This beautiful lily pops up just next to one of my cottages every year in Nov or December. For the rest of the year it looks like two or three shriveled leaves. It’s commonly known as a veld lily or river lily and is one of the Crinum lilies. I am still arguing with all my sources as to which one it is. Depending on the book or source, my crinum changes names.
I think it may be a crinum stuhlmannii but one of my books disagrees.
Anyone have an opinion?
This is the school where I painted one of my murals. Childrens Eco Training has sponsored the community gardens, the new school hall and the Eco classroom where I painted my mural. Although this school is dirt poor, one can see that they still take so much pride in their teaching environment. There is still quite a bit to be done and lots of equipment needed for this school.
Matikinya Primary School – Acornhoek
I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
So far this summer we have had quite a few cloudy days and lots of lovely rain. Not our normal blistering heat – but warm balmy humid days. The result is really thick green lush bush.
When you look at the picture above you really don’t see many colours, so it is quite surprising when you walk around and look closely at how many stunning spring flowers are blooming. I snapped a few on my daily walk.
Quite spectacular really.
One of my favorite trees growing here in the Lowveld is the sausage tree. Sadly it does not produce real meaty sausages but it does develop huge fruit shaped like giant sausages. These fruit have a tendency to drop on parked cars and make huge dents (just like coconuts) so don’t ever park under them.
I was thrilled when I saw that I had one near my cottages when I purchased the farm, but over the three years I have been here it has never produced fruit. It does have a lovely flower though.
The sausage tree, kigelia africana, occurs throughout tropical Africa from Eritrea and Chad south to northern South Africa, and west to Senegal and Namibia.
This is the one in my garden
Growing up to 20 m tall, the tree is evergreen where rainfall occurs throughout the year, but deciduous where there is a long dry season. The flowers (and later the fruit) hang down from branches on long flexible stems (2-6 metres long). Their scent is most notable at night indicating their reliance on pollination by bats, which visit them for pollen and nectar.
The fruit is a woody berry from 30–100 cm long and up to 18 cm broad; it weighs between 5–10 kg, and hang down on long, rope-like peduncles. The fruit pulp is fibrous and pulpy, and contains numerous seeds. It is eaten by several species of mammals, including baboons, bushpigs, elephants, giraffes, hippos, monkeys, and porcupines. The seeds are dispersed in their dung.
In African herbal medicine, the fruit is believed to be a cure for a wide range of ailments, from rheumatism, snake bites, evil spirits, syphilis, and even tornadoes. An alcoholic beverage similar to beer is also made from it. The fresh fruit is poisonous and strongly purgative; (ask my friend Vanessa who ate some!) The fruit are prepared for consumption by drying, roasting or fermentation. Kigelia is also used in a number of skin care products. Locally we use it mixed into aqueous cream to remove sun spots and solar keratosis’ very successfully. I keep a tub of it next to my bed and use it regularly.
For this reason, I was quite sad to see that my tree did not fruit, because I would have loved to have been able to make my own cream. I had assumed that I must have a male tree, but today as I was walking around the garden much to my surprise this is what I saw…….
Finally some fruit!
Onions have turned out to be the most complicated of all my crops this season. It took many questions and a handy book from my farmer friend (and now boyfriend 
)
Finally after 8 long months of growing, I have harvested my onions. I did pick and eat quite a few through the season as onions can be eaten at any time during their growing cycle.
One has to wait for 70% of your crops leaves to fall over, then bend over the remaining leaves and leave the bulbs in place in the soil for 7-10 days to go dormant. During these 7-10 days you may not water them and it must not rain (ha – try explaining that to my weather). You then pull them and leave them in full sun for one day and then outside in a warm, shaded, dry area for another week or so. Then you can plait them and store them in a dark dry area for many months.
It seems some of mine have gone dormant well but those with thick stems have not dried out yet. I think they might end up getting chopped and frozen.
I must say that I have been very impressed with the size of some of them.
As South Africa goes through the throws of a bitterly cold patch with a first-time-ever of snow in all nine provinces, I continue to harvest from my garden in sunshine. Incredible.
