The Fynbos Blog

Spring on the mountain, silent stillness, glowing sunsets and the promise of summer rising up with the heat from the valley.  Days of cool rain followed by the smell of warm wet earth as the dogs and I run, happy and quite fit, around our mountain.

The research is almost done, and even while it held me chained to my desk I would slip out on a fine evening for a quick run with the dogs, returning to my books as the light faded, full of energy and enthusiasm to work late on into the evening.

Though the winter rains were light and we remain officially in drought, the fires have stimulated the flowering bulbs and the mountains are aglow with light.  Where I have found one or two special specimens in specific places over the years suddenly everything  is everywhere, clothing the burnt land with carpets of spring.  The blue of Babiana fragrens is a distant reminder of bluebells woods at home in Ireland.

Carpets of Babiana fragrens

Babiana fragrens

Babiana fragrens

Babiana fragrens

Tufts of Aristea spiralis are all over the farm, not just in the special damp places, while Spiloxene capensis, the peacock flower is also prolific along the drive and along some of the high damp banks.  Some years I see hardly any of this charming stars, this year is a real treat.

Aristea spiralis and Spiloxene capensis

Spiloxene capensis

Spiloxene capensis, the peacock flower

Aristea spiralis

The Moreas are also prolific. I love the salmon pink Moraea collina, again prolific everywhere after the fires, but I have been told they are poisonous to horses and cattle so I like them a little less now.  Moraea tricuspidata has been so rare that some years I’ve missed it completely because of travelling. Impossible to miss it this year as it has emerged in copious quantity along the paths where we run.

Moraea gawleri

Moraea gawleri

Moraea gawleri

Moraea collina

Moraea tricuspidata

Wurmbea punctata doesn’t have a particularly pretty name, but it’s a gorgeous little flower found only on damp slopes high on the mountain.

White stars light up the roadways as we run, here are Hesperantha and Geissorhiza ovata

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In past years I have celebrated the Ericas in spring. So many are gone, and may take years to grow back.  This one survived along the drive, Erica imbricata.

Erica imbricata

Another lovely sight is the Leucadendron tinctum. Where the two fires meet there is an unburned spot, where these flower prolifically.  They are lovely now and splendid in summer when the leaves turn terracotta.

This one is rather unattractively known as the beetle lily, Baeometra uniflora.  It grows in a very specific place, where our run takes us briefly onto the neighbours land.  There are dozens of them there this year.

Baeometra uniflora

I am not entirely sure of the identification of this one.  Dianthus albens?

Dianthus albens

Keeping the best for last.  I love this tiny little green orchid.  This colour seems to be hard for my iPhone camera, it doesn’t capture green flowers well.  This is Disperis capensis, the cowled monk. I have only ever found it close to the olive groves above the house, this year it is suddenly everywhere.  Utterly charming.

Disperis capensis

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As always, the dogs are my faithful companions.  We have a new Irish Wolfhound puppy, Maverick.  He’s too young to come running, but enjoyed a sunset walk with the girls one lovely evening.

Maverick

And there it was.  Dancing and fluttering in the wind on a sunlit winter morning.  We’ve seen a few in the past couple of weeks but this was the best.  In full flower, the “Red Afrikaner” shining in the morning light.  A happy flower bringing joy to the morning run.

The dogs and I love winter evening runs on the farm.  If I’m working at my desk I set the alarm for 5pm, head up to the house, change into running gear and we set off.  The sun is just dipping behind the Paardeberg as we leave and the light slowly bleeds out of the sky, filling the evening with colour and drama, a typical winter sunset.

The evening was unexpectedly mild as we headed up the mountain.  We stopped by the stream which is flowing with proper determination now, after several weeks of regular rain.

I have been neglecting this blog, in part because there are fewer ‘surprised by joy’ moments as the land takes its time to recover from the ferocity of the summer fires.  But I have been away for a week and to my delight today there was some wild rosemary, Eriocephalus africanus flowering by the road.  We had thousands of these sweet smelling shrubs with their delicate white winter flowers, and I daresay we will again.  For now I was happy to see any at all, the flowers gleaming in the late light of day.

