Root pruning

The fig grew several inches last year and was very healthy: lush leaves, sweet fruit and not one pest. Nonetheless I felt guilty about not having repotted it and was worried about the state of its roots. I know how fast roots can grow in a pot and wrap themselves round and round the circumferance of it, and it looks plain uncomfortable. The point is that the roots need to be able to absorb nutrients, and the fewer new, fine roots there are, the less efficiently this can be achieved.

After some very rough hauling, shoving and just a little cursing, I managed to free the rootball from the container. It was packed tight with roots, with no free soil to spare. The roots were so tight that I could not loosen them to do a careful trim, and landed up hacking an inch away all round, with the Felcos working very hard. Then I repotted it with an organic potting soil, and gave it a good drink (Noilly Prat with a dash of Cassis - makes the figs taste better).

After reading this article afterwards, though, I think I may go back in today, and remove more from the bottom of the rootball,which I left untouched. The weather is still cool, and I feel a little braver. The article is about bonsais, but I feel that my 3' tall and wide fig falls into the nebulous category between bonsai and bona fide small fruit tree.

The moss. It was actually the luxurious mat of moss that told me that the pot was full of roots. Moss just loves the tightly packed foundation of a mass of roots. I saved the moss, and will see what it thinks of the New Dawn pot.

GRDN Brooklyn

On our first full day back in New York I had to garden. And I needed some potting soil or compost, the latter easier to find, ironically...Garden shops and hardware stores: please stock bags of compost! Please. Pretty please?

Tony's, my regular hardware store, had only Miracle Gro potting soil. Crack for plants. So we headed to GRDN (on Hoyt betw. Pacific and State), a dangerous place, as one always leaves with something extra. I was trying to be frugal.

The shop was filled with stunningly fat and bright hybrid primroses, hardly the shy flower of the hedgerows, but they looked beautiful. Outside I found violas, and left with three quart pots, at only $4 each. Not bad at all for a retail store. Also organic potting soil, so we left with two bags.

I spent the afternoon root-pruning my fig, repotting a sage, a calamitha and the surviving oregano, and sowing some of Dan's Fire Island hollyhocks.

If it stops raining today I'll plant my garlic cloves.

66 Square Feet

Within minutes of walking back into the apartment I was on the terrace sniffing about for news of spring. The tarragon has many shoots, and deserves a larger pot. Although I tend to lose interest in it in summer. All the chives pots are sporting sappy green bristles, and the cat's nepeta has new grey leaves.

Last night should have been welcome-home-roast-chicken-with-tarragon night, but I passed out before 8pm. Vince had an afternoon nap while I did a rather-more-than-ritual cleaning of the apartment. Hm, that sounds bad. He really was very tired. And had already cleaned the bathroom.

Our trip was a little eventful, with a camera left on board our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg - please hold thumbs that it surfaces - they actually found it and reported that to our New York-bound aircraft but with so many hands through which it must pass the likelihood of seeing it again is perhaps slim. Just before landing I contrived to break one of my toes, stubbing it on a piece of rigid airplane. But I have nine more.

Yes, the cat is fine! Indifferent to us, up at 4am, all as usual.

Hm. Calamintha seedlings. I let some of them live last year, but shan't again. Any takers? At least...could they be summer savoury? I'm going to have to look at last year's pictures again. Savoury stay, calamintha (although I love the flowers) go. Many baby fennels, too.

The climbing Iceberg is very healthy and prepping for its May party. We've extended our lease on the tiny apartment so will definitely be here. The New Dawn is also well, but very sad news is that the Abraham Darby didn't make it. It was a little diseased already last year, but the healthy branches made a huge effort and lots of flowers. I'm not sure why it succumbed this winter.

So that is at the top of my shopping list. Have to have one, can't live without those flowers and that fragrance.

I also need a new, tall Thing for the big pot in the corner were I grew my tomatoes last year. It used to house the standard Iceberg that I took out. Possibly another standard, or even a very small, trained fruit tree. Currants? Apple?

The New Dawn might come out after May. And perhaps a grape will go in. The rose does not rebloom, and in this tiny space I want as many seasons of interest as possible from a single plant. Pressure. A grape will give us leaves to eat as well as, well...grapes.

The fig is alive. Green tips.

Above, the juicy shoot of the Silk Road lily. By July it will be 6' tall. I think I will order some more Formosas for April planting.

Today? Perhaps some compost for repotting of herbs and fig. I must prune its roots. And spread mine.

And maybe plant some garlic cloves...

The call of the road

The N9 from Graaff Reinet, from which we will turn off to Nieu Bethesda, and on to the farm Doornberg. Many stories await. The circle in the ground. The fracas in post office. Flowers in the veld. Rooigras.

