The pines have their own charms though. When you’re raised on European culture and JRR Tolkien - and our spectacular African scenery is just the backdrop to life - it was easy to romanticise this slightly exotic landscape. But it doesn’t really belong here and as such it lacks the intense diversity of our native biomes. The one upside though is that it provides a living for fungi from Europe which extrude bizarre fruits out of the ground and bark after rains.
The native forests of Table Mountain. Dense and ringing with the calls of forest birds - unlike the bare alien pine forests that still linger on some slopes.
My camera battery charger has been rediscovered. So I took it for a long walk in the woods on the mountainside this morning. It’s really striking how many more birds you hear when you leave the alien pines and enter the indigenous forest. Now that I recognise the eerie, jaunty call of the Sombre Bulbul, I can hear that the forest is lousy with them. I also spotted a Cape Batis.
@withoutaleaf merrily teaches T to break the laws of God and men on our outing with @goflow42 and @jason66c to Kirstenbosch for a bit of apocalypse relief.
Having the house thoroughly cleaned is a deep joy for us but a nightmare for Trinket for whom the vacuum is a combination of the devil, Godzilla, and Voldemort. She’s fled the house for most of the day.
Kane pauses to punch some navigation data into the hyperdrive.
This wonderful chap took me out onto a sea of teal glass in which every denizen of the kelp gardens was clearly visible. We drifted past dozy seals on sea rocks otherwise speckled with cormorants, gulls, and oyster-catchers. Strange little barrel jellies hovered in space. Just one of the best outings I’ve ever been on.
We were in Walmer Estate yesterday to pick something up. It’s such an attractive neighbourhood - #notaninvitationtogentrifyit This hair-dresser, corner store is a reminder of the vanishing corner stores that used to be ubiquitous in Cape Town. We call them Cafés for some reason - although we often pronounce it ‘Kaif.’ I have no idea why. You couldn’t buy coffee in them usually when they were everywhere when I was a kid. This hairdresser has supplemented its advertising with a graffito of a very strangely proportioned young man.
@withoutaleaf enjoying some well-deserved time off after over a 100 days shooting long hours. Convenient being able to stay home during the SA third COVID surge too. We’re both half vaxxed now though.
Saw my dear friend Marcus with my own eyes for the first time in nearly a year and a half. Got filled in on his major plans and events - the way this COVID time seems to have swept everyone’s personal history along like it’s swept global history along. I rode out to meet him in Keurboom Park and then we hung out on our old high school fields. When we were kids, the only thing we liked about that shitty old fashioned school were the vast, luxurious grounds. ...