Eriocephaus africanus

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Another jewel is Microloma tenufolia.  The waxy texture of its flowers make it hard to photograph, I can never capture the amazing coral colour that flashes bright as we run past it.  I was delighted to see it, a dear friend, determined to survive and thrive, just like us.  It’s a climber and flourishing all over the place at the moment.

A determined friend is Leucadendron salignum. This brilliant green shrub thrives on the north side of the farm which was completely destroyed by fire three.  New plants emerge from the roots of twisted skeletons and here and there a plant has survived, casting a remarkable effulgent green light onto the bleak mountain.  A joy to behold as the light fades towards the end of the run.

Along the drive the charming blue Morea tripetala flourishes.  The bulbs seem to be fine after the fire.

A mist rose from the valley tonight as the dams reflected the light.  The sky turned a myriad of colours, deep blue and pink with a rising moon above the mountains to the east.  To the west a huge cape eagle owl launched from this tree into the valley below, just before I took this picture. We returned home, the dogs and I, happy, exercised, carrying the enchantment of the mountain in our spirits and I took one last photo of the darkening valley and the deepening sky.

Nerine humilis

A few weeks ago Peter was down by the river, clearing all the dead Port Jacksons (invasive trees that got completely destroyed by the fire).  He found these incredible red flowers, emerging from nowhere.  They are paintbrush lilies, Haemanthus pubescens.

Haemanthus pubescens

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There are always thousands of Oxalis studding the farm at this time of year and even in the badly burned places some have emerged, nothing like as prolific as other years, but all the same, there they are.

Oxalis purpurea

Then there are these fabulous aloes that have probably been there all along but were hidden by massed proteas.  The proteas are gone and somehow these survived and I can see them from the road at the top of the farm.  I think they are Aloe plicatilus.  They would normally flower later in the year but between the fire and the unseasonably hot weather they may have decided to flower early.

Aloe plicatilis (?)

For a blog that records flowers on our mountain there isn’t a lot to report.  The end of summer is once again hot and dry, we’ve had one decent fall of rain and a little drizzle here and there, interspersed with days hot enough to make the earth hot, dry and hollow as a drum.

There is a serious drought in the Cape, with dams at some of their lowest levels ever recorded.  If we don’t have heavy rains in April Cape Town will be in serious trouble.  Don’t tell anyone, but here on the farm we have never had so much water at the end of summer.  With all the trees gone along the riverbeds high above us, the water is pouring down the mountain strong and pure.  As a consequence the dams below us may not be full but they are not doing too badly.

The dogs and I run through the desolate landscape; the girls play in the empty land, sniffing and running on the cooler mornings.

Meath surveys the farm

There are signs of life.  The first things to emerge after the fire are the ferns.  They stud the black earth with bright green flares.

There was a yellow daisy for a day or two.  Then it disappeared, almost as though it made a mistake and decided to wait for better times.  I am sure it is Haplocapha lanata which flowers especially after fire and has the peculiarity  of being leafless.

Haplocarpha lanata

The most surprising thing of all is that just a couple of weeks after the fires this Asparagus rubicundis emerged all over the farm.  A small shrub that I have recorded in flower only once before, but clearly it likes the fire, it is the only green flowering thing on the mountain and it’s all over the place, anywhere that has a bit of damp from a watercourse it flourishes and flowers like mad.

Asparagus rubicundis

Almost all the proteas are gone and I cannot imagine how long it will take them to grow back in their thousands.  One is making an astonishing recovery.  Protea nitida, which I was particularly sad to lose, as it grows into a tree putting out huge fluffy white flowers in winter and great redheads of regrowth in spring.  To my delight the trees are recovering fast, they seem to be fireproof, even where the fire burned hottest and destroyed everything most of nitidas have glowing trunks in the black landscape.  If the trunk is too badly damaged the leaves emerge from the ground.  Mostly they are coming into leaf quite quickly.  It will be a delight to see them flower, perhaps later than normal but I hope they do.

Protea nitida

The leaves of Protea nitida emerging

This is, I hope, the very start of a massive outpouring of life and recovery.

