Category: quota photo

Day 275 – Boxing Day QP

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As ever, I’m writing a few posts in advance over the holiday period (such as it is) so that I can have a little bit of break as well. And because I don’t want to be using up all my words in one go, here’s a quota photo that I took on our recent trip to the Cederberg.

Star trails for dayz (or… er… nightz).

This was the result of 2 hours (and one second, because why not?) of exposure, then an automatic noise clean up on the camera (I won’t be using that feature again – took another 2 hours!) and a bit of tweaking in Lightroom. Bigger and darker here.

I quite like it.
It was almost worth fumbling around in the pitch darkness of the bush in the early hours.

Almost.

Day 257, part 2 – A quick note

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Hello again.
This morning, I was hiking in the fresh air amongst the incredible rock formations of the Cederberg:

This evening, I am doing parenting stuff in a warehouse in Claremont.

Swings, roundabouts.

We’re back in the land of the wifi though, at least, and so I was doing a quick catch up on the latest news from the Whatsapp groups when I saw this:

Cape Agulhas Municipal area has gone from 8 active Coronavirus cases to 107 in less than 3 weeks. By comparison, the top peak of our first wave was 43 cases mid July. The Coronavirus spreads through human contact. Therefore the spread & control is literally in our own hands!
Our health services & health personnel are under strain & the Festive Season hasn’t even begun yet. If our system is overwhelmed we, as healthcare workers, will be forced to turn away people who could ordinarily be saved. This is not a situation we ever want. We care deeply about our patients and community. We desperately need people to wear their face masks, observe social distancing & avoid unnecessary risks.
Keep yourself and your family safe. Help us to help those that need medical care.

That’s an increase of [counts on fingers] 1237.5%.

However could this have happened?

[roll eyes emoji]

As an aside: We were very glad to note the excellent precautions being followed at the place we were staying this weekend.

Day 179 – View

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The weekend away was a massive success. Fun, friendship, general foolishness and a frightening amount of drinking. And while we kept ourselves to ourselves for the most part, when we did go out and about we were sensible, respectful and cognisant of the current situation. We also went some way to supporting the local economy of this small farming community in the Western Cape by buying all of the wood that they could provide.

All of it.

The place we stayed at was close enough to civilisation to be convenient, but remote enough that we didn’t have to restrain ourselves too much.

And there was this view when we arrived as well:

Rubbish composition because there was only a tiny balcony to get the shot from. Sorry.

If this sort of geological feature was in the UK, it would have a name and everyone would know it. But the best description I can find of this is the edge of the Koue Bokkeveld (the “cold buck shrubland”). I think it deserves more.

The scenery around the place was all pretty amazing though, and I’m hopeful that I can get the family out there to have a visit at some point in the near future.

Day 166 – Orange

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No, it might not have been the wettest year on record, but there was a very reasonable amount of rain. Certainly enough that our Clivia patch has gone a bit mental and given us the best display since we inherited it.

Sadly, because it’s so long and thin, it’s quite difficult to all get in, but you can see orange from front to back in this poorly planned, wildly overexposed shot. Mooi!

I’m really not a gardener, but these are pretty, bright and really require very little effort to look after: they’re very much my sort of plant.

Next week: grass! (No, not that sort of grass…)