Mountain Zebra National Park

Rhodes, Eastern Cape

When we left Rhodes, a tiny, beautiful, green and damp village tucked at the feet of the looming  Drakensberg mountain range, or the Berg, as it is known locally, we were not sure where we were headed, other than south, towards the coast. We were contemplating the Wild Coast, but Vince really wanted to see elephant, so Addo seemed a natural choice. We had looked at the map, seen the small patch of green outside the farming town of Cradock (which forever and chillingly meant The Cradock Four to me) that said Mountain Zebra National Park, and thought it might be a good overnight point, probably not much to see, but a SAN park, so well run - judging by all our previous experience: clean, safe and with a town nearby for Internet, where we could research availability at the popular Addo.

 Gladiolus in Rhodes

The drive out of Rhodes was beautiful, with mountains crashing like green waves into the valley through which the damp dirt road wound.
 

Asclepias fruticosa (see comments)

 The ploughed fields were like black chocolate frosting.
 

At Aliwal North, last encountered on our way up to the Eastern Free State - we'd now come full circle, with Lesotho in the middle - we stopped, yet again, to stock up on boerewors and lamb chops. Remember them for later. And we hit the Friendly N6 Route, an artery from the interior to the coast. It was in very good shape, and incomparably better than the Maloti Route and its potholes. This was our experience all through the Eastern Cape - local government seems to be paying attention to infrastructure. The same cannot be said for the Free State, thinking of the Maloti Route and bombed-out Ladybrand. If anyone knows more, I'm curious.

 

It was wonderful driving through this country.

 

We were heading for Queenstown, where we would turn off to the west on the smaller R61 to Cradock, and I was wondering where my cousin Kate and her husband farmed.  If we had planned better we could have visited.

Below, outside Queenstown, Mandela Houses. I can find little background about them on the Web. Still known locally as Mandela Houses, I believe only about 40,000 were built during Nelson Mandela's term in office, rather than the 1 million that were promised to those who had no brick and mortar homes to live in. But the name persists, and the houses are often painted in many different colours: the box shape and pinks, blues and yellows. I'm also curious whether the colours have any connection to the rainbow nation construct attributed to then Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Around Queenstown, roadside sellers were hawking prickly pears (cactus pears) by the bucketful. They were all young men. Stationed at intervals of 30 yards or less, prickly pear seller after prickly seller. How do you pick a prickly pear seller? This was like the Free State near the Lesotho border where lady after lady was selling peaches - white plastic bucketsful of identical yellow peaches. How do you pick a lady? It was only in Lesotho that we saw the trees, one or two per homestead, growing near a rondawel,  branches thick with fruit. The ladies must have walked across the border to South Africa to set up shop. 

And then we were in Cradock, a town dominated in the middle by Cape Dutch buildings startlingly white and by a Dutch Reformed church modeled after St Martins-in-the-Field, of all places. We found an Internet cafe in a computer shop off the main drag, and established that Addo, near the coast, had some camping spaces available. So on we went to the Mountain Zebra Park, just a couple of miles outside town, to put up our tent for the night.

The road leading into the park was dead straight and led into low, green hills. 

 

We saw our first bokkie, in this case a Springbok. 

In the campsite, which was quite full of caravans and tents, with a central area closed off so the grass could grow back, we chose our camp stand, with neighbours to one side and a wide hiking path leading into the bush on the other.  The campers on the other side of the path were our neighbours from the Karoo National Park, with the huge silver awning pulled over their trailer which flipped inside out to reveal a state of the art camp kitchen.

We unpacked the tent and set it up to stake our claim, and then hurried to do a circular drive on the plateau on top of the hills off before sunset.

I had no way of knowing, then, that the short, steep ascent to the plateau, and that wide, endless vista over country that cried Africa, would return to me in dreams in New York, again and again.

Red Hartebeest

The sky was filled with so many layers of light and cloud that the perspective of the plain and hills beyond was reverse-telescoped to the extent that you felt that there was no other place, anywhere in the world.