The wind is howling tonight as I write and I confess I am still nervous about fire.  When it blows like this I can’t sleep.  Almost everything around us has gone, but we are a green oasis on the mountain and the fire might like another bite.  Peter doesn’t want me to call them flare-ups, but how to name the smouldering stump that suddenly bursts into flames?  We have them all the time, sudden breakouts.  The drama is over but the battle continues and we long for rain.  It could be a month or more.

Protea repens chooses the hottest and most inauspicious time of the year to flower, covering the farm with fat pink and white flowers in February.  This year they are dead skeletons and thousands of seeds, probably millions of them, released by the heat of the fire.  And yet…  As I ran around the desolate blackness with the dogs the other day, here and there a protea has survived; sometimes a whole group of them.  By the lookout at the top of the farm all the leucodendrum tincta are intact – Fire two came at them from one side, and Fire three from the other, yet somehow that tiny part of the farm didn’t burn. Where they have survived they thrive and I managed to photograph a couple of Protea repens, one on the drive – literally the only one left out of hundreds, and one from the top of the farm on a different day.

Protea repens with singed leaves

Protea repens on the drive, a flower almost hidden behind the singed leaves

Early the other morning Peter came and called me urgently – I was fast asleep.  “Sarah, come quickly.”  Sometimes it’s really annoying when he does this, but sometimes he’s got something really worth seeing.  I dragged my unwilling body out of bed, onto the balcony and into the cold dawn.  Meabh was sitting by the edge of the dam barking.  Right in front of her, not five metres away, was a cape clawless otter, teasing her.  And right behind him, a few metres back, his family was playing and cavorting in the water.  Peter told me he’d seen this when I was away, but it seemed so incredible that I hardly believed it.  Yet there they were, wild otters, teasing the Irish Wolfhound.   A couple of evenings later they were there again.  I didn’t manage to capture the otter, but if you look closely you can see the silhouettes of Peter and the dogs in the silver water and to the left the ripples of the otter as he swam away.

It is a great privilege to live in Africa and at times it’s a privilege that exacts a high price.  At other moments you get cape clawless otters in the sparkling dawn.

Cape Clawless Otter – credit Nik Borrow

It started on Thursday, as fires do, with a puff of smoke on the other side of the mountain.  We were in Johannesburg on business and everyone assured us that it was quite far away and we were safe.  By late Thursday it was on our neighbours’ farm, still high above us.  Peter was on a plane home and I was getting our farm workers back onto the farm to help.

On Friday at 4am Peter phoned to say they had lost it on the south side of our farm. I was already wide awake; I got up and packed to come straight home.

The fire from the air as we flew over the farm

By late Friday I was standing at the gate with a friend and neighbour.  I’d been running food, drinks, diesel and other supplies but couldn’t get onto the farm because of a raging fire at the gate.  Our neighbour John, an experienced farmer and firefighter had come up to give us water and sustenance.   He said “The first fire was to test us.  The second fire was serious.  But this, this fire is the real thing.”  Meanwhile complete strangers were stopping me on the dirt road to tell me they “knew” our house had burned down.  The fire raged on.

Taking water from our dam

It is Saturday evening now.  We’ve been fighting flare ups all day.  The nights can be frightening.  Last night we had “resources” to help – because there were so many hotspots.  Tonight we will be on our own.  I am becoming more competent at firefighting.  If it flares tonight I won’t evacuate.  I will make sure the dogs are safe and go and fight it.  The whole mountain has burned and now the fire seeks the last lines of green, the few remaining trees and plantations that we’ve saved.  Another neighbour says “the fire sees something it wants to eat, dry grass, a tree, a thatched roof; then it goes and gets it, even if it has to jump far.”

Friday evening.

Friday night

Not a single fynbos flower left and barely a plant anywhere on this entire mountain that hasn’t been damaged by the fire.  The forest is dead and the land is a moonscape.  It will revive of course.  That is what the fynbos does.  But so many old friends gone.  All my old friends that have appeared on these blog posts; all are gone.  Now they must regenerate.  They say the fynbos burns every 15 – 20 years.  It has been 17 since this farm burned.  I cannot bring myself to post the really terrible photos of the scorched earth.

Jemima Chew in the burned lands

I am told the spring flowers will be incredible.  I hope so and I hope to share that joy on these pages.  It will take a while.

