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Could try harder

Posted on May 28, 2016 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

The blog has suffered because I’ve gone back to school. I’m doing a Masters in Philosophy in Coaching (MPhil means you do a significant research piece, that’s for next year). Weeks like this one, spent at the business school, are intensive and in between there’s lots of study and lots of writing. Along with launching my new business there’s just about time to run but not much time to write about it.

One of the subjects I was thinking about tonight on the run was the challenge of confidence and humility in business leaders, and specifically in myself as a leader and a coach. I’d say I don’t have enough of either. Confidence isn’t too hard to think about. I don’t want to waffle on so in a nutshell, in many ways confidence is everything, it allows you to be grounded and forget yourself so that you can immerse yourself in the flow of whatever it is you are doing. Lacking an edge of confidence might not be a bad thing though. In my case it’s the endless “could try harder” I got as a child instead of positive reinforcement in the form of praise. Yet it gives me an edge, makes me work a bit harder. I’m a bit of an Avis type: I may not be No 1 but I try do harder.

Humility as a notion is altogether more difficult. I’m trying to uncouple the notion from the famous role models like Mandela, Ghandi and Mother Teresa. They may be shining examples of humility but it’s a public and political humility. The kind I’m trying to understand is a humility that a great business leader or star sportsman or woman can epitomise. Utterly genuine, held in a context of great work or great sporting success. How can you develop and encompass that humility? Indeed what is it?

These are the questions the study leads me to consider…

The evening was mild with heat from the warm day beating up into the cooling air and as we ran along the path at the very top of the farm we came across one of my favourite flowering bulbs, the gold and brown Gladiolus maculata. Elegant and queenly, the flower heads arched into the path in front of us.

Gladiolus maculata

The small brown Afrikaner

The Eriocephalus africanus is early this year compared to last – as are many flowers – the warm wet autumn must have a lot to do with it.

Eriocephalus africana

Wild rosemary

As we ran down the mountain Maebh paused and the last rays from the west caught the ghostly tips of her coat, illuminating her in the evening light.

I have so many other flowers to post, but this magical evening run deserved a blog to itself.

Irish Wolfhound

The Vulnerable – Leucospermum lineare

Posted on August 11, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

Leucospermum Lineare – The Vulnerable

Delicate, tumbling down the slopes beside the drive, the Vulnerable as Lucospermum lineare is known, is one of the sights of winter and early spring. It is rare and endangered and safe with us.

What a weekend! Why do we think: let’s do a dinner party on Thursday, and then, yes, another one on Friday, leftovers on Saturday but oh my goodness a long long Sunday lunch at the gorgeous and delicious Overture Restaurant in the Hidden Valley where we plumbed the depths, the deepest depths, of their wine cellar? And got home at 9pm. From lunch. Personally I blame the wonderful and very talented Niall who has been here coaching dressage and who likes the good life just as much as we all do and is thoroughly good company, so everybody wants to spend time with him when he’s here and we like to entertain him.

So I didn’t get out on the farm this morning, but I managed to stagger out with the dogs for a lovely time on Saturday afternoon which was much more about the flowers than the running. The Babinia fragrans are all over the place now – one of the prettiest and commonest flowering bulbs on the farm. Once they flower everything else seems to start bursting with life.

Babinia fragrens

On the drive, growing now among the Morea tripelata is a delicate little flower which I have not identified.

Ixia

Seen from the back

And the side

And talking of Morea, as we ran down the path to the waterfall I saw this, which made me stop and look twice. It looks very like an oxalis, but the colour is darker than most, the leaf not the same and it lacks the common yellow throat. Also, the Oxalis petals grow in an Escher-like (would that be Escherian?) spiral, where this has three top petals and three bottom petals. As I flicked though the Encyclopedia of bulbs I suddenly recognised it – Morea veriscolor. Lovely to find something new and learn a new flower as well.

Morea veriscolor

Morea veriscolor, showing the leaves

We stopped for a drink of course and Seamus took his usual spot in the stream, peeking at us through the ferns.

Seamus peeking through the ferns

All over the farm and probably all over the country the tickberry is in flower. This is one of those plants that has been renamed – it used to be known as Chrysanthemoides monilifera but now has been reclassified as Osteospermum moniliferum. It grows wild all over South Africa and is found in lots of gardens as well.

