To the Cederberg and beyond

We had a family get-away in the Beautiful Cederberg this long-weekend. What we discovered was that Life is hard (very hard) without electricity! Especially when it's 45 in the shade!! That's degrees Celcius!! I felt like I could die! I haven't been that HOT in a long time! Luckily in the end we had a great time and everybody enjoyed their stay, more so when the weather cooled off a bit!

 

 

Cederberg

 

The weather in the Cederberg is very fickle, the one night sprinkled water would evaporate from your face in 5 seconds, the other we actually slept with a double-thick duvet it was so chilly. So if you do venture there - be prepared!! And I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in midsummer! No way!!!

 

 

Jenni's morning walkies

Out of control?

Runner bean

In the 2 weeks since I last had a good walk about the garden and especially after the garden services have skipped a week of weeding everything feels SO out of control!! I have drastically underestimated the space needed by tomatoes, the gourds have started growing into everything and down the gabion walls and the lettuces are in desperate need of contributing to the compost heap. One thing I also know is that I won't ever plant plectranthus (the green-grey groundcover variety) in a garden ever again! Unless there's a large infertile slope or rockery I wish to cover up quickly. They are almost an invader!! I have trimmed them back 3 times already in the past 2 months! I don't even bother with secateurs I just rip big chunks of them out with a twist of the hand and chuck them in a far-away corner... the problem is they just don't die, they start growing roots and settle themselves in the new spot. I think I will slowly but surely remove all of them from the back garden completely, they're quite a pest with all the water we're giving the young, more tender plants. I think I will remove all the overgrown ones and throw them on the side of our garden where there's no sprinklers, hopefully they will die then and provide a bit of mulch?

I will also have to seriously work through the veggie patch! The rocket's taking over, the celery is looking dire and I think everything could do with a good trim or clearing out! I think I'll start up some new seeds and then plant them out when there's space after the cleanup. I must admit: this gardening project is much harden than I imagined it would be! It requires more than just a few hours a week and I haven't even given it that much attention since Jenni arrived. So I guess it's not that difficult, but you can't leave it unsupervised for more than a few days!! I will have to rescue the tomatoes and maybe trim them back a little because my whole little "support" I built has tumbled over under their weight... monster tomatoes!

 Scooby snack... ?