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Posted on March 14, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

The glimmering lights of Paarl

It’s been a busy week in Johannesburg and London and I returned home this morning a little bedraggled and the worse for wear off BA059. Peter points out that its not all because of work, I took advantage of a quieter week than usual in London to catch up with friends and family which was wonderful, but a very bumpy flight home and little sleep didn’t help today.

It’s hot in Paarl and I spent a quiet afternoon doing some work and catching up on emails in the shade of the big blue gums behind the house. This evening there is not a breath of wind, always rare on the mountain and the sky, the mountains are glowing in the light of the rising moon, nearly full.

I walked down to the dam wall in the stillness and all around the fiery necked nightjar and cape eagle owl called in the dusk. These are the sounds of the African night and I felt utterly at home. There is an autumn coolness in the air but the earth smells slightly burned and spicy from the heat of the day. The lights of Paarl glow down in the valley with Paarl rock silhouetted against the setting sky. The moon rises over the house, reflected in the still waters of the dam.

An almost full moon rises behind the house

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Wolfhounds slipstreaming in the wind and glorious early autumn sunsets

Posted on March 4, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

Two lovely runs this week. One on a cool damp morning with the new growth of Leudadendron salignum glowing green in the grey light once again and bounding dogs enjoying the autumnal weather. The house is full of guests and it’s lovely to get up early, go for a run and enjoy my own company and that of the dogs, returning to a social breakfast full of chat and laughter before we get on with the day. Our guests are terrific, they know their way around the house and on Monday’s run I returned home to a delicious breakfast of poaches eggs with english muffins, avocado and olive oil, all prepared by Niall before he took himself off for a morning of work.

This morning was the perfect opposite in terms of weather, a typical hot dry windy morning with the heart monitor showing the heavy weather I was making of pushing up the mountain against the howling wind. The wolfhounds love the wind and stand face on, enjoying the feel of it slipping through their shaggy coats. As ever on a hot day, they enjoy a quick water break at Fox Pan as we run up the mountain and you can clearly see the wind ruffling their coats.

Seamus and Maebh enjoying water and wind

Although flowers are not prolific I can see the Cape cycle starting once again. Having grown up in the Irish climate where winter is winter and spring gets off to a slow start, this Cape climate is always a little strange to me. The slowest period is during the hot summer months of January and February. As the weather cools and the rains arrive, the whole mountain bursts into life, the flowering season starts again, lasts all winter and reaches it’s apotheosis in the spring months of September, October and November. Having been through the cycle once I am alert to the signs that the new flowering year is getting ready to launch. Murlatia hysteria is a real stalwart, along with the Salvia africana it really does flower all year long without a break, but now in anticipation of the rains it seems to be showing more blooms than ever. Here it is in the morning sunlight.

Muraltia heisteria

I cannot resist taking photos of the gorgeous Leucadendron salignum, particularly when it’s been raining which seems to set off the glowing green. There will be many more photos of this gorgeous plant during the course of the winter. It has begun its flowering season already.

Leucadendron salignum

One could do a whole blog just on grasses but as the are hard to photograph really well I tend to ignore most of them. It’s a technical subject and I have a couple of books, but not the time to identify this one which has just come into flower all over the mountain, especially in high, rather damp places.

Grasses with yellow flower

I’ve identified this as a member of the Helichrysum family. I’m still not sure that’s right but I can’t find anything else that it resembles. The flowers don’t seem very helichrysum-like to me, but I can’t find anything else that it resembles. As I was taking this photo just above Fox Pan, I realised that the dogs were very interested in the plant and really getting in to have a good sniff around. So I stopped and looked and you could clearly see that something had been lying up on top of it. Makes perfect sense, this plant is growing in front of a large protea, so it’s protected from the back, sheltered overhead and looks over Fox Pan and the whole mountain so whatever lay up there obviously felt completely safe and its lucky I didn’t run past at the wrong moment with the dogs. I presume it was a buck of some kind, we see lots of them and the dogs often put them up and give chase, but they are far far slower than any buck and don’t even try that hard. It’s lovely to see evidence of the animals who share this farm with us, whether it’s picking up a porcupine quill on a road that I’d only run the day before and imagine him shuffling up there in the dark, or seeing a plant flattened by a buck contented after her drink at Fox Pan and enjoying a rest on the mountain.

Is it Helichrysum?