Massed tickberry shrubs growing wild on the mountain

Tickberry flowers

Osteospermum moniliferum

Another very common shrub is known as the climber’s friend, cliffortia ruscifolia. Quite a stocky and strong rooted shrub, which must be why it is known as the climber’s friend, it certainly can’t be much fun to have to grab these brutal prickles.

The climber’s prickly friend

Cliffortia ruscifolia

We’ve cleared lots of lands over the winter and although I always worry about how much fynbos we take off it creates room for new growth. The iPhone does a brilliant job of photographing flowers but not the delicate massed scattering of daisies and Babinia fragens in a field of buchu. At the top of the field are masses of little yellow daisies. I couldn’t find them in the book until I realised that the buttonwood daisy can have yellow petals as well as white. This is not a great photo of this tiny flower as the light was hot and yellow.

Cotula turbinata

Just at the top of the waterfall a single Red Hot Poker, Knophofia uvaria has emerged.

And along the road I saw this flower that I didn’t recognise at all but it was on the first page that I opened in one of my books. It is Metalasia divergens.

Metalasia divergens

And one last flower seen on this run. I’ve spotted some new Pelargoniums that I don’t think I’ve documented before and we’ll be off in the morning if the light is good to see if we can get some shots of them.

Meanwhile this pretty Erica is different from all the others I’ve documented so far this year. Pretty soft grey leaves distinguish it from others, as does the slightly different shape of the pink bells. It’s gorgeous.

Erica with soft grey leaves

A spring morning

Posted on August 3, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

On Friday evening the neighbours came to dinner and arrived early for a flower safari. Wonderful to have neighbours who love the mountain as much as we do and who appreciate how special it is. I took them on the old doctors road to see the waterfall which is pounding in its winter splendor. There are hundreds of flowers at this time of year, the wildflower spring commences long before flowers come to the garden. We discovered the old doctor’s road when Peter cleared a veritable forest of wattles along the river; they had overgrown this road and below it, a small but spectacular waterfall. Now this place is a haven for the fynbos which grew back the instant the trees were cleared.

From there we walked up to the weir, a favourite spot and much photographed for this blog because of the magic of the magnificent, ancient, white trunked Ilex Mitis trees, and then on up, above the weir and close to the top of the farm. The sun was setting behind the Paarderberg mountain; a soft mist gathered in the valley below, the evening was completely still, silent, breathless. The gentle warmth of a mild sunny winter’s day coming from the earth beneath our feet. As it grew darker the full dams in the valley gleamed the reflection of the evening sky into the stillness of the coming night. “It’s like a holy place” said Francois, “there’s something spiritual about it.”

Dinner was companionable, cheerful and as we are in wine tasting mode for Christopher’s wedding in January, a little too much drink was taken. Our guests left us late, very happy, as were we.

Perhaps a little less so the following morning when the full consequences of overindulgence emerged, but not enough to prevent me from donning the running clothes and setting off with the wolfhounds and Jemima Chew into the gloomy grey morning on a serious mission to photograph flowers for the blog. The first Babinia fragrens has appeared which is for me the harbinger of spring, and with it shrubs, little trees and tiny plants have burst into flower. I won’t post the Babinia, as there will be thousands more, I didn’t get a great photo and there is so much else to post. It rained heavily during the night, those very still evenings often indicate a change in weather and flowers were covered in raindrops. To my delight I’ve identified two new flowers that I don’t remember seeing last year and which turn out to be related. The first is Hermannia saccifera and the second is Hermannia hyssopifolia, a pretty and sizeable shrub with an unusual flower that has a pin-hole throat and this urn shaped body, called a calyx. Absolutely recognisable when I read the description, there is nothing quite like it.

Hermannia saccifera

Hermannia hyssopifolia

The Hermannia hyssopifolio grows in an area that Peter cleared last year, cutting through old fynbos and finding a large flat area where we least expected it, evidence of terracing by a farmer long ago. A stream runs through this area and shrubs and there is prolific growth along it’s banks, including this sprawling shrub with its sticky leaves and tar-like smell. It’s known as the tar pea, Bolusafra biuminosa, and grows, appropriately enough, along mountain streams.

