Earthscapes 2

The earthscaping project continues unabated. Mondays and Fridays are being reserved by Roy and Siya for this mammoth task. They are both of very slight build and so this heavy job needs the days in between to rest up. Siya does not have any other work so perhaps that is why he returns faithfully to help with this huge task. I think most gardeners would run a mile away from this one.

Progress in photos .....use the white protea flowers as the marker for your bearings.

 

 

 

Notice atop,  the pile of collected mulch just waiting to be used.

 

On the right hand side of this photo below, some indigenous trees are growing "in front" of the curvature of the path of the planned wall. We don't want to pull them out after all these years so we are going to keep them as a mature growth to disguise the block-wall.

Here the wall curves behind the little coppice of mature growth.

 
We are running out of these blocks to finish the task so, reluctantly, will rebuild one of the "steps" with a different type of block, which a neighbour threw out and donated to our project. Hopefully this will release enough of these  semi-circular blocks to complete the main wall. Fingers crossed. These  square blocks are even less attractive and I hope that I will be able to disguise them by planting shrubs in front of them. What with the awful finish of our neighbours wall, there is much disguising to be done.

 

Earthscapes 1

At the same time that we had our house built, in 1988, the owner of the land in front of ours started building his too. His builder sneakily stole huge volumes of soil from our land to fill in the foundation walls of his construction. Once we became aware of it (we were living elsewhere while we built) , we demanded that he cease. He had excavated and stolen the soil from  a second erf that we owned, which purpose was to act as a buffer and garden in front of our house.

So much soil had been excavated that the remaining embankment threatened to collapse. The authorities assured us that the owner of the land in front of us would have to build a retaining wall to stave off this collapse because he was the instrument of its creation. They sent to us a letter which confirmed their ruling. Two years went by and the owner just dragged his heels about any retaining wall. In fact, he never finished building the house and all that lovely soil of ours inside his foundation walls just blew away over the years. What a waste!

Realising that the situation with the remaining embankment was likely to drag on indefinitely, and not wanting to lose any more of our garden soil, we took it upon ourselves to spend precious income (so precious, because we all know how difficult the first years are in paying off a mortgage)  to buy huge, ugly retaining concrete blocks. These would shore up the soil until such time as the municipality enforced their ruling. At one place, the embankment was 3 metres high. In fact, it is illegal to have retaining blocks stacked over 1 metres high without a foundation. But from our point of view, it was  temporary and no building inspector ever came to look at the situation again.

Twenty years on and new owners picked up the reins of building on the property in front of us. They have built the most overpowering dwelling, 8 metres high and taken up almost the entire 500 m2 of their single erf. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. They have managed to take away the view of the coastline from every window in our house. Grateful that we could still see the horizon of the sea, the owner soon sabotaged it by erecting  a monstrous chimney to spoil even that.  (who needs a chimney 1.5mx1.5mx1.5m in size?)

Once they had finished building, they complained to the building inspector about our illegal concrete blocks that had no foundation or drainage. The building inspector demanded that we submit plans and build a properly authorized retaining wall. 

Luckily, I still had the letter from the municipality informing us that the owner of that erf was responsible for constructing a wall. At first we were told by the Cape Town City Council that they would not consider a situation that went back over twenty years.  I argued that if you buy a property for its assets , so you also accept the accompanying liabilities. I felt that this prescribed wall was definitely an inherited liability for the new owner.

Now living on a small income, we could never afford to construct an engineered wall at this stage of our lives. Eventually, for some reason, the building inspector realised that we were not being obstructive or cheeky. We had been totally genuine martyrs in this ongoing long-term situation. So the owners on the property in front were ordered to accept their inherited liability and to add a retaining wall to their construction.

 

 

Our adjacent neighbour might take issue with the lack of backfill
 behind the wall, his tree roots now exposed and soil slippage from his side.

It was built over a year ago. I have been itching to rearrange our soil so that we no longer lose part of our garden footprint to our retaining blocks, but waited  to see whether they would plaster or paint the shoddy brickwork on our side of the wall (one can always live in hope!) 

We have given up on that and have started the tricky job of rearranging things. It is likely to take some time. Here are photos of the state of affairs up to this point. Its a process of removing blocks, shifting soil, replacing blocks, reshifting soil into and behind the blocks.  

Star and Midge serve as supervisors on site. 

 

The photos do not really give an idea of what we are trying to achieve but here is a little sketch again which might give a better idea of our plan. Sadly, we can never fill the garden to its previous levels. We did have an opportunity about three years ago for a huge mountain of soil from a neighbour but while we did use much of it elsewhere in the garden (See Earthworks and the follow-up), we had to refuse at least half of it because we had no idea how long we would have to store the soil(about 9 m3)  while waiting for this wall to be built. So now its a question of shaping it into varying levels along the wall, using the existing soil.

 

I do hope that the transplanted Wild Camphor survives

 

 

 

Its still a work in progress.
I cannot wait for it to be finished so that we can start planting!!

