Cape Town and Simon's Town

We arrived in Cape Town on December 27. One of our first views was of the beautiful Table Mountain that overlooks the city.

The next morning we tried to take the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain, but the line was ridiculously long so we left. It was a nice view, even from the lower station. We ended up visiting the South African National Museum and wandering around the Company's Gardens. The Gardens were originally created by the Dutch East India Trading Company to grow produce for their voyages.

The next day, we took the city train to Simon's Town, a small beach-front town on False Bay, about an hour's ride by train from Cape Town. The train tracks ran directly on the beach for half of the trip, so it was a beautiful ride. Though it's so windy here that sometimes the sand from the beach would start to blow in through the windows so you had to close them or risk looking like a sugar doughnut. From the train station, we walked a couple kilometers to Boulder's Beach where there is a colony of African penguins that you can view up close. The penguins are still endangered, but clearly they felt safe on this secluded beach.

We also viewed the Castle of Cape Hope, previously on the sea front but now about a half kilometer into town due to land reclamation. This fortress was built in the 1600s and is the oldest building still in use in South Africa. We viewed the daily 'handing over of the keys' ceremony. Close by was the District 6 museum - a memorial of sorts to the thousands of Cape Town residents who were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated away from the center of town in the 1960s when this district was rezoned as a 'white zone.' Their homes were subsequently razed.

On New Year's Eve we did a group wine tour to four wineries near Cape Town. One wine we tried that is unique to South Africa is Pinotage. They had a lot of other nice reds as well. In the evening, we ventured down to the V&A (Victoria & Albert) Waterfront to take part in their big New Year's celebration. There was live music, food vendors, tons of people, and a rather anti-climactic countdown. It was still good to be there and be part of it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Spice Island

We made it to Zanzibar, an island that's part of Tanzania, known for its beaches, spice plantations and former slave trade. The main city on the island is called Zanzibar Town, with the oldest part of the city called Stone Town. We wandered through the winding, narrow streets for a day while, bought spices at the central market, and had dinner at the outdoor gardens. We also did a cooking class with our hotel's cook, toured a spice plantation, and went to a nearby beach with a sweet Danish couple that was also staying at our hotel (the hotel was outside Stone Town and the beach it was on was not the best for swimming.)

Skewers of seafood for dinner.

Fusion seafood lunch.

 Reading at our beach front hotel.

 A classic Zanzibar door.

 A Christmas tree in the Anglican cathedral.

 Spice plantation tour: pineapple

 Jack fruit

 Lemongrass

 Nutmeg

 Dhows viewed from our hotel.

 Hakuna matata beach.

Lions and rhinos and dik diks, oh my!

As I write this, we are on the beach in Zanzibar. We finished our safari yesterday. It was an amazing experience seeing Tanzania's national parks.

On the first day, we visited Ngorongoro crater. It is the largest intact caldera in the world. Inside, there is an extraordinary collection of animals. Because the crater has ample food and water, and due to the steep crater walls, most of the animals do not migrate in and our of the crater. We saw a lot of animals in the crater: zebras, wildebeest, hartebeest, several types of gazelles, warthogs, hippos, hyenas, elephants, many birds, one female lion and one black rhino. The rhino is particularly rare, as much of their population has been poached nearly to extinction. Apparently, rhino horn is thought to be an aphrodisiac in China, so poachers are paid obscene amounts of money to kill them and take their horns. It is an incredible waste of one of the world's beautiful animals, all for an absurd purpose. We were fortunate to be able to spot one.

We stayed on a coffee plantation that night, which was a delight. The next morning, we headed to lake manyara. The lake is home to more than 200 species of birds. We also saw hundreds of baboons, black faced monkeys, blue monkeys, giraffes, and many of the animals we had seen the previous day. At one point, we saw several hundred baboons in a single group, which isn't a common thing to see.

After the lake, we visited Tarangire national park, where we camped for two nights. The park is not very large, but it is home to thousands of elephants. Some of these are very old, very large elephants. On the first night, at sunset, a herd of elephants came to our camp to eat the trees near the site. It was intimidating to be so close to such a large animal. We rose early the next morning for a sunrise game drive. Almost immediately, we saw a cheetah. We watched as it stalked in the grass, looking for prey. Eventually, it ran after a pair of jackals. They got into a bit of a barking match before the cheetah trotted off into the bush. Later that morning we watched a female lion and three cubs laying in the sun on top of a ledge. It was also in Tangarire that we were introduced to the dik dik. These were the cutest animal we saw. They are a deer the size of a small dog. Super cute!