We came down the steep road again, towards camp, surprising two enormous kudu in a gully.We felt a little different, coming down. Thoughtful.

 

It had started to rain. Back at camp we opened the back of the 4 x 4 and set out the tailgate, making a work station protected a little from the wet under the raised hatch. The fire was ready, and had been moved (it was on wheels) under the awning that Vince had stretched from the tent on poles, making a stoep for us, and every now and then the coals hissed as water blew in sideways. 

I put the chops and the wors on the coals, and turned away when I heard a sudden cacophany of jackals yipping and yeehawing close by. I stood for maybe twenty seconds, listening to them, just at the perimeter of the camp, which was just a row of stones, fifteen feet from our tent. Then I turned back to the fire.

Hm. The coil of boerewors was suddenly noticeably shorter. I counted the chops. I swore I had put six on the fire. Now there were five.

The jackals were silent.

We drank some more red wine. And sat in our camp chairs, eating, glancing up every now and then to the dark world beyond the ring of firelight.We debated whether there had in fact been five or six chops in the pack from Aliwal North. But there was no reasoning away the short sausage.

Of course I was channeling my mother who has seen a jackal nip some chops from the fire in front of her her, hundreds of miles away, in Nossob, in the Kgalagadi.

We slept very well that night. We were surrounded by hills and grasses and neighbours who had come from all over the country to camp and braai and drink coffee early in the morning before going on their own circular drive. Rain pattered onto the canvas. Something green and rainfilled crept into my bones and took up residence there, invisibly, and only made its presence felt many months, and many thousands of miles away.

Tomorrow: the camp by day. Flowers. And the best tomato bredie, ever.

What came before:

Day 1 - Cape Town to the Karoo National Park

Day 1 - Tortoises- a sad story
Day 2 - Karoo National Park - a thief in the night
Day 2 - Traffic Cops in Beaufort West - how the law won
Day 2 - Coffee and a Rusk
Day 3 - Karoo National Park to Nieu Bethesda
Day 4 - Doornberg, the farm of our dreams
Day 4 - Nieu Bethesda
Day 4 - Sneeuberg deli and Two goats brewery
Day 4 - Flowers on Doornberg
Day 5 - The R26 to Golden Gate - the worst road in the country?
Day 6 - Maliba Lodge, Ts'ehlanyane National Park, Lesotho
Day 6,7 and 8 - Golden Gate and Glen Reenen Rest Camp
Day 9 - Sani Pass
Day 6, 7, 8 - Flowers of the Free State
Day 10 - Driving to Rhodes

To arrive where we started...

 

Convolvulus natalensis, growing beside the damp dirt road leading out of Rhodes, at the foot of the Drakensberg, in South Africa.

Mountain Zebra National Park, next stop.

Pennsylvania

The biggest surprise, on waking up in the Pennsylvanian countryside (after the difference in temperature - 55'F/12.7'C when we left NYC, 39'F/3.8'C when we arrived, two hours later) was the leaves. We had arrived in the dark, so I was unprepared for the season that greeted me through the windows when I drew the curtains the next morning. The surrounding woods - layers and layers of trees,  were stripped to branches and trunks, and many still held on to dripping colour. Yellow, mostly, with splashes of crimson where maple appeared.

I felt like a town mouse transported to another world.

I had not expected to be washed clean of the city whose familiar season I take for granted.

While setting up pictures on the mossy lawn I was distracted again and again by fallen leaves like jewels in the grass.

Even the undergrowth of ferns was beautiful in a brown and pale yellow way. Then Ellen showed me muddy bear paw prints on the side of the house and I looked a little more carefully at the woods.

My reason for visiting: wine, in this case Linden flower. Think Noble Late harvest, but with an essence of something entirely different. But that's all I'll write about it now - more in February (she says, cryptically). We carried this in chilled hands to the lake nearby (Update: Read the story I wrote about Ellen's wine for Edible Manhattan here).