We get the best sunsets at this time of year and I always try to capture and share the good ones. This was over the weekend as we sat on the balcony enjoying the house cocktail, gin and tonic with Campari.

Another perfect sunset

Heat and Dust

Posted on February 25, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

As I write this the wind is howling outside, whirling around the mountain, roaring down the natural funnel that our little valley creates; rattling the roof and whistling through the chimneys. The days are hot, late 30s every day, and the land is dry and cracked. Typical end of February weather. A few drops of rain expected at the weekend, but realistically no proper rain until late March.

Hot summer evening with the haze of a summer fire visible in the valley below, the mountain to the northwest is the Paaderberg

The dogs enjoy a late evening paddle in Fox Pan with the evening sky reflected

In Northern Hemisphere terms this is late August, a time when few gardens look their best. And we don’t know if we’ll see much in the way of flowers for still another month. Yet we love the summer. The heat gets into your bones and is a pleasure when you grew up where it’s damp and cold. We went to a local wedding on Saturday and it was a splendid evening. Though the wind blew on the mountain in the valley it was still and warm and the reception was held on the lawn, with guests lounging and chatting on sofas and chairs scattered in the shade of the tall oak trees. A wonderful South African moment.

Last week we had an exceptional cloudy day. We woke during the night to hear rain hammering down on the roof and by morning we had a grey damp sky and mist. Of course the dogs and I got up joyously for a cool run. At last the proliferation of new flowers has stopped and the whole mountain has taken a moment to recover and to start again. The last two times we’ve been out we haven’t seen anything completely new. What we do see is new growth for the late summer season when the Protea Repens comes out and the Leucodendron puts on it’s lovely winter foliage the better to glow in gloomy winter days.

New Leucadendron salignum leaves

Leucadendon salignum, covered in new growth, glows in the cloudy light

The lovely Protea Repens preparing for a spurt of growth and late summer flowers

Protea with new growth. We shall only be able to identify it once it flowers

A day later it was back to summer. We had a host of guests to stay and a competition at the weekend. Tomorrow morning we will get up early, go off for a run and doubtless will report back on more heat and more dust…

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Helichrysum Days

Posted on February 7, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

I try to write this blog at least once a week, sometimes more, with the aim of staying current with the flowering cycle on the mountain. For some reason the past 10 days have been particularly busy. We had a series of guests, family and friends, which is wonderful although it puts paid to quiet nights when we can watch TV and write blogs. Then horses and dogs have needed trips to the vet. The magnificent Seamus has had a bad time. He got a tummy bug, received treatment and then had a frightening adverse reaction to the treatment. It is a well documented allergy, but so rare that our vet had never seen it. Two days of worry later he is much better although his back legs are not working perfectly and we don’t know if he hurt himself, or if it’s a consequence of the neurological reaction he suffered from. He’s not in pain; he would tell us if he was, but it will be at least a few more days before he’s allowed running on the mountain again.

The horses were just getting all their routine annual innoculations, check-ups, dentistry and so on. All of which needs doing but is rather time consuming along with work and the guests. I must remember next year how busy this time of year can be and plan a little bit better.

Peter’s business has picked up and while we wouldn’t say orders are flooding in, the painful trickle has certainly become a steady trickle. Which should be wonderful except that labour protests are growing in South Africa and he had a sit in strike at the factory today. Fortunately it was resolved quite quickly. How frustrating finally to have some business, so that we can potentially pay more and afford bigger bonuses and instead be dealing with strikes and knowing our overseas customers are watching this and wondering whether SA is the right place to do business. That’s not to be negative, just realistic. Peter is brilliant at managing these situations and he will sort it out.

To my delight there are all sorts of happenings on the mountain which make running a pleasure. In particular several different Helicrysums are in flower. Plants that flower at this time of year tend to have dry looking or tiny flowers that can cope with the potential heatwave as you can see from these pictures.

Helichrysum Flowers

Helichrysum flowers – a different sub-species

Yet another variety to be found here on the mountain: Helichrysum flowers

A cloud of Helichrysum in the morning light, this one situated in the heart of the olive groves; they grow all over the farm

I started this blog last year in March when the first of the proteas came into bloom. So it is exciting to witness the burgeoning of protea life as the shrubs of Protea repens are covered in buds and will flower in the next few weeks. That, for me, is the start of our flowering year and I cannot wait.

