A Flowery Picture Post

Today I've decided to focus on something cheerful and pretty, to break the habit I'm getting into of thinking about depressing things. So here's a post about my garden! It includes lots of flowers and other random garden-associated things.

(I'm listening to Goldfish while writing this. Happy music!)

So, to begin with: Flowers!

I used to love popping these buds when I was a kid. These pretty things are outside the front of our house, surrounded by other huge plants, so are often overlooked.

I can't remember what these are called, but they're darn cute. They're on our balcony in a pot with other things that I don't know the names of, either.

I nearly didn't see this tiny purple flower, only spotting it because I was looking for a huge flower that I remembered seeing a few months ago. It's on the ground, surrounded by HUGE blades of grass (not so huge, actually). What a teeny tiny flower!

Little orange shower-flowers! I call them this, because they're all around our outdoor shower. They're all you see when looking at our shower-view.

Speaking of our shower-view, this cactus can be seen from our shower, as well. According to Sean (my step dad), this cactus is used as a really potent hallucinogenic drug. I also can't remember what this is called... But I find it hilarious that it's all over our garden. :P

These two flowers are next to a potted plant that sometimes displays some very pretty snowdrop-like flowers.


I don't know what these are. They're... Yellow. Round bunches. Of things. But they're also pretty and cheerful and stuff!

I noticed these flowers on the right a while ago. They're dying now, but have lasted for a very long time, and are still beautiful, even as they stop blooming and start withering away.

These make me think of lavender... But they're not lavender. And there's loads of the pretty, wild, pretty wild stuff.

Oh look! A butterfly! That's kinda hard to see. But I saw one, and I took a picture of it. So fascinating, I know.

The vines climbing up this structure are grape vines!! We've already had grapes from this vine, but all of this climbing is a recent accomplishment for the plant. Its mommy must be so proud.



And on the right, a pretty bird-bath, or fountain, or something... How sweet.

Here I am, relaxing on the hammock that Francois' mom bought for us (for her, actually, when she last visited us), enjoying the view into the forest.

And here are some pretty ferns and gooseberry bushes that are growing outside our kitchen window. They're quite overgrown, it's a shame that the gooseberry plants aren't as huge as the ferns. :P



Okay, I am late for work. Damn it. Bye now!

Holiday Plans and Things!

Our tickets are booked! In May, we'll be travelling up to Gauteng to visit the various family members, and to venture with Robin (Francois' brother) to the Drakensberg for a hike up Sentinel Peak.

I can't wait! I've never been to the Drakensberg before, and Francois has told me many things about the beauty of the mountains there, and the intensity of the hike. Yippee! (Yes, I love hiking. Although a less recent discovery than my enjoyment of cycling, this was also a fairly new revelation for me. A younger me would never have believed that I'd like exercising so much.)

Resting in the shade during one of those hikes that I enjoy so much. (Proof!)

Some more specific information for the family and friends who I'd like to see:

• We arrive in Johannesburg on the 14th of May
• We leave again on the 30th of May
• We'll be taking a weekend to do the hike, most likely the 16th and 17th, but maybe the 23rd and 24th. This still needs to be finalised.
• Most of the time, we'll be staying in Pretoria.

By the way. Our arrival in Joburg will not be by bus. We're flying! For the same price! Thanks to the awesomely affordable new airline, FlySafair, we lowly folk can now afford to travel across the country at a great speed, and no longer have to put up with stinky, crowded, slow-moving buses... If we book far enough in advance, of course. This makes me very, very happy.

So yes, we have some exciting times coming up. I feel very ready for a holiday, and for some contact with certain people that live very far away. This does mean that I need to make extra money before we leave, to make up for the two weeks that I won't be working, but that should be easy enough to do, with my mindset right. 

Look at how perfect it is! Buy it!

To help with the extra monetary needs, we're selling Francois' Wacom Inkling. It's a really cool drawing gadget, but shortly after he purchased it, he bought his drawing tablet, so it's gone unused. Feel free to share the hell out of that gumtree ad, by the way. It'd be great to actually sell it sometime soonish. :P

Well, this update is long enough, I think. Bye for now!

The Pros and Cons of Showering in the Great Outdoors

Our  bathroom is like any other bathroom. It has a toilet, a basin and a bath. What it doesn't have is a shower. Where we live, if you want to have a shower, you need to walk outside, go around the house, and step behind a screen that Francois and his brother built to create some privacy for us... We have an outdoor shower, and we love it! So, for your amusement (and mine), I've decided to break down the good and bad aspects of outdoor showering in a nice list.

This is our shower!

Lovely Thing #1:

Space! You don't get many showers bigger than ours... And yet, somehow, we still manage to bump elbows if we're showering at the same time.

Horrible Thing #1:

Wind Exposure... On a particularly breezy day, the screen does a rather limited job of stopping the cold air from giving you goosebumps.

Lovely Thing #2:

Nature! While showering, we have a view of the forest. We wash our hair and clean our feet while watching birds frolicking in the trees, and examining pretty spiders making their webs.

The pretty, pretty view from our shower.

Horrible Thing #2:

Nature. Our shower is under a fig tree. On the one hand, the huge leaves protect us from rain when the weather is a little moist, but on the other hand, the tree tends to drop leaves and unripe figs into our shower. The leaves make an awkwardly soft shower floor as they rot, and the figs attract fruit flies, which take flight as soon as you turn the tap on, and hover around you while you're soaping up. This leads me to my next horrible thing...

Dead leaves and rotten figs
and tiny icky FRUIT FLIES.

Horrible Thing #3:

Maintenance. Regular sweeping and de-fruiting of the shower is required... Though we don't adhere to that requirement very often. Proooobably should.

Lovely Thing #3:

Maintenance again. We never have to worry about a blocked pipe, a leaky shower, or digging hair out of the drain.

Lovely Thing #4:

A lack of steam. Most people like having hot, steamy showers. I like hot showers, but in summer, too much steam makes me feel really funny, and enclosed showers have a way of trapping that steam and suffocating you with it. Outside, the steam dissipates so quickly that it never becomes a hazard to your breathing...

Horrible Thing #4:

Dirty feet. This is easily solved by wearing slops while showering. The ground under the shower is concreted, with pretty pebbles and what not, but the trek from the shower back to the house is a rather muddy one. Francois doesn't really care about this as much as I do.

Lovely Thing #5:

Feeling fresh after a shower. That lacking steam mentioned in the last lovely point really contributes to this one. No matter how hot and humid the weather is, a shower leaves me feeling clean and fresh. In the past, using indoor showers in the heat of summer, the bathroom would get so steamy that I'd start feeling sweaty and icky very soon after getting clean.

Horrible Thing #5:

Unexpected visitors. This one is really irritating. Garden services are supposed to come every second Friday to cut the lawn... Sometimes they come on a different day without any warning. Once, I was showering when they arrived... This was before the screen was built, by the way. Aaaah!! Luckily, Francois noticed them arriving and chased them away before they saw anything saucy. I hope.


So that's five points to each side, ten in total... Honestly, the good outweighs the bad for me. The outdoor shower is one of my favourite things about this little cottage, and I'm really going to miss it one day when we move back to a place with a boring, conventional, shower... Though I won't complain about the increased level of privacy. Hehe.