C'mon Baby, Light My Fire

Garden trash accumulates. Old, dead branches that are too misshapen to use as fuelwood, fat trunkwood too gnarly to split, rotten with wild fungi and infested borer-beatle, Old planks of untreated wood used as garden benches and now falling to bits. Everything must go!

It's better to burn out

Than it is to rust

Ashes to ashes and

Dust to dust...

Baboon Vandals

Lots of Baboons about. The day before yesterday the dogs took off after a couple of them and disappeared for several hours. It's a big worry--the dogs can easily be severely injured by the Baboons. Eventually Keira returned, completely exhausted by her adventure. She could barely walk up the hill, let alone run from a Baboon turning on her, and her breathing was extremely ragged from exertion and stress. We were hoping that this would discourage the Baboons a bit and keep them at bay for a couple of weeks, but no such luck. One of them was around a couple of minutes ago. Luckily I was alerted by Scyla and I could chase him off. If it was just a case of them stealing fruit, that would be one problem, but

...and thirty minutes later, having chased off another of the bastards who has broken a large branch off our 20-year-old Apple Tree, Scyla Dog has taken off across the farmlands and, by the sounds of things, chased him up a tree where she will no doubt keep him trapped for some hours.

In the twenty years we've been here, we have never had this much trouble with Baboons.

Update 20 min. later: Scyla has returned, thankfully unharmed, from far across the farmland. We have to do something about these thieves -- it's us or them. I am at a loss just what, though...

Strange Dreams

I had a dream, last night, that a Bushbuck came and ate the tops off my Tomato plants.

Woke up this morning, and went out to empty the rain gauge (5mm), to find

Strange, and slightly scary, to have such powerful dreams!

Loving Spring

Love this time of year, despite the pressure to get seeds sown, seedlings transplanted, beds prepared, weeds weeded...

Lime-green Salad Tomatoes. Transplanted into their bed just a couple of days ago. Perfect transplanting weather, followed by a couple of days of light (and much needed) rain means that they've coped with the move perfectly.

Pakistani Maroon Beans are just emerging. They're a pole bean, grown for the dry beans. Suits me well, since I should get a higher yield per area than bush varieties. This is a new variety to me, so we're evaluating the variety as well as growing up a larger seed-supply for next year. Lots of pressure to get more bean varieties planted...

The climbing structure for the Pakistani Maroons. We should have a plant at the bottom of each of the hanging poles. Dog keeps an eye out for greedy moles wanting to eat my beanlings.