Skipping up the mountain
After a week of howling wind that has distressed the garden and stripped the leaves and lots of baby olives off the trees, we finally had a quiet, damp, cloudy morning today. This kind of weather is much more conducive to flower photos so we managed to capture a few we’d missed.
The Christmasberry, Chironia baccifera is in flower all over the place. It has these pretty pink flowers now, and later in the year it will be covered in beautiful red berries.
As I’ve been running up the mountain in the past week I realised a sad truth. We went to the bush for a few days at the end of November. I love everything about the bush except for the fact that going running would make you a nice, easy, soft pink target for the predators. So you can’t run. A few years ago I realised the solution was to bring a skipping rope and this time I was quite good about skipping in the mornings. It’s very boring, but it does work and to my amazement when I got home I ran quite effortlessly up the mountain. Next time I’m struggling with fitness I’ll get that rope out. Tiresome with amazing results.
Another tiresome thing is that I’ve missed some flowers. I caught these comb flowers, Micranthus alopecuroides at the beginning of their flowering and this morning caught the end of the flowering, they are a little tatty but still very pretty.
Something happened while we were in the bush and it was funny enough to be worth the telling. We came back from a game drive and I did my skipping, followed by a lovely brunch. Tired from the early morning start, the exercise and the indulgent brunch, I decided to go for nap. Off I went to our room, the last little cottage along the river, and lay on the bed. It was hot; at this point I have to admit I was naked. I duly fell asleep. A noise woke me. I looked up. Sitting on the balcony, lined up in rows as if in a cinema, the babies sitting on the shoulders of the adults, staring in at me through the huge windows, was an entire troop of baboons. Just watching me sleep. It was the most bizarre feeling. I sat up. They didn’t move, just stared. It was rather unnerving. Then quite quietly I said “go away” and equally calmly they all left. I watched them go, en famille, off along the river bed. We didn’t see them again for a couple of days.
Back to the flowers. I have no idea what this pinky red pea is. I’ll post it on ispot and see if we can find out.
Unidentified pinky red pea
These are an old friend, Selago corymbosa, quite common and very charming.
I went for a walk the yesterday evening. I’d missed the morning run and when the wind dropped in the evening I thought the dogs would like a walk. They certainly did and I took a couple of beautiful photos of Maebh. The focus isn’t perfect her coat looks great in the evening light.
One of the first things to flower at the end of summer is the Protea repens and I think this might be a second flowering, it’s unusual to see them at this time of year.
Protea Repens
I think this one is a Crassula but I’m not sure which one so once again I will ask the iSpot experts to identify it for us.
The Fynbos Blog 
I think your Combflower might be a Therianthus, not a Micranthus 🙂
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It is definitely Micranthus alopecuroides, not Therianthus. The Blue Combflower is a common flower here in the Western Cape and easily identified. We haven’t seen many this year though, probably because we had such a dry winter. But in the areas that burned in Cape Town they are everywhere, they clearly do very well after fire.
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