The Protea repens is budding, a harbinger of summer's end. The first flowers will emerge well before the autumn rains

The Protea repens is budding and heralds the end of summer. The first flowers will emerge well before the autumn rains

We have exceptional sunsets at this time of year. Almost every night and it is a lovely time to walk around the farm. With Seamus on the sick list we haven’t gone far and last night I took this picture of the farmhouse with the pink mountains behind us.

Pink sunset on the mountains

Sometimes we can get strange effects of the light as the sun goes down, like this photo of the sun just dropping behind Paarl mountain. Taken a moment later than the one above there is a circular glow around the setting sun that was distinctive and I was surprised it was captured so easily by the iPhone camera.

Sunset over Paarl rock

The Bartinney Angel

Posted on January 27, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

This blog is all about the wildflowers that I come across when I’m out running on the farm, and in almost a year of blogging I have never felt the need to deviate from that. Even as the profusion of flowering dies back there is so much to describe on a run, the air, the light, the dogs, the water, the weather, and always a flower or two to talk about. Indeed I have a new blog almost written and ready to publish.

Yet I am going deviate. Because on Saturday I saw the most extraordinary sight, too ephemeral and too gorgeous not to share. We were at a party in the Kylemore valley, about 30 KM from here, along the Helshoogte Pass. It was a perfect day, pure blue sky, not a cloud and for once not too hot. We were enjoying cold wine and delicious braai in a friend’s garden. Liz, another friend who lives in this lovely Kylemore valley, came over to me and said “there’s something I want to show you.” We went around to the back of the house and she pointed up into the mountain. There, carved out in a meadow full of shining grasses, is an angel, the Bartinney Angel.

Bartinney wines have an angel on the label, based on a sculpture by Dylan Lewis. Now they have carved their angel into a meadow of the lovely shining grasses. Breathtaking.

The Bartinney Angel

An evening run

Posted on January 19, 2014 by fynbosblog 2 comments

Our friends and family who follow this blog or drop in from time to time know that I spend far too much of my time on planes and away from our farm. My work as a management consultant is part time, but sometimes very intense. This has been an busy couple of weeks, working on a project that distracts me from the normal concerns of life and pulls my focus to what matters, in other words, the work that earns the money, in part at least, to pay for it all.

The project is winding up, although it took most of the weekend to finish the work for a demanding client. The last report went through to Johannesburg as the sun started to set and on went the running shoes, up went the dogs tails and off we ran.

Mostly I like to run in the mornings; it gets exercise out of the way and is such a satisfying way to start the day. Yet there is something extraordinary about the evening run. Especially on an evening like this. The sky was perfectly clear, the light diffused with damp. For January it is not hot, warm, certainly but not hot. The wind has dropped and the stillness on the mountain is like a deep breath taken, not yet released. The intensity of the light comes across in this picture taken above an alley of hakias and pines that serve as a windbreak with the setting sun behind them.

We have magnificent buzzards, Forest Buzzards we think, nesting in the trees along the drive. They are migratory and territorial and return year after year. The two of them perch on trees either side of the dam and screech gleefully, joyfully at one another. There is nothing quite like the call of an African raptor. We think one of them has a sense of humour. He perches on a tree at the top of the drive, and dives off as we pass, flying along the valley. Maebh chases him, imagining he might come into reach. At the bottom of the valley he turns, and flies back up again, close to the road, where Maebh joyfully pounds along beside him. Its so funny to watch and begs the question, do birds have a sense of humour? Probably not; but sometimes you wonder.

The Christmas berry or Chironia baccifera is in full flower now. I’ll post it later in the year, covered in glorious red berries. It’s a lovely shrub, I wonder if I could take cuttings and grow it in the garden? unlikely given my ungreen fingers.

Chironia baccifera

I can’t believe how stunning the red heath, or Erica abietina is looking all over the farm. Where other flowers retreat in the hot weather, and the fecundity seems beaten down by the harsh light of the summer months, this plant defiantly produces it’s best flowers and looks magnificent.

Erica abietina, Red Heath is magnificent in the summer months

As we ran down the mountain I was conscious that it was hot and stopped to wait for the wolfhounds. I keep a close eye on them in the summer heat. I don’t want to lose one to a snake, or sudden dehydration, which happens in this part of the world. Here is Seamus catching up with us while Maebh keeps an anxious eye.