Bolusafra bitumenosa, the tar pea

Another new identification also grows in this area, Phylica oleaefolia, with these pretty ranks of pale green, cupped flowers. This is quite a tall elegant shrub.

Philyca oleaefolia

We went down to an area where I haven’t been for a while and some of the yellow daisies are still flowering, the Athanasia trifurcata and the Osteospermum spinosum that I mentioned on a blog a couple of months ago. I love when the flower matches the book’s comments perfectly, particularly as the photos don’t always. The Athanasia trifucatum, says the book, has wedge shaped grey leaves, 3-5 toothed at the tips. If you look closely at the leaves in this photo you can clearly see the three teeth.

Osteospermum spinosum

Athanasia trifucatum

In the same place grows a tiny pelargonium, one of my favourite flowers which grows all year round in different parts of the farm. I think it’s Pelargonium myrrhifolium, var. myrrhifolium.

Pelargonium myrrhifolium varr. myrrhifolium

Along the road we walked on Friday night, which I call Erica Alley for the many varieties of Erica that make their home there, are several stunning varieties in flower. Two beautiful examples of the common Erica plukenetii, showing the range of colour, from white with very pale pink, to coral. And some with pretty pink bells in many shades, as well as this lovely white Erica where the bells grow in ranked series but which I have never identified.

Erica plunketii

Erica Plunketii

Erica with tiny pink bells

White Erica, with the flowers growing in orderly rows

A close up of the white Erica showing the tiny protruding anthers

Another pretty shrub which I have not managed to identify. The flowers are green and tiny; so tiny that a single raindrop captures several of them.

And a small tree-like shrub flowering in several places on the farm with prolific drooping flower heads, but I can’t find it in the book.

More familiar friends include Stachys aethiopica, also known as woundwort with it’s mint shaped leaves and pretty little pinky-white flowers.

Stachys aethiopica

All over the farm the buchu is in flower. Agthomsa, mostly crenulata, or a crenulata hybrid, though we also grow lots of Agthomsa betulina. Buchu, the common name, loves the sandy mountain soil and especially the north facing slopes on the farm. The flowers are mostly white but sometimes pretty shades of pink and lilac.

Agthomsa, or buchu with pink flowers

I couldn’t resist capturing Protea burchellii looking stunning in the grey morning light as well as the Leucadendron tinctum. These yellow flower heads will soon turn the most wonderful shade of coral – they are prolific on the mountain and grow in massed groups in certain areas.

Protea burchellii

Leucadendron tinctum

All in all we had a wonderful time, the dogs and I. As a run it wasn’t up to much but as a morning spent together on the mountain, it was the best of times. Maebh has boundless energy and was particularly happy to find a mongoose to chase. He is much much cleverer than she, there was never a chance of her catching him, but she was very pleased with her morning.

Maebh hunting in the olive groves, her coat dark from running in the soaking wet fynbos

Uncategorized

Aliens and Ericas

Posted on July 24, 2014 by fynbosblog 3 comments

This storm was promised; the weather forecasting in this part of the world is so good that they predicted the first drops of rain almost to the minute. And here it is, cold, wet, miserable weather so that when I look out of the window I can’t even see the dam, never mind the lights of Paarl in the valley below. We are holed up in the study, watching 24 with Jemima Chew curled up before the fire snuffling and squeaking and hunting in her dreams.

I am getting carried away again and the point of tonight’s blog is to catch up with some flowers that I haven’t posted yet. First of all two different Ericas. I’m not sure which ones they are – both have tiny tiny flowers, several would fit on my little fingernail.

The tiny pink Erica flower

Pink Erica

White Erica

The next is the gorgeous Moraea tripetala. These little Iris-like flowers grow on the driveway and are a joy to see when they emerge each year. Typical bulbs, one day there is nothing and the next, stunning flowers emerge in their full glory.

Moraea tripetala

After the floods of rain last week we went out on a dark damp evening for fresh air and an evening run. After so much rain a lot of flowers were ravaged and new ones hadn’t yet emerged but this rain-soaked Protea nerifolia glowed a rich red-pink in the gloom.

