We made the big move on Friday 25th February 2005; I traveled in Lady Bird with Sam in the dog box and Tiger Lily in a basket on the back seat.
Tiger meowed from Cape Town to the Vlei, a distance of some 250 kilometers!
Nick followed in his bakkie with a trailer and our friend Jean was the rearguard with a bigger trailer.
We spent the first few days finding our feet and deciding on a modus vivendi for this funny old establishment, but we are pretty organised now and ready to receive guests!
Tiger Lily is amazed at the new world she finds herself in and has settled quickly, considering she is ten years old, she spends her days “hiding” in Nick’s “studio and workshop”, and ventures out at night, her eyes twice their normal size!
We are living in an old mud brick school house which has been converted into a kind of guest house; we have 4 big rooms with doors opening into the garden so it is bit like an old fashioned holiday camp.
The “living room” opens onto a large verandah covered in a creeper which sustains a family of witoegies (white eyes), several bulbuls and a large group of resident pied starlings.
In front of the verandah are 2 ancient manitoka trees propped up on poles the same way the Japanese keep their old trees upright, these trees provide shelter for Cape robins, barbets, sunbirds, Cape weavers, Cape sparrows and many other birds I have yet to identify.
The trees and creeper provide us with much needed shade on the hot days and the birds offer endless entertainment. The property is about two and a half acres in extent and over the years the weirdest collection of plants have been propagated; succulents, pelargoniums, aloes and all kinds of trees and daisies.
Needless to say this garden is providing me with a wonderful source of slips for our future garden on the other side of the vlei.
Nick has already done wonders with the irrigation system, and the place is coming back to life, having been rather neglected for a couple of months.
I have three bird baths going which have to be filled twice a day; they are so much in demand!
We are establishing a routine of rising early and watering the garden and then sitting about admiring the surroundings. Elands Bay is about 6 kilometers due west of here, so we drive down there when we want to walk on the beach, which runs 35 kilometers north to Lamberts Bay (long walk), or one can stay here and listen to the sea without moving.
Our neighbour, Johan, on the adjacent property, has lived here for 8 years and has established a veritable oasis; he has an orchard of lemons, oranges, grapefruit, granadillas, mangoes, bananas and papaws. Everything grows here for some reason, providing it has enough water and compost. He also has 2 baby springbok, 5 months old, whose mothers rejected them, and they are too sweet for words and “pronk” with ease floating high above the ground in their special bokkie camp. They have a bottle of formula every morning and eat out of his hand. The latest addition is a baby duiker that was found near death in a potato field, Johan reports he is responding well and beginning to eat, so I hope to meet him soon. I will try and get a picture of the bokkies and forward same.
We have finally received the go ahead vis a vis our heritage settlement area, so my next task will be to re-visit our house plans for re-submission all being well we should be able to begin building April/May, so do hold thumbs we have no more red tape.
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