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February
1
Another
perfect effing day in Paradise. It was still, calm, warm, with a
suspicion of champagne in the air wafting off the sea when I took
the pets for a walk this morning. Arlene's
Toy Poms , Candy and Susie, are rapidly turning into real dogs,
having seen the real world for the first time on these Cliff-top
walks. This morning I had to hold them back from chasing a colony of
rock-rabbits, poised on pinnacles of rock directly above the sea.
The entire family of dassies faced us and squeaked in unison.
Susie and Candy stood on their hindlegs and snapped back. Last week,
off their leashes, Susie managed to corner a small rock rabbit in the
split of a rock. The split was only about 10cms high, but ran far
back into the rock-face. Susie managed to get far enough in so that
only her flattened hindlegs were visible while her big 'sister'
ran round and over the rock, yapping madly. Candy also chases
Francolins, and when I finally taught her to fetch a stick she became
so exited she bit me and tore my shirt - near the shoulder!
I
am alarmed at the fact that I find it so hard, nearly impossible, to
sit down at this infernal machine. In Johannesburg I couldn't
wait to spend eight or ten hours hitting the plastic buttons and
swearing at the computers minor ideosyncracies. Now, with so much
beckoning outside, it's
like sitting in the dentists chair. And the pc resents my attitude
and the sharp salt air. It shortcuts all sorts of things and waxes
temperamental while I invent new curses upon its blank face.
The
perfect day changes mood as I write. Looking up from this desk I can
see that the sparkling, dark-blue sea is beginning to fleck with
white, and there is a grey wall of mist approaching from the West.
Interesting. I ought to be out there.
The
cliff walk continues to be fascinatingly different on every occasion.
Just when I think I prefer the scramble under the cliffs and along
the rocks at low-tide, I discover new things on the top path. "Did
you see that the cliff lilies are out!"
said a man I met above the "little
island". He was carrying
a rubbish bag, and turned out to be Brian (?) Ankerfell(?) one of the
activists on the "Keep
Hermanus Beautiful"
committee. Only moments before John ("our"
John Mlilo) and I had seen our first lily around the corner, a
glowing red candle sprouting right beside the path. And I had noticed
that, almost overnight, the fynbos had transformed with numbers of
trees bursting into bloom and shrubs changing colour and shape after
a few hours of misty rain. February is the most colourful month in
the fynbos - but of course the colours change every fortnight or so.
"Look
down there in that kloof,"
said a woman whom I often encounter on the path. "See
that red flower?" I
dont often see red, but
instead of explaining, I just nodded in agreement. "Soon
that whole little valley will be red with April Fool candles. . .
now here's the way to get
down there. See!" she
added, pushing aside a bush on the side of the main path. "It
doesn't look like a
side-path, but it goes straight down the rocks to that stretch of
fynbos." Enjoyed her
enthusiasm, so didn't
tell her I often walked there, and had seen the April Fool
(Hianethum???) a week earlier. Why spoil the magic?
Barry
T and I took a stroll along the cliff, going east the other day. He
showed me the (three-leaf) family, opening new doors of awareness for
me. Apart from the genus and its variations, I suddenly noticed that
each bush adapts its shape, size and "plumage"
to its position in the wind, on the rocks, or in a place where it has
to fight for space and light. There are dwarfs and giants of the
same species everywhere. "Look",
said John M. "These
bushes are cut like a hedge. I wondered who did such a big job, so
neatly, until I could it it was the wind that turned those bushes
into a very smart hedge."
Today
I visited Serenity and found it was trying to be a duckpond. The sea
was flat and low, with swells lipping the ledge of the pool and
pouring back in waterfalls to the waves. The pool itself was
unrippled; a mirror to the sky and disturbed only by dozens of
seagulls paddling up and down like domestic ducks. Candy finally
drove them back to the sea, but failed to alarm the oyster catchers
on the ledges beyond.
The
other day was oystercatcher day. Just as robins take over our little
world on one day, and prinias have a monopoly the next, followed by
Lesser striped Swallows on the third, the other day belonged solely
to oystercatchers. |
