I do suffer from green envy when others extol the awesome rewards of their gardening exploits. Living within the natural territory of our brazen Chacma baboons, it has proved impossible to grow anything edible. This includes certain types of flowers and most bulbs too.
From time to time, in a fit of optimism, I live dangerously and plant out one or two sacrificial plants in our garden.
There is an Afrikaans idiomatic expression which mentions the baboon (bobbejaan) and seems to be very appropriate here: "Moenie die bobbejaan agter die bult gaan haal nie" (literally "Do not go and fetch the baboon from the other side of the hill") which loosely translates to: Don't think or speak of negative, pessimistic possibilities which have not been indicated by the situation or else they might actually transpire. In other words, don't tempt fate to fulfill your predictions of all manner of imagined negative outcomes. Rather, be positive! In response to my fairly pessimistic nature, my dear friend in the Karoo has often used this expression to damp down my dark forebodings.
I guess by planting some edible plants, I am actually tempting fate, which, in this instance, is a baboon. (Perhaps a clue to the origin of the idiom!)
So, you can imagine my absolute glee when we discovered that a single Paprika Pepper plant had gone unnoticed, even to the point that the plant was dangling its decent-sized fruity secrets.
There is an Afrikaans idiomatic expression which mentions the baboon (bobbejaan) and seems to be very appropriate here: "Moenie die bobbejaan agter die bult gaan haal nie" (literally "Do not go and fetch the baboon from the other side of the hill") which loosely translates to: Don't think or speak of negative, pessimistic possibilities which have not been indicated by the situation or else they might actually transpire. In other words, don't tempt fate to fulfill your predictions of all manner of imagined negative outcomes. Rather, be positive! In response to my fairly pessimistic nature, my dear friend in the Karoo has often used this expression to damp down my dark forebodings.
I guess by planting some edible plants, I am actually tempting fate, which, in this instance, is a baboon. (Perhaps a clue to the origin of the idiom!)
So, you can imagine my absolute glee when we discovered that a single Paprika Pepper plant had gone unnoticed, even to the point that the plant was dangling its decent-sized fruity secrets.
Today the baboons were very active in and around our garden and so, without further ado, we harvested our mini-crop. Most of them had not yet turned red but this has not detracted from our sense of sneaky triumph!
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| Stuffed BBQ Peppers |
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| With bacon filling |
Maybe you should plant a protective border of peppers - to keep the baboons away from your other crops?
ReplyDeleteThey DO eat these peppers. Anyhow, even if they do decide that they don't like the taste of something, they first rip everything off the plant or rip the entire plant out before taking a bite and then either eat all or discard the ravaged bits to move on to the next victim. This plant survived detection by having other plants grow up around it and it was camouflaged but it would not have survived yesterdays persistent baboon visitations to our garden. Sad. But for now....Stuffed Pepper for dindins.
ReplyDelete