Maebh waits for Seamus in the hot evening light

Meanwhile this slightly bedraggled daisy-like thing seems to like the hot weather. On the north side of the farm there are quite a few of them, though they have proven strangely difficult to photograph in focus. This is about the best we can do. I think it’s Felicia aetheophica, which grows all year round.

Felicia aetheopica

As we ran down the mountain the sun set directly behind Table Mountain. If there are moments when I count my blessings, this definitely was one of the them. The light was amazing, the dogs had gone for a welcome break in Fox Pan and all was well with our world.

The sun sets behind Table Mountain, 60 km to the west of us

Two Irish Wolfhounds and Jemima Chew enjoy the cool water in Fox Pan

Just as I stopped to take this photo these little pea like flowers grabbed my attention. I think it’s a type of honeybush or Cyclopia, but I’m not sure which one. This is new and to my amazement means that we have still found a new flower on every single run.

Cyclopia or Honeybush

The Morning Run

Posted on January 11, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

The unseasonal weather continued all last week with pours of rain thundering down for much of it. Yesterday morning it was dry at last and we woke up early to go running. At this time of year we are normally sweltering in the heat so it was a joy to be splashing through puddles and smelling the sweet damp morning air. I was working in Johannesburg for much of the week, missing the rain, but also the dogs and the run, so they were full of joy as we bounded along. Yes, I did say bounded. Fewer flowers mean fewer photos so I’ve been running a bit harder and slowly getting fitter.

I count my blessing every day that we spend on this farm. We’ve been a bit slow about transforming the garden and today the fabulous Henk Scholz came to give us some advice. He is incredible, one starts with an idea of course and he’s very kind so he takes it on board, but then comes up with his own idea that is so audacious and splendid it’s completely irresistible. Peter then came up with a couple of stunning ideas which, if he really is prepared to do the work, will transform the place and make it even more beautiful. I described the farm to someone the other day as the most beautiful farm in the Cape, which was stupid because there are many amazing farms here. Ours is unusual and unexpected which gives it a special beauty.

Henk admired elements of the vegetable garden, principally the fact that I’ve managed to get anything to grow at all. I may love plants and gardens but whatever shade my fingers are, it’s definitely not green. He gently explained that the reason my plants are not fruiting is because they are completely smothered by weeds. Oh I can make all the excuses I want, the rain, the fact that I fertilised everything before the rain, which of course the weeds love even more than the plants. The time, or rather the lack of it that dominates my life. In the end, after he left, with the earth still soft and yielding after all the rain I dug and weeded for hours and have cleared all those pesky monsters away. Maebh loves it when I garden, she sniffs around and tries to help, then lies down and observes all the work with great interest. Finally she curls up in the cool shadow of an orange tree and happily falls asleep.

Back to the run. As we bounded up the mountain I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this Protea repens. What? Now? It’s far too early! And indeed the season doesn’t really start until March. This one clearly decided to get ahead. It has just opened, perhaps the season starts much earlier than I’d realised and this is the first.

An early flowering Protea repens

One of the joys of the mountain is the magnificent Salvia africana-caerulea. It flowers prolifically for eight months of the year and particularly seems to thrive at this time of year.

Salvia africana-caerulea

Another flower that is glorious at this time of the year is this stunning Erica. I’m pretty sure it’s Erica abietina, simply called Red heath which flowers all year round but seems to relish the dry most of all. The coral flowers are stunning along the drive and although the strong midday sun was almost too much for this photo I couldn’t resist the way it reflects the flight and glows from within.

Erica abietina

Despite the cooler weather Seamus still took a dip and a drink in Fox Pan as we climbed higher up the mountain. Then, graciously deigning to wait for me, he stood and admired the view with the water cascading off his flanks and shining in the morning light.

Seamus after his dip admiring the view

I rushed to identify the last blog’s flowering bulb as Watsonia, possibly because it gave me a great title. But I was a bit bothered by that and not entirely convinced. The flowering season is wrong, and although that sometimes happens you have to be certain. So back to the books I went and in fact it is Tritoniopsis, most likely triticea, although burchellii is almost identical and grows in the same places. The brown leaves, which you can see in this photo, are distinctive and make me confident of this identification.

