Tag: garden

Day 689 – Everything smells of compost

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It’s a year to the day since we moved into this house, and the garden is taking the strain at the moment. Builders, summer heat, no rain, and some nasty pests which are taking advantage of the weakened state of the plants to move in and do their nasty pesty stuff.

I decided to fight back today, and headed down to the local garden centre (struggling to get past The Irrigation Bore) to buy some things to treat the garden to some delicious garden nutrients and kill the pests.

Long story short, the garden will benefit hugely from my heroic efforts in the medium term, but in the short term, everything smells of compost.

Including the beagle.

Right now, a cold beer and some football (my fantasy side destroyed by impending Champions League fixtures).

Well deserved (the beer, that is).

Day 353 – Garden shot

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The work on the house continues with some painting, some lighting and some extra additions here and there. The pool is full, but it’s dark and wet (outside, not the pool), so I can’t do my after photo just yet.

Here’s one from yesterday then – a Citrus Swallowtail (Papilo demodocus) in the back garden:

We see a lot of these around (they’re probably the second most common butterfly locally after the Acraea horta) but they never stop moving: they’re flitty and flighty, so I’ve never managed to get a shot before. This one actually settled for a few moments, although it never stopped moving its wings (rapidly) for a single second and so I was forced to use high speed shooting in Sports Mode on the camera to get a decent image (and about 74 poor ones).

There are actually a couple of other reasonable shots, but I haven’t got as far as Lightroom yet, because the work on the house continues with some painting, some lighting and some extra additions here and there (I think I mentioned this), so those might have to wait for another day.

Day 269 – The day of rest

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I’m not going to be writing much here today, especially after the last few days which have seen several thousand of my words spread in pixel form across these pages. I have been busy in the house as part of The Big Clearout ahead of The Move and I have been busy making sure that the garden remains every bit as nice as when the people who are buying our house last saw it.

Add to that a quick walk down to the local shops (because other people around here have to stay in the house and not go out in public for reasons) to find ingredients for christmas treats (currently being manufactured in the kitchen by my daughter).

We also tried to mend the router, which has been on its last legs for a while now. We couldn’t, we gave up and we bought a new one, so you’ll note that it’s been a busy morning.

I have big plans to watch some football and (possibly) have a beer this afternoon.

More tomorrow. There’s always more tomorrow.

Big Hole by night

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Now that I’ve started writing this, I realise that without a “before” photo, this “after” photo won’t mean a huge amount to anyone. But, for the record, suffice to say that if it were taken a few weeks ago, the majority of this particular photograph would have been taken up by my big tree, which fell over in high winds earlier this month.

I now have a Big Hole to rival Kimberley’s Big Hole (this is a reference to Kimberley in the Northern Cape and not Kimberley on Sea Point Main Road) (although she does also have a big hole) (allegedly).


My garden minus the big tree, yesterday evening.

While I was taking that photo, I took a couple of others – one with a smaller, barer tree that we can now see and another which captured a rare visit by a zebra to our garden.

What? This is Africa, you know?