Protea nerifolia

The driveway is one of the most prolific areas on the farm, or at least the one that I see the most. Another shrub in flower at the moment is this Felicia filifolia.

Felicia filifolia

Aliens!

We spend a lot of time and money taking out aliens. Some are pines from the forest next door and here is one in flower – they might be aliens but these are pretty flowers all the same.

Another is this elegant tree. It is a type of wattle I think – but far prettier than most. The leaves are silvery grey and in summer I use them in flower arrangements and to decorate the house at Christmas. At the moment it is in full flower and makes an elegant flowering tree.

Grey wattle with yellow flowers

Young pine in flower

Finally I can’t resist posting this particularly splendid sunset from last week.

Roaring waters

Posted on July 21, 2014 by fynbosblog Leave a comment

We had some turbulent weather last week and I lay in bed morning after morning listening to the rain battering the roof and feeling no desire whatsoever to leave my warm, wolfhound laden bed to go running in the wet coldness outside. Thus is the road to perdition paved with good intentions. Night after night I go to bed and promise myself a morning run. Morning after morning I lie in the snug warmth and don’t go anywhere. Paths go untrodden, flowers unphotographed, dogs unexercised

On Saturday the rain stopped and in the evening we finally ran up the soaking wet mountain in poor light with little to see and charming only to us. We ran via the waterfall, roaring white in the dull evening light.

Today dawned grey once more, but no rain. We were taking the young horse to a show, so there was no chance of a morning run, but after a happy day of showjumping at Noordhoek, I came home to glorious sunshine and enthusiastic dogs. The only possible answer was to go out on the mountain. I’m not sure it could entirely be described as a run. I walked most of the uphill and we made several detours into wilder bits of fynbos to examine and inspect. The dogs were delirious with happiness, noses a-quiver and constantly dashing off into the bush after wild things, real or imaginary.

There was a lot to see: first the pounding waterfall, white with pounding roaring water.

We stopped at the weir for a drink (for the dogs, not me) and I took a series of strangely beautiful photos of Seamus. The sun was shining through the trees and catching his coat, confusing the camera. He lay in front of the magnificent Ilex Mitus, the Cape Holly with its gleaming silvery green trunk.

Seamus in the eerie evening light enjoying a drink while resting in the stream under the Ilex Mitis

Higher up the mountain we ran into fynbos as the light became ever more golden. The pink Protea burchellii and the first Protea nitida of the year. We had to bash through some bush to get to Protea nitida. This colony scatters an area of the mountain on top of the farm and they tend to flower quite late. This is the first of these graceful silver trees to flower.

Protea Burchellii

Protea Nitida

We took a little detour to the stream that leads off our land to the forest and came across some Microloma tenufolia. Never easy to capture, it somehow works well against the lime green leaves of the Lucadendron salignum and you can see the tenuous climber’s twisted stem quite clearly. The colour is amazing, always pinker in a photo than its more coral reality.

Miroloma tenufolia

Microloma tenufolia stands out against the brilliant colour of the female Lucadendron salignum

The Buchu that we grow commercially on the farm is in full flower and on the way down the mountain we stopped and in the perfect light just after sunset caught this flower-spangled shrub by the road.

Agthomsa crenulata

We had wonderful weather before the rains this week and there is a backlog of blog photos to post, along with splendid tales of the morning light as it hits the Simonsberg, the Paarderberg and Paarl Mountain and of the evening sun as it catches the water in the dams below us and they gleam golden, pink or red and orange. But those are tales for another day.

Running in between the flying

Posted on June 17, 2014 by fynbosblog One comment

When I got home from Nairobi last week little Jemima Chew was not looking her usual self. She’s what the South African’s call a ‘pavement special’, an SPCA rescue dog who arrived in our lives shortly after Seamus. Although quieter than the attention seeking wolfhounds, she’s a lovely dog and often ends up a favourite with guests. She also gets bullied by Maebh as a result of which she now sleeps on our bed at night while the hounds sleep in the kitchen. A perfect outcome from her point of view.

