trip: they're such nice logistics. Diesel! Candles! Firewood (we'll bring that. We have to make BIG fires)! Freezing weather!

"The house isn't serviced so please be prepared for a rustic, slightly dusty, cobwebby experience. There are comfy beds with pillows and fitted sheets which get washed erratically. So bring your own bedding + a pillow case.
Then we need to bring drinks and food. There is a gas stove and oven, bodum and all the basic cooking gear so no real constraints there.
And we need diesel, candles, paraffin, firewood and other housy stuff.

I was wondering whether you include me in your food plans, and I'll bring the house & landrover related things?

It will be freezing cold on the open landrover when we go for 'landscape drives' (that's what I call them because sometimes we see no game at all) - so bring gloves, hats, warm gear, poncho, whiskey / whatever it takes to keep warm. Unfortunately we're not free to go in another / your closed vehicle (reserve rules) so we have to do it Thelma & louise style.

A torch is useful (no electricity). Cell phone is not (no range), but there is a landline [deleted]. Maybe we should bring a game or something, like scrabble. Yes - I'll bring scrabble. I believe Andrea can't make it and I haven't invited anyone else (yet) and probably won't get it together before the 5th, so it's just us.

What else? Can't think of anything but will let you know if something crops up.
Me too, I can't wait for Marie to arrive and some good long chats in front of a braai / fire. "

For Jay

I was cleaning out unnecessary photographs and came upon this little movie made at Christmas, with my dad, brother Francois and family-friend Marlene around the table after dinner. I think it's sweet.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, RIP

Appropriately sepia-ish, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is nearly finished, literally. I killed it. It was badly bound. So the middle has fallen out. I've been watching the David Lean film as well as a later BBC one with Ralph Fiennes, pacing myself so that the movie-action doesn't overtake the book's. And the book I've been taking in small bites, to last: each bite is desert, sand, rocks, some thorn tree, camels and silk. He writes about landscape more evocatively than I have seen it filmed. Perhaps because it is page upon page of minute observation by a man whose genius was perception and its communication. I have a feeling now for the desert of Arabia that I could never have imagined, before. He was in love, and saw, and recorded, everything.

It is interesting how the film epic is a telescoping of the book, a creation, not true. Peter O'Toole was actually brilliant, apart from the hair gel.

I will never transcribe the threatened lamb-feast; I promised more than I am willing to deliver. It must be read. If you buy the badly-bound Anchor Books edition it is on Pages 265 -268. Nevermind the tribes, all the names, all the logistical back and forths - this is really the most remarkable way of becoming immersed in something utterly foreign. Apart from landscape, his pictures of men (never women, there are none in his eyes) are extraordinary, and toward the end of the book there is a six page self-analysis on the occasion of his 30th birthday, which is riveting. And his views on women. Well. I think he must have had a baaaaad experience:

"The lower creation I avoided, as a reflection upon our failure to attain real intellectuality. If they forced themselves on me I hated them. To put my hand on a living thing was defilement; and it made me tremble if they touched me or took too quick an interest in me. This was an atomic repulsion...I had a longing for the absolutism of women and animals, and lamented myself most when I saw a soldier with a girl, or a man fondling a dog, because my wish was to be as superficial, as perfected; and my jailer held me back."

Hm. Maybe he didn't hate them. He hated himself?

Flying

Because my head is traveling I went Google-mapping, first trying to find Marijke's farm near Barrydale (is it closer to Lemoenshoek, Marijke?), and then going to look at my parents' house in Cape Town. I can see the Louw's next door, on the right, and the Champions on the left, in their red-roofed fortress. The Oaks' lawn needs watering, on the near side of the cul de sac, around their shiny, H-shaped house.

9 Sun Valley Avenue, Constantia: well, the cul-de-sac. I can even see the 7 olive trees....the roof that is most silver-white and shiny, just before 1 o'clock on the compass, right on the greenbelt.

OK, somewhere here, somewhere in the middle, north. How far off am I? - is the mythical Patatsfontein, that I've been hearing about ever since I first met Marijke in January (that was so weird: both suspiciously tall, both garden designers, both second careers, a year apart in age). Anyway, this is where my mom and I start off our week-long trek around the Northern Cape, spending two nights before moving WNW to Clanwilliam, where I think we will stay at the hotel with its famous breakfasts (but who can eat breakfast? As long as the coffee is proper. I don't need much of it, but it has to be real coffee. Note to self/mother: must take coffee pot). Back in the day I would travel to Clanwilliam at speeds pushing the sound barrier with my brother Anton (axe murderers, anyone?) in his Alfa or his (now business partner) friend Chris in a huge old BMW, through the tunnel in the mountains to go waterskiing on the big brown dam (this link is quite funny. To me, anyway). That was before his daughter Gabriella existed, before she was a Springbok water skiier, before. Before.

Then where do we go. Kamieskroon. Where I think we're staying at the hotel, too. Actually, I have to say, South African coffee is quite good. Much better than American. I mean, ordinary, non-espresso coffee - still, the pot will be insurance. We stay three days, then down again to Nieuwoudtville, where we stayed last year in a stone hut (part of the Van Zijl monopoly: avoid) outside town with a flimsy door against which we piled all the furniture. My weapon of choice was a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, which slept with me in bed. We made friends with a tail-less cat... Our house was named Katstert (cat-tail) after the flowers that grew around it, and we thought it very appropriate that this cat was its guardian. Shame, it fell in love with us after the dry sausage and milk we fed it.


The tall yellow flowers are the katsterts, Bulbinella latifolia...

Poor friendly little Katstert...she had been hunting alone in an empty field when I called her over.

 
These falls were just outside town, and below is Sparaxis elegans: they were growing in the middle of town in a field. You couldn't walk without crushing them. So we stood still.

And then back home again. Jiggety-jig. That home, I mean. How many homes can one have? Hm. And does home have to be a place?