We did a lot of other drives, saw a lot of elephants, impala, waterbucks, and a lot of other animals I'm sure I've left of the list. It was a fantastic experience, and all the staff from the safari company were great. A very special thanks to out terrific driver, Aimi.

Now we are on Zanzibar, relaxing for a few days.

African air

We arrived at 2am after a long day of travel. The first thing that struck us was the smell in the air. When you arrive somewhere for the first time, you notice the change in smell right away. You will never notice it as much as that first moment when you get off the plane. It smelled just how you would expect Africa to smell. Fresh air, with flowers and grass and clean jungle.

Luckily, we were greeted by our friendly driver and Ben's brother. (Ben is a friend from Madison who owns the safari company we are using.) After a short land rover trip, we were at our hotel, where we crashed for the night.

This morning, we were greeted by the music of goats, roosters and children playing nearby. Today is a chill day, with a trip to Arusha and dinner with Ben's brother tonight.

Fall Colors

This was an especially gorgeous fall. The combination of reasonable moisture and moderate temperatures meant that the trees achieved their maximum color and it lasted a long time. My street, lined with sugar maples, was beautiful. My annuals and summer blubs didn't die until the end of October, a couple weeks after typical frost here in Madison.

I planted a new kind of bulb in our terrace this fall - Colchicum cilicicum, sometimes called (inaccurately) 'Fall crocus.' I planted them in September and within a few weeks they were blooming. It's pretty cool to see this pink, crocus-type plant in fall. Unexpected.

Peak of Summer

I realize it's no longer the peak of summer, but with all the craziness that is my job in September, I'm just now getting around to posting some September pictures. This is the sci-fi garden that I planted for Adam. The purple leafy plant is an elder, Sambucus nigra 'Black Lace', that died nearly to the ground last winter. While the plant survived just fine, it never flowered. I take that to mean it flowers on old wood? Either way, the foliage is lovely. I also have some dahlias, grasses, calamintha, and coneflowers.

This is my back bed. It's a mixture of perennials, woodies, and annuals. I get a lot of self-seeding coreopsis (the parent plants died a long time ago, but it makes plenty of babies), and I noticed that my smooth asters - the tiny blue flowers - made some babies as well this year. That's ok with me because it's a nice, native plant, attractive to bees, and the rabbits usually eat their share.The larger-leafed plant in front is Stachys byzantina) 'Helen Von Stein' and it's a really nice foliage plant. Other lamb's ears have unattractive flowers, but this cultivar hasn't bloomed yet.

Here's another picture of my favorite Benary's Giant zinnias, just because I can't get enough of them. They finally died last weekend (late October).

Here are some pictures of my tropical garden. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I finally cleared it out this past weekend, and it took a garden saw to cut down the castor bean plants. I'm planning to try to save the canna and dahlia tubers. They died this past weekend and I'm giving them a week to store up their energy for winter. I'll give an update in the spring as to how they fared.

Summer is Flying By

This is one of the best times of year. The butterflies are in full force, the garden is producing, and just about every day is gorgeous. It's days like today that make that long, cold winter tolerable.

I don't normally plant squash, simply because i don't have enough room. I do, however, eat a lot of squash. Which means that squash seeds find their way to the compost bin and since the compost bin is pretty much an ideal growing condition (though it is in the shade), those seeds sprout. So before i knew it this year, i had giant squash plants and tomato plants. So far we've harvested three delicata-like squashes. There's also an acorn squash and just-about-ripe sungold tomatoes. Which is actually quite a fortuitous thing since the sungold plant i purchased has not grown much at all.

The zinnias are in full bloom. These are, if not my favorite flower, very nearly so.

 

Last year i planted a few Lilium asiatica 'Casa Blanca' lilies. The rabbits promptly ate two of them (which ended up surprising me and returning this year, but they weren't very big). The third one escaped the worst damage, but was eaten just before blooming. This year it bloomed and it was everything i had hoped for. Really large, bright white, fragrant flowers.

 

 

The purple coneflowers continue to run away with my prairie garden. But I regularly see monarch and yellow swallowtail butterflies on them as well as tons of bees. Sometimes you have to pick your battles.