The walk, on leaf-covered roads, showed witch hazels in bloom everywhere

 

One of my favourite trees, and this one only familiar to me after last year's trip to the Catskills. The native Hamamelis virginiana, which blooms now, rather than the more famous pre-spring flowers of its Oriental cousins and cultivars.

Woodpiles. This wood is used to heat the house in winter, via the woodstove in the basement. Michael's weekend job was to move it all into the garage and out of the coming, winter-long snow. 

In nearby Milford:

 

White pickets fences...

...and maple leaves.

And sculptural gingko.

 

And near the highway Ellen stopped to show me silver berries - Eleagnus umbellata - heavy with fruit. Tannic, tart, and juicy.

Probably Virginia creeper berries. Not edible.

Soon I was on the bus, headed back to Brooklyn, snapping road pictures and watching as the season contracted again and met half way the one I had left, where leaves are still green.

Port Authority, the Frenchie meeting me in its charmless bowels, the A to Brooklyn, packed with New Yorkers, teenage mothers, a crying, unhappy child, Hipsters, workers, tourists. Back in the hood in the dusk, warm bread and fragrant coffee from Sahadi's, more mushrooms from Mr Lee to supplement the succulent oyster mushrooms from the woods, delicious Chilean Pedro Jimenez wine from the Wine Exchange, which was hopping on a Saturday night, and home to a handsome black cat and a terrace that drank its fill as I watered it in the cool air under stars that had just come out.

Oyster mushrooms:

 ...they're what's for dinner.

 

They were picked from a log on the outskirts of Shohola, Pennsylvania (one store, one bar, about six houses, three churches and a little post office, and the Delaware River), just after noon today. Ellen's husband, Michael, slowed the car down as we approached the fallen logs that often have born the mushrooms, and Ellen spotted them at once, with a yelp of joy. We should have brought a knife, said Michael,

I have a knife! said Ellen.

Foragers are prepared.

She kindly packed some up for me to carry back to the Brooklyn. The butter for them is melting as we speak. A hint of lemon, salt and pepper and that's all I'll do. For our main course we'll have some fresh hot baguette with button mushrooms that I am a la Grecquing...

 

Open Gardens Weekend, Cape Town

On October 29th and 30th, five private gardens in Constantia and Bergvliet will be open to ticket-holding members of the public.

My mother's will be one of them, and a very good place to kick off the tour, as you work your way east from there: 9 Sun Valley Avenue (pictured above).

The Constantia Valley Garden Club holds this Open Gardens tour annually to benefit two stellar organizations that rely on donations to function: Abalimi bezekhaya, and Soil for Life. (Here's a previous post I wrote about Abalimi).

Both support food gardens in the impoverished parts of the Cape Flats. The more visitors that attend the Open Gardens, the greater the size of the cheques that can be handed over to nurture gardens that do essential, grassroots work: growing food for those who are hungry, and who have no employment. 100% of the earnings from the weekend are donated.

Rob Small, the director of Abalimi bezekhaya, will set up shop at 9 Sun Valley Avenue and sell CSA-grade vegetables (below) from the farms in townships. Fair warning: the vegetables sell FAST. So be there early.

There will also be a plant sale, at very, very reasonable prices.

Tickets to the Open Gardens cost R50 per person, and include tea at one of the gardens. Tickets can be bought at the door, or ahead of time at this list of venues:

Ferndale Nursery - 021 794 5144 - on Brommersvlei Road
Peter Gilder Jewellers - 021 794 2116 - at Constantia Village
Sherwood Hardware and Gardening - 021 715 1520 - Glen Alpine Shopping Centre, Bergvliet
Love Flowers - 021 702 2020 - Steenberg Village Centre 
Cape Veterinary Shop - 021 715 6345 - Park and Shop, Meadowridge

This is a very popular event that attracted two thousand visitors last year. You will have the opportunity to compare five vastly different types of gardens both as far as style and size are concerned.