The girls however have decided that they want babies and all but Ethel have stopped laying. Ethel, my midget chicken, lays one tiny egg a day and the other three pile onto it to try to hatch it. So all three end up on top of each other on top of the tiny egg.
I wonder how long being broody lasts?
Despite the go-slow on egg production I have ended up having a few too many eggs as I have not been eating them, so I needed to make something. I am currently reading about, and learning, how to preserve foods, I decided to try pickling them. I had never eaten a pickled egg until last year when I gave it a try and I was surprisingly pleased with the taste. On investigation the recipes around are diverse and it seems anything goes as long as you include eggs and vinegar – so one can experiment with your own flavours.
Because my farm eggs are tiny I was able to fit twelve eggs into a large-ish size canning jar.
Hard boil the eggs and while they are boiling, boil up a cup or two of vinegar with some pickling spices and add whatever flavours you like. (Don’t forget some salt)
I used curry powder and turmeric (for yellow eggs) and a teaspoon or two of sugar just for that slightly sweet taste. I used my homemade pineapple vinegar which I think will be complimented by the curry flavour.
Chop up an onion (if you like) and put it in the bottom of your clean bottle and then pack in the peeled hard-boiled eggs. Cool your vinegar mix and pour this over your eggs. You can dilute your vinegar down with some water if you don’t like very vinegary pickles.
Store in the fridge for a week before you start eating them. They can be stored in your refrigerator in this way for months. My next batch I will make red by adding a beetroot to the mix. Delicious!
During the process of pickling the eggs I used up all my homemade pineapple vinegar so I quickly started a new batch of vinegar – apple this time.
You will need an apple (or just apple peels and core), some non-chlorinated water, a clean bottle and a bit of sugar. (For pineapple vinegar just use your scraps and peels)
Chop up the apple into chunks,
Place them in the bottle and cover with a tablespoon of sugar.
Fill to the top with water and cover with a piece of cloth and an elastic band (or string)
Leave to ferment outside of the fridge for a few weeks. (Don’t let it get too cold or else your living culture will die)
You will be able to smell when it first turns to wine and then to vinegar. Once the vinegar reaches the acidity and taste you enjoy strain it and bottle.
And finally, I eventually got a good photo showing you how Cleo ignores the giraffes around here. It never ceases to amaze me how she pretends they do not exist.
Some of you may remember that I was rather stressed about my brassicas not performing in the vegetable bed. They were growing very well but not making heads. Around that time I made a new friend who is a veggie farmer who kept on urging me to just wait. I read up about them and decided that I would have to pull them all up and start again. I was again urged to just wait.
My new friend came to visit me recently, and walked into my veggie garden and yanked a complete broccoli plant out of the ground. I nearly hit him over the head!
He showed me where I had J-rooted the plant but kindly (and probably because he saw my face) replanted the plant in the same spot. I did not hold out much hope for it though.
Well today I can announce that my brassicas all have heads and I will be getting some cauliflowers, broccoli and cabbage. Yay!
Some pictures from the beds
As you can see – I am loving my new camera. So many new things in my life right now. This is good.
Starting to eat more and more of my garden. I have the brassica blues though. I think they are all going to bolt without heads. Any tips?
After one and a half months of getting used to their new home Betty and the girls were ready to go free range this weekend. I had been dreading this because when I first got them they escaped and it took ages and a lot of trouble to get them back into their cage.
I was assured by Alf who gave me the chickens that after a month they would have settled down and I would not have a problem getting them back into their cage. So early on Saturday morning I released them into the wild to go foraging.
I noticed that they are no longer afraid of me and that they may even like me a bit now. In fact they come when I call and I can get them to follow me. I even took them to the compost heap to go scratching for worms. They followed me all in a row while I made chicken noises and scratching sounds.
Jackie the chicken whisperer
Come sundown they walked nicely into their cage for me and hopped up onto their perch. I will be letting them out now when I am at home. Although Cleo just watches them and has made no moves to chase them she does get very jealous when I talk to them. I think if I leave her alone with them when I go out she may just try to show them who is boss.
