Tag: kirstenbosch

Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concerts 2009/10

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Summer’s here and with it the promise of lazy Sunday afternoons enjoying the Old Mutual Summer Sunset Concerts at Kirstenbosch.

Kicking off on 22nd November with South African legend, Johnny Clegg, the concerts run through to the end of March (and, I guess, the end of summer) with Watershed signing off for the season on the 28th.

The full line up:

2009 

22 November – Johnny Clegg
06 December – Jesse Clegg 
13 December – Jonny Cooper Orchestra
27 December – Ashtray Electric and Pretty Blue Guns
 

2010

03 January – A Fist Full of Diamonds with Josie Fields, Faryll Purkiss and Dan Patlansky
10 January – Freshlyground
17 January – Zebra & Giraffe
24 January – Fokofpolisiekar

07 February – aKING
21 February – Just Jinjer
28 February – Prime Circle

07 March – Goldfish
14 March – The Dirty Skirts
21 March – The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra
28 March – Watershed

Tickets for the first concert cost R95 for adults (yep – that’s what I thought too!) and are available from Kirstenbosch ticket office (021) 761 2866 or via http://www.webtickets.co.za/.

As usual, Kirstenbosch will be the place to be to rock out those Sunday afternoons (with the exception of 21st March, perhaps).

EDIT: While cross-checking details for the above piece (we’re damn thorough here at 6000 Towers), I saw this on the sanbi.org website:

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Is that a promise?? I hope so.

Gumtree at Kirstenbosch

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Gumtree, originally uploaded by Ballacorkish

A snappy quota snap for today – my Saturday promises to be hectic and rushed – although there’s always a slim chance of something later if you’re lucky.
Warmer days at Kirstenbosch in February. With my favourite lump of rock in the background.
You’d think that the best gardens in the Southern Hemisphere would be able to grow a straight tree.
But no.

Of penguins and picnics…

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I haven’t been on teh interwebs much today, but I would imagine that absolutely no-one in the blogosphere has mentioned the fact that it’s Valentines Day at all. And so once again, the responsibility of informing the world about these things falls on my shoulders. But it’s fine. I can manage. Honest.

I had almost forgotten that the big day was coming up, but was fortuitously forewarned by a sudden and otherwise bewildering increase in the price of cut flowers. So I popped out and adopted a couple of penguins on a buy one get one free offer at SANCCOB (offer valid until end of February 2009), cos penguins is romantic: especially when kept at a suitable distance. They tend to get a bit smelly otherwise, mainly due to their ichthyophagous habits. So it’s handy to stay a whole credit card transaction away from the actual birds, cute, clumsy and cuddlable though they may appear.

During the afternoon, we packed the kids, the pram, a picnic and the camera into the back of the car and popped just around the corner to Kirstenbosch. It may appear to the more attentive reader that we go to Kirstenbosch most weekends. And indeed, that does seem to be the case just lately. But there can be few more romantic places than Cape Town’s beautiful and almost completely penguin-free Botanical Gardens. Although initially, it seemed that we had the place to ourselves, walking on deeper into the somewhat repetitive fynbos after we had eaten, we found a myriad of courting couples.
Fortunately, Kirstenbosch is pretty open plan, so there was no danger of coming across any naughtiness, but we sent the boy, happily and loudly singing about microwaves, ahead anyway, just to kill the mood should the mood be there. Safety first, dear reader.

       
A Valentine’s Day Selection…

And that was it – almost. Heart-shaped chocolate brownies and tea in front of Coupling on DVD and then a quick upload onto Flickr (actually, this is via the South African telecommunications system and someone needs to get the ADSL hamster to run faster in his little wheel up in Bloemfontein or wherever he’s kept so I’ll have to finish the Flickr stuff off tomorrow, ok?) and then I’ll wend my weary way up to bed, hoping and praying that the little one doesn’t start moaning about her erupting incisors again tonight.

I wonder… do penguins have teeth…?

Parlotones at Kirstenbosch

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As promised (although I’m not sure by whom, to whom), we headed out into the blisteringly hot February sunshine to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens to see the ever-popular and completely sold-out Parlotones.

I was disappointed. They weren’t up to their usual standard and they were much, much smaller than I remember them. This could have been because we were sat so far back with a million* people and a small forest between us and them. Or it could have been because they had shrunk and weren’t as good as before.
Thanks to several beers and a mild case of heatstroke, the  jury is still out on that one. 

Thankfully, as ever, it was less about the music and more about the idle chatter, the free-flowing alcohol and the people watching. And so we chatted, drank and people watched, including Faceless pandas, Camps Bay queens, Posing dudes and Schalk Burger and Andries Bekker.
And I couldn’t resist one more quick shot for my Sunsets and Skyscapes set.

  
  
More pictures in the Parlotones – Feb 09 flickr set.

 Next week, Arno Carstens. Bigger, better and something else beginning with B.

 * teeny exaggeration.