I know for a fact that my mother has been planning for this for the last year, spending every available moment in her garden. Hers is a plant collector's garden, where you will see a mix of interesting, unusual, beautiful plants alongside both indigenous and exotic specimens. Edible and ornamental plantings overflow and overlap (where do you think I got it from?). She has a substantial potted garden in sun and shade as well as bonsais, a herb garden, shady garden, and big, beautiful mixed plantings in sun. The whole garden faces Table Mountain whose Fern Buttress dominates the wonderful view.

Open Garden Hours:

Friday, 29th October: 2pm till 5.30pm
Saturday, 30th October: 10am to 5pm.

Here is a list of the gardens, courtesy of horticultural author, photographer and garden club member, Marianne Alexander - (with some editorial tweaking by yours truly):

11 Bruce Road, Constantia (tea will be served here!)

A formal garden, with garden rooms with informal planting

A series of clipped hedges have divided this large well treed garden into a series of interlinking garden rooms home to a formal rose garden, vegetable garden, boules court and pool garden. The patio overlooks a rustic water feature.  Although the structure is formal, the planting is an informal mix of indigenous and exotic plants.

9 Sun Valley Avenue, Constantia

This plant collector's garden changes from year to year as the adventurous owner [my mother!] tries new plants and interesting combinations while creating a haven for birds.

The owner describes the garden as a journey without a destination as it is a constant state of fluid change as she experiments with new plants, interesting colour schemes and new plant combination.  From the patio with its fascinating array of container plants, a sloping lawn leads down to a shade garden and wild area planted for birds.

3 Zomerlust Avenue (There will be a plant sale here)

A tranquil, informal garden with large trees, mixed borders and interesting courtyard garden.  Birds, chameleons, and a pair of owls share the space.

This informal garden is a haven for birds, chameleons and a pair of owls. Often featured in film shoots the owner follows no rules but has an innate love of both exotic and indigenous plants which are skilfully grouped according to their colours. A place of tranquillity and reflection.  Enclosed patio also on show.

34 Vineyard Road, Bergvliet

An informal garden with an interesting mix of indigenous and exotic plants many of which have been grown from slips and placed with thought to their textures and colours.

This informal, 17 year old garden is home to a tree aloe, Aloe barberae and other waterwise plants on the windy verge.  Attention has been given to the texture and colours of the plants while vegetables thrive in a sunny patch of the north-facing border.

1 Ceres Road, Bergvliet

Restful park-like garden with Koi pond and new vegetable garden with a sweeping lawn bordered by a bougainvillea pergola and shady garden beds.

In the meantime, if you have questions, please call Gail at 021-712-5668 or Elaine at 021-713-1845.

And if you are a local blogger or gardener, please help to spread the word and feel free to reblog this post.

Soiled and Seeded is launched

Photo: Mikaël Lavogiez, Soiled and Seeded.

A new zine has put out its first green cybershoots with its inaugural issue going live today.

Soiled and Seeded - Cultivating a Garden Culture has its land-based roots in Toronto, but is borderless in scope. Barbara Ozimec, a self-described gardenless gardener and botanist, and photographer Mikaël Lavogiez have produced a journal whose manifesto begins:

Soiled and Seeded is an online garden zine dedicated to neophyte, seasoned, adventurous and guerilla gardeners. We are intent on cultivating a garden culture not based on decorative, hi-gloss scenarios, but rather one that restores our connection to the natural world and redefines our relationship to plants. Soiled and Seeded seeks to expand the conventional approach to gardens and the practice of gardening. Not strictly an instructional guide, the material presented is wide-ranging, edifying and lively. Encompassing plants, art, design and landscapes; we present an endless exploration of botanical abundance.

Go and have read, send them feedback, or submit copy for their next issue.

October

We are having very good skies at the moment. This is looking east and south.

Today I will be traveling to Pennsylvania, with cameras and notebook (and pork rillettes!) and into the world of Ellen and her wine. Crabapple, silver berry, amelanchier.