The story of our trip is being told very slowly, I know, but perhaps because I do not want it to end. Today we will board two planes, our life in our luggage, and travel farther and faster than our two week overland expedition, where time was measured in coffee cups, sunsets and horizons. Overnight our culture and climate will reverse and we will be reabsorbed into the fight for the survival of the fittest.

But perhaps we are coming closer to understanding just what survival means, for us, and how fit we need to be.

As Thabang Titoti (post about our expedition with him coming up) said recently, Priorities. These are what shape our lives.

Supper in the kitchen

On nights when a chilly breeze blows on the patio, we have dinner at the kitchen table. Candles are added so that we don't sit in a glare of overhead lights. The kitchen table blossoms under tablecloth and silver, so different from its cluttered state during the day, when it holds bowls of fruit, newspapers, a cat, a handbag, groceries. It looks all grown up.

Occasionally Wellington, the one remaining mobile cat, reminds us that he actually eats his meals here during the day and does not see why he should not join us for dinner.

Tomorrow we head far, far north. We fly from the very first suggestions of autumn in Cape Town (that chilly breeze) to the beginning of spring in New York. We will leave behind these daily shared meals with my parents, kind friends, conversations with Tipsy, the garden of birds and flowers, the friendly dogs and the two cats who are perhaps not going to be here next time; and we will leave the easy access to beautiful beaches and mountain, wild flowers on our doorstep, and delicious coffee everywhere. Leaving is very sad.

So it is back to the terrace. I imagine that the chives and tarragon are up, and that the roses are thinking about making leaves. Estorbo will be fat. I am glad he is there to meet us.

Yesterday I processed the final cut of pictures chosen for the story about 66 Square Feet in Visi Magazine's April edition, and lived through them a year on the terrace. An eight page spread of memories and inspiration and two pictures of Don Estorbo himself. The layout looks lovely and it is very exciting to see it all in a magazine I have admired since it was first published.

So. See you in New York.

Coffee and a rusk

The morning after...

No matter what came before, what adventures, fair or foul: coffee galloping over the Cadac gas flame, milk heating, the rusk packet rustling...all is restored and brought to a moment of peace. Koffie en beskuit. Coffee and rusks.

Over how many hundreds of years has this started the day for a people who evolved from colonizers and native peoples, who took root, who took a stand and who then took too much?

I just learned that my father's father lost three sisters in English concentration camps, to disease and malnutrition. His brother Daniel was, at 12, apparently the youngest Boer prisoner of war, sent to Ceylon for riding commando.

Monkey see, monkey do. The abused is the abuser. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. One can't help thinking of the rise of the Third Reich as a response to the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Or of children who see their mother beaten or humiliated, who go on to beat and humiliate their women and wives, their own children.

You see what coffee and rusks can do? I think it's the dunking needed to soften what Vince describes as "a biscuit resembling pieces of old castle wall." Time for contemplation.

Then you bite your rusk, taste the wonderful combination of biscuit and coffee, and it all vanishes like a mirage. There are weaver birds at your feet...

... and night insects resting in the trees, innocuous in daytime, fearsome in the dark.

And the sun is rising, reflected from the puddles of rain left by a storm in the night.

The day has started, and the road awaits.

Breakfast

My cousin Andrea had the clever idea of meeting for breakfast. I decided to cook it, instead of going out. I think breakfast is one of the best parts of the day, but seldom enjoy it as a meal. It's usually coffee and a roll, or toast, for me, and having a proper breakfast is a real treat.

Beautiful figs are in season at the moment: deep purple skins and bright red inside with a slightly tart flavour after the sweetness. They are perfect, I think.

But the main event was a cheese souffle with crispy, herbed bacon on the side (I baked it in a roasting pan with thyme, savoury and parsley). Plus croissants (Woolworths croissants are the best I've had: they import them from France, the pastry frozen), apricot jam and farm butter, coffee and passion fruit juice.

Souffles are not difficult to make, despite their reputation, and frankly, I think its easier to produce one souffle than several perfectly poached or fried eggs. Or maybe I'm delusional. It is entirely likely that I was ratty around the time the souffle was on the table waiting to be eaten. Souffles don't like to wait.

I used Elizabeth David's cheese souffle recipe from French Provincial Cooking, and doubled it so that it was enough for four. She also writes a very good introduction to souffle-making in general.

As we sat under the awning on the patio a fine mist of rain fell, and my mother bolted her breakfast before heading into the garden to work in the cool after the serial heat waves that Cape Town has been melting through. Autum is a-coming.