Pallet Project

I so often see wonderful products which people have created from old pallets. My hints fall on deaf ears and nothing has ever been done about pallet windfalls in our house.

This last week, for some reason, Roy decided to humour me and offered to build anything which did not require pulling the entire pallet apart. (I never look a gift-horse in the mouth in these circumstances!)

 Seal the underneath while it is easily accessible.

The cross members and legs were made from door-posts of old garage doors that we bought and recycled a few years ago.

The shelf below was built with a few left-over slats from those doors.

 

He will build a second one.

They are rough and ready and will be great to use for messy activities in the garden.

Monkey Mischief

We spent last week up at our plot, after delaying our departure time and again, due to some pathetic lethargy on our part.

Wet fields greeted our arrival and a Cape Gooseberry bush, heavily laden with ripe fruit, waved happily at us as we examined our garden. I picked a few  fruit and decided that I would pick a handful each day as a celebration of garden edibles being "baboon-free" in this environment, unlike our Cape Town garden.

The seasons always seem to turn on the Easter weekend  in Cape Town and, arriving on Easter Sunday, this proved to be true of the plot's environment too. It rained on and off for the whole of Monday and Tuesday and we luxuriated in being lazy and reading a pile of books. At one moment, while we were absorbed in our reading, the dogs rushed towards the window, barking. I was too late to see the monkey but Roy described it to me and I knew exactly what it looked like. (a photo later found on the internet).  It had peered inside momentarily and then dashed away on seeing the dogs and us. We walked outside to see if he was still about and then noticed some berry casings lying on the ground. Every ripe gooseberry had been picked! The single green granadilla was missing in action too!

A new idiom: A ripe berry in the hand is worth hundreds left unpicked on the bush!! 

I had no idea that this type of monkey ranged in this area. I know that there are baboons which occasionally leave the Tradouw Pass and glean fallen oats and wheat from harvested fields not too distant from our plot. So this means that there are TWO possible primate types in this environment!

Can you spot the creature in our flower box which has been nibbling on the contents?

 
On Wednesday, the sun shone and John pulled all the ivy creeper off the back of the bungalow, and more importantly, off the roof of the bungalow. The onduline roofing is made from some sort of pressed cardboard material and I had finally convinced Roy that it is not worth taking a risk that the ivy damages the roof with its roots and shoots.

I had long ago admitted my error in planting the wretched stuff but one of Roy's quirks, being a non-gardener, is his reluctance to kill/pull up any plant once it is established. He insisted on leaving some of the ivy clinging to the fence poles alongside the bungalow so I can foresee that this will be an ongoing item on the chore list.

Thursday, neighbour Ed and Roy helped another neighbour get to hospital. His health had steadily deteriorated over the last eighteen months and the danger of living on one's own in a fairly isolated area and without  transport was highlighted by this emergency dash to the local hospital. The stress of the morning was cured that evening with a superb dinner at Dani and Rman. She cooked a leg of lamb in her solar oven and it had the most incredible flavour. Accompanied with all sorts of delicious goodies from her garden, it showed us just what can be done if one is determined to make it all happen!

Looking at my schedule for the next few months, sadly, we won't be able to get up there again for quite a while. We left the trees, which are now big enough to cast shade, and look forward to seeing the difference that a couple of months will make.

 

 Planting trees today that others will enjoy tomorrow, is a worthwhile, 
selfless mission in life.

www.michaelnorthimagery.com

Life's unexpected way

Our friends came to stay with us for a few days in Cape Town while they attended various appointments. On the second day, the husband's leg broke, quite inexplicably.  After an operation to mend it, a diagnosis of secondary bone cancer was made and then, when the  primary site was identified, the status  was escalated to terminal stage. Within three weeks of their arrival here, he died this morning. Such a shock for everyone, but by the end, it was only a kindness to himself to let go.

He was a diver in his working life and recruited, 
trained and mentored others on the same path. 




He had the soul of a writer and poet.

How unexpected life can be.

A Salute

Away!

The last dive is begun,
Further, even further,
To the brightest Sun.
Waves lap and caress,
While quietly we sleep,
Nicolaas, our own,
Brave knight of the deep.

At last!
To reach that other shore,
To see that dear Light,
To suffer no more.
Winds stir and draw veils,
While softly we weep,
For our loss, our own,
Sweet knight of the deep.

Arty Aspirations

We drove up to the plot on Sunday and spent the rest of the day sheltering inside the building from the burning heat. Monday and Tuesday were spent draining off some of the contents of the rain-water tanks in preparation for winter rains. It is rather a tedious process and I dragged a little stool and book, sitting alongside each tree for the duration of the watering. I read three pages per tree while the water chugged around its roots = 20 litres per tree. Roy took a photo and I was so taken with it that I have spent some time this evening with one of my favourite, free software downloads, Photoscape. 

Here are some of the possible effects (but by no means the entire scope of the program) So much fun!

 Antique

 Cellophane

 Watercolour

 

 

 Oil painting