All we have left are the olives, which miraculously survive and some buchu lands that our farm workers fought bravely to save because they have not yet been harvested.

The hungry fire smouldering darkly.

And our house.

We left the farm in November to spend a few days in the bush.  Peter’s family have a share in a lodge in Mashatu on the banks of the Limpopo River and we congregate there once or twice a year.  The lodge is a peaceful place and the game viewing is spectacular.  It is a place for deep refection and peace, where the pressures of life dissipate and the soul can recharge.

One afternoon we sat with a glass of ice cold white wine in hand as we watched a herd of elephant playing in the waterhole.

Then a miracle happened.  Twenty-two months after her encounter with her mate, on this hot summer day in the riverbed not 30 metres from where we sat, an elephant gave birth. For the next two hours we watched the outpouring of love, family, and attention that comprise the heritage of a baby elephant. He will grow up bearing a name that we gave him, witnesses to this rarest of sights.

As we spoke around the fire that night, I reflected on the experience and the profound impact it had on me. This has been a difficult year. Witnessing the birth of this beautiful creature brought, I said “an element of hope to the year”. “You mean an elephant of hope”, quipped Peter’s cousin, Yvonne.

Yes, an elephant of hope. The hope that every new life will encounter a better world. That we might preserve this lovely place where he was born so that in 50 years he may stride the land, massive and magnificent. That we might preserve a climate that provides him with the water he drank on his first day at this watering hole in the Limpopo River. That our grandchildren may encounter his. That we will live in a world that continues to care for nature and the earth’s heritage.

An elephant of hope that no matter how hard our lives may seem, life goes on and at times we must simply bear it and at others we may rejoice. Sometimes the two overlap one another at a terrifying speed, offering despair and opportunity in equal measures.

I write this blog primarily to share the flowers that grow on the farm, and I only post photos that I have taken on the farm.  But as Georgie was quick enough to capture the birth of our elephant, I shall break my rule this once and have uploaded the videos of that and of him getting on his feet for the first time.

Back on the farm we have stepped up the running and I feel fitter, stronger and more at peace with the world.  The flowers are fewer than in wetter years, but they never fail to surprise and delight me – the joy of turning a corner and seeing the magnificently named Wachendorfia paniculata shining against the sandy bank, or the blue powderpuff suddenly appear on the path ahead.  The world cannot be a bad place while the elephant still roam and the land is full of flowers, the house full of dogs and the sun sets magnificently behind Table Mountain, turning our Hawequas Mountains a brilliant pink.

Wachendorfia paniculata

Cyanella hyacinthoides charmingly known as Lady’s Hand

Crassula – not sure which one

Powerpuffs – Selago corymbosa

Slag corymbose

Pseudoselago serrata

Tritonia undulata

This is the time of year when we see snakes.  They wake up from their long winter hibernation and are at their most active as they have to build up their reserves of fuel and fat.  We don’t see very many but over the years there have been cape cobras, puff adders, the odd boomslang and countless harmless mole snakes, grass snakes and olive snakes.  I am no expert so I’m wary of them all, but unless it’s a puff adder making a home in the garden we tend to live and let live.

I see them only rarely when we are out running on the farm looking for flowers.  At this time of year the spring flowering season slows down but there are still delightful surprises around every corner.  One particular favourite is Aristea capitata, the long blue spikes grow in damp shady areas all over the farm.

Aristea capitata

We’ve never had trouble with snakes and the dogs and when a boomslang was spotted heading for the tree outside the Manager’s House, near Peter’s office, none of us was particularly concerned.  We were alerted to her presence by the crazy antics of the fork tailed drongas, mobbing her because she was after their chicks.  We had guests staying in the Manager’s House and we didn’t mention the snake to them.  Boomslangs are very shy and live in trees. Although their venom is the deadliest of all snakes, causing internal bleeding and death, they almost never bite people in the wild.

The following week she was seen again, a long snake and surprisingly cheeky, on the ground and not heading straight for the tree when she was disturbed.  This is unusual behaviour for a boomslang.  They are diurnal, which means they hunt in daytime and as Peter says, at 2 metres she was huge and may have been driven down from the trees to get enough food.  She was hanging around between the Manager’s House and Peter’s office and with the flow of people and animals in that area there was no way this lethal snake could be allowed to stay there, so we took action.