Tritoniopsis tritecea

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Watsonia, weather and a resolution

Posted on January 6, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

After one of the wettest winters in memory we’ve been expecting a hot, windy dry summer. So far it hasn’t materialised. There was a lot of wind before Christmas, which is typical of the Cape, but over the Christmas period itself we had perfect weather, still days with little or no wind and temperatures that didn’t rise above 32 or 33. After New Year we expect all that to change – the Christmas guests leave and the oven goes on. Typically in the second week of January the thermometer soars to 40, sometimes more in the valley below and the dogs and I gratefully retreat to my air conditioned office.

Not this year. As I write this on 6th January 2014 it is pouring with rain outside and the temperature is a cool 24 degrees. The rain is set to continue for the next few days and for once I’m actually grateful to be catching an early flight to Johannesburg on Wednesday and hoping to miss the worst of this most unseasonal summer stormy weather. I expect we’ll get the heat soon enough. My mother is staying with us and we went to Cape Town this morning to purchase some new outdoor furniture for her sunbathing – not much chance of that in the next few days so she’s off to Simonstown for a few days of less rural life.

Our fynbos runs continue to surprise me. Running down the drive late last week a flash of coral caught my eye and I stopped to admire a little group of Watsonia that is flowering on the bank. This bank along the drive really is fynbos heaven, it seems to capture water and most of the interesting things that grow elsewhere on the farm thrive here. This one looks most like Watsonia coccinea although it might easily be another of the many fynbos subspecies.

Watsonia coccinea

Although we’ve seen this Microdon dubius before I can’t resist posting another picture. It’s in full flower at the moment and these yellow-purple spikes are all over the farm, lighting the roads and profilic in the buchu lands.

Microdon dubius

The next couple of weeks are going to be taken over by a work project that will take most of my time and much of my energy so blogs might be in short supply. This year our Christmas/summer break was curtailed by a project in Stockholm in December and this one in Johannesburg that starts a week before I’d planned to get back to work. We are driven by the client and grateful to have them, but sometimes a holiday break would be nice!

Even a short holiday on the farm is a joy – the dogs love having us aournd, lots of friends come to stay for a night or three and we are blessed to live on this mountain.

As work takes over again the Fynbos Blog resolves to carry on in 2014, with the aim of capturing even more of the amazing diversity of flowering shrubs and bulbs that flourish on this little farm.

The Large Brown Afrikaner heralds the New Year

Posted on January 1, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

We love taking friends for walks on the farm and of course I can’t resist pointing out the fynbos as we go, particularly if we come across something new or interesting. I’ve noticed that while I tend to photograph the flowers, thinking of the blog, friends love to take photos of me getting excited about the flowers. Lots of fun photos of bums in the air as we bend over to view something tiny and exquisite, or jumping up and down as I find something new.

I was jumping up and down the other evening as we walked above the waterfall with Anna and Stefan. If there is one species I love to see it’s the Gladioli. They are all lovely graceful things and we’ve seen five different subspecies in this year of blogging, if you include this one. It has an extraordinary habit: during the day it is quite brown and closed and scentless, and in the evening it transforms, changes colour and issues the most delicious spicey almost clove-like scent. This is Gladiolus liliaceus, known as the Large Brown Afrikaner. The ones growing here on the farm are far lovelier than any photographed in my fynbos books. Identifications is quite easy with the pointed petals, the size and the distinctive change of colour and fragrance.

Gladiolus liliaceus, known as the Large Brown Afrikaner – at sunset

Gladiolus liliaceus during the day

In the same area we also came across these little blue flowers. They look like miniature versions of the purple powderpuff we’ve already seen and though they don’t quite match the descriptions in the book, I’m pretty sure they are also Pseudoselago, possibly sublabra but maybe something else. I’m getting much more confident in my identification of flowers now, understanding the lingo and also the major groupings. If nothing else this project is a wonderful way of getting into the vast botannical world and developing an eye and a little knowledge.

Pseudoselago

With the heat I take great care to make sure the dogs get water along the route, even if we are on a short run. They have long coats and struggle a bit during the hottest months, so we run early and late and stop for watering and to cool down. One of Seamus’s favourite places is the stream that runs beneath the shade of several magnificent Cape Hollies or Ilex mitis. These beautiful trees are nothing like the European holly (or at least not to me), they have huge white trunks and glossy dark leaves and live with their feet in the stream while their spreading canopies create the most wonderful darkly dappled shade on the hottest of days.