Jemima Chew (named for the Jimmy Choo boots she very nearly destroyed as a puppy) is always alert, always ready for action and always hungry. So when she was down in the dumps, refusing food and clearly off colour we were quite worried. Especially when Peter told me she’d been that way for a couple of days. She didn’t have a temperature, but in our part of the world you worry about biliary and I found a couple of ticks on her. We rushed her to the vet and although she didn’t have biliary she did end up on a drip for 24 hours. Poor girl, she’s so tough that in six years its’s the first time she’s ever had to go to the vet. By Sunday she was home, feeling much better, wagging her tail and demanding dinner.

Here she is in the misty afternoon light a week later. It poured with rain all last weekend but stopped early enough on Sunday afternoon for us to go for a quick run before I had to leave for the airport. This blog is being written on a plane between London and Frankfurt.

Jemima Chew, fully recovered

The light was fantastic and made the grove of Ilex Mitis by the weir look like a scene from The Hobbit. Seamus and Maebh put on their best performances for this photo.

Scene from The Hobbit, starring Seamus and Maebh

The waterfall, which I posted only a few days ago, is now white with pounding water – we must have had 30mm of rain at least and the farm is soaking wet.

Water!

One lovely result of a few days of rain is all the bird activity when it stops, especially as this is the mating season for most of our birds. We took a different route through the fynbos today and saw lots of Cape Sugarbirds having battles over the girls. The iphone which I used for all my flower photos is much less good at caputuring fauna but I did manage to get one image of the sugarbird inspecting his territory from the top of a Protea repens.

If you look closely you can see the Cape Sugarbird with his long tail

Not so many flowers on this run – the rain, followed by some sun, means there should be some new things to see next weekend when I get home. This is a new protea gleaming in the soft winter light. I have promised myself I will be stricter on identity this year, but I’m not sure what this subspecies is.

Unidentified pink Protea

No problem identifying Chasmanthe aethiopica which we have posted before. This group grows higher on the mountain on a different part of the farm – a damp shady area just below the weir. Such a lovely flowering bulb and reliably reminds me of the damp sweet smelling Irish spring where it grows wild on the verges and in the hedgerows.

Chasmathe aethiopica

Another shot of the graceful and beautifully coloured Chasmanthe aetheopica

Torrid days and windy nights on the mountain

Posted on April 17, 2014 by fynbosblog 2 comments

The Western Cape sat under a torrid heatwave last week and over the weekend. I watched the new plants in the garden anxiously, hoping they wouldn’t give up the ghost on us but with plenty of watering they seem to have survived the worst. It suddenly cooled on Monday, still sunny but a good 10 degrees cooler – 28 is very different from 38. And cool and damp in the evening, enough to need a sweater. With the cooler weather came the wind, howling and screaming around the mountain, stronger at night, trying to get the roof off, blow the trees down and blasting the autumn leaves off the trees.

Yesterday I had an early start dropping Peter to the airport, so I couldn’t run and by the time I got home in the evening after a day of meetings and errands I’d taken a pill for an incoming migraine, which also precludes running. So the dogs and I went walking instead. The wind howled around us, but the mountain was beautiful, glorious even, with the sun setting in the western sky. I sometimes wonder why I don’t take crisper photos, and last night was a good reminder of the answer to that. I defy anyone to take a perfectly crisp photo when the subject is leaping, dancing or even merely quivering in the wind. Still, with a lot of patience we captured a few flowers in between the gusts. This time of year is exciting with lots of new growth and even flowering bulbs starting to push their way above the ground. Some of the flowers we won’t see until August are already sending forth their shoots and it’s fun to recognize them as old friends.

An old friend from one of my earliest blogs is this, very common, plant. Last year I incorrectly identified it as a Crassula but I know better now. There is a resemblance to the Metalasia family, in part because of the rolled leaves with tufts of smaller leaves in the axis. But the the flowers don’t fit. Another for the unidentified file though it is irritating when the species is so common.

Unidentified and very common

The same flower in close up – impossible to get a perfect shot in the howling wind

The evening light in the olive groves was stunning

Even at the end of the summer there is still plenty of water coming down the fall

The wind took out our wifi connection, so this is written and sent in an early morning hurry from Cape Town International. We are off to the bush for Easter.

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

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.

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.