Not before she claimed a victim.  Last Sunday morning little Murphy, the Irish Wolfhound puppy started to look unwell.  We took him to the vet, who treated the symptoms.  Later that night we lost him.  We were completely stunned, especially when the autopsy showed that he had bled out.  We don’t keep those kinds of poisons on the farm and Murphy was too young to wander.  We really couldn’t believe he had been deliberately poisoned, our farm is not the kind of place where that happens.  When the boomslang reappeared, unafraid and on the ground on Tuesday we realised she must have got him; the symptoms match perfectly.  She was in the area outside Peter’s office where he frequently played.  The experts will tell you that it’s most unlikely and they are right, we were excessively unlucky.

Murphy was with us just long enough to capture our hearts; his future sang with possibilities, I couldn’t wait to take him for his first run on the farm.   This blog is above all a hymn to nature but there are times when nature, at her purest, is very cruel.

What was I thinking?

Around the middle of 2015 I decided to stop travelling so much and spend my time building a new business here in South Africa.  I left Spencer Stuart in December 2015 and one of my decisions was to get serious credentials as an executive coach.  I’d already started coaching and if you are going to mess with people’s heads, you should have some idea what you’re doing.  I fancy myself as a bit of an intellectual so thinking I’d enjoy an academic programme I applied to do an MPhil, a research based Masters degree, at the University of Stellenbosch Business School.  I must have been mad.

I love the study.  I wondered what it would be like to study again at 50.  It’s not that hard.  By 50 you know how to work and deliver, so assignments are not too bad and as I’m really passionate about the subject, Executive Coaching, I do enjoy the research side of the work.

The problem is the volume.  The volume consumes vast quantities of time.  Take this weekend.  I had to coach yesterday and I badly needed to catch up on some sleep after a busy few weeks of work and competing.  I also have to submit an assignment tomorrow.  So no running, no riding.  And most definitely no social life.  Social life has disappeared from the scene.  Peter supports the study but I think he regrets that we no longer see our friends.  The problem is there is another whole year of this as I have to submit a dissertation next year based on original field research. Yikes.  By the time that’s over I doubt we will have any friends left.  They will have forgotten us.

The mountain is always there.  The flowers change with the seasons; the mountain is immutable.  We run, the dogs and I, through the wind and rain, through the warmth of the late spring sunshine.  Now that this assignment is submitted my challenge and commitment is to run every day for two weeks, to kick up my fitness and shed a pound or two.  And to spend time in the glory of nature, of our fynbos world.

Intermittent running means that although we’ve seen so many flowers the spring winds make them impossible to photograph on some days, so this is a selection of some of my favourites, many of them bulbs, as ever, caught on days that wind rain and light permitted photography.

The first is Moraea collins, I love this delicate salmon pink flower which grows all over the farm.

Moraea collina

Another prolific flowering bulb is Aristea africana.  Brilliant flashes of blue line the roads, it seems to like growing in shade and doesn’t mind stoney ground.

Aristea africana

This is Ornithogalum imbricatum.  The pale green colour and delicate shape make it difficult to photograph on bright days – catching it in the shadow here gives you an idea of its delicate nodding flowerhead.

I’m always been enchanted that common garden flowers that I grew up with in Ireland grown wild here on the farm in the Cape.  Helichrysum is to be found on every patio and in every hanging basket in the country, and here it is, Helichrysum dasyanthum, growing all over the place, the grey leaves a perfect setting for its yellow flowers.

Helichrysum dasyanthum

This little pea flower only grows on one path and there it is prolific for a spring moment. The flowers can be red or yellow and the distinct leaves lead to identification as Lotonosis, though I am not sure which subspecies.

Lotonosis

This Aspalathus cephalotes subspecies obscuriflora flowers every year on the corner of the road that leads from the waterfall to the wier.

Pelargoniums are common here and this captures the most common of them all, none the less delicate and lovely.  Pelargonium myrrhifolium var myrrhifolium.

Exquisite Gladiolus carneus, known as the white Afrikaner, or the painted lady, covers the lands and roadsides in the month of October.

Gladiolus carneus

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