Seamus rests in the stream at the foot of the Ilex mitis

Table Mountain has spent the last few days buried under its tablecloth of cloud. Yesterday the wind picked up and swept the cloud away and the year ended with a glorious sunset right behind the mountain. This photograph was taken from our balcony just before we left for dinner last night. A magical end to 2013 on the mountains of the Western Cape.

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Christmas Fynbos

Posted on December 27, 2013 by fynbosblog 3 comments

Travel at Christmas is always fraught with risk. We left for a short trip to Ireland to spend the weekend before Christmas with a very dear friend, celebrating his 50th birthday. Thereby infuriating a whole series of family members, who believed that if we were in Ireland that close to Christmas, we should see them, not friends. Sorry. We then braved a lot of stormy flooding roads and wild bouncing skies, along with a Heathrow made worse than ever by the despairing passengers whose flights were cancelled two days before Christmas. Our plane, thank goodness, slipped through the weather and flung itself southwards and even managed to land in Cape Town without crashing, unlike another flight at O R Tambo in Johannesburg which walloped its wing by crashing into a building on the ground causing a mighty row between air traffic control and the British Airways pilot. You can imagine. No-one got hurt.

We arrived home on the 24th, back to the farm, the dogs and our gorgeous friends who came for Christmas. The fabulous David in Paarl did all the catering for us, so we had a wonderful self-indulgent break. Hubert sat beside me at dinner and explained that he doesn’t really love this blog because it’s too academic for him. He’s one of the cleverest people I know, so I think that, as a friend who lives most of the year far away, he’d rather more gossip and fewer flowers. Those last two paragraphs were for you, Hubert.

Meanwhile out on the mountain the dogs and I have been running regularly and loving it. Summer runs take in lots of water breaks. You hear of big dogs dehydrating so I’m careful about that and make sure the dogs are always in sight so that I can spot if anyone gets distressed.

Seamus and Maebh enjoying the water at Fox Pan on a very dry sunny windy morning

Lots of things enjoy the summer weather and the Christmas collection includes a snake nearly trodden on by Noella, who was remarkably calm about it. Also a red lipped tortoise, charming creatures and we see them quite often. This morning a scorpion ran across our path, minding his own business. I love seeing these things, but it’s another good reason to keep the dogs in sight, just in case they get too inquisitive about something nasty.

The flowers may not be profuse, but there are still plenty of things out there to interest us. Some choose to flower in the hottest driest of weather, like the helichrysum that covers the mountain.

Helichrysum

There are plenty of Pelargoniums that don’t mind the heat and choose the hottest months for their flowering. I’ve taken a lesson from the mountain and planted lots more of these in the garden.

One of the many subspecies of wild Pelargonium that grows on the mountain

I have only seen these orange spikes in one particularly damp spot on the road that leads up to the pine forest. They are known as wild dagga and the dried leaves traditionally have been used medicinally but are not a narcotic or tobacco substitute, contrary to what some of the local residents have told me.

Wild dagga, Leonotus leonurus

I love this Selago corymbosa which flowers only in the dry months on it’s long softly spiking stems.

Selago corymbosa

There are 35 fynbos lobelias and they are really stunning, especially in close up. I’m going to suggest that this one is Lobelia pinifolia because many of them have hairless flowers while this one is quite clearly hairy.

Lobelia pinifolia

This is known as the blue pea and is most likely Psoralea restioloides, choosing to flower late in its season near the stream that marks our boundary with the nature reserve at the top of the farm.

Psorolea restioloides, the blue pea

This, oddly, is known as the Christmasberry, although it flowers at Christmas and the spectacular red berries appear in the autumn. It is a common shrub, with a distribution along the coasts and a good way inland from Namaqualand on the West Coast of South Africa all the way to KwaZulu-Natal on the Eastern Coast. Perhaps among all those different habitats there is one in which the berries appear at Christmas.

Christmas berry, Chironia baccifera

I love these protea cones though I can’t remember which member of the protea family this shrub belongs to.

Protea cone

This time of year brings the most magnificent sunsets and with friends staying we often take a sunset walk with the dogs. We’ve had tremendous winds this spring and suddenly over Christmas they’ve dropped and the weather has been perfect, sunny but not too hot. The air is amazing, a light breeze, slight damp dew falling as the sun goes down. Fewer flowers perhaps but the valley below us is a theatre of glorious changing light.