Romantic Day Spa
Spring at our day spa is reasonably unique! For one thing – it doesn’t value dates. That’s right – 1 September is official Spring Day in South Africa, but the willows next to our stream have already had leaves for a fortnight and peach blossoms have come and gone! That doesn’t mean we didn’t have a hard winter – we did. The frost was grueling from May and a late black cold in August messed up moderately a list of plants that then had to be shorten right back or removed whole. But on the sure side, the daybreak temperatures have been above zero for whole of August and the lawn that we dressed and watered as an experimentation in the early week of August had to be mown by the 31st because the pasturage was so tall and thick. This morning I saw a dormouse pulling out grass and eating the roots that were watered yesterday. Merely a few metres away, a duet of orioles was busy with a Massage at the grass. Hopefully they were finding insects and not threatening the grass. I tried to tell myself they were nature’s way of scarifying the lawn for new growing, but I don’t feel too confident. Since early August we have watered the gardens using stream water ample in natural nutrients and this has paid off in a host of iris and magnolia buds just waiting to erupt into bloom during the next week. That’s if the mousebirds and bulbuls don’t eat them all up first. The birds could do with the buds nutrients to get them into select procreation shape and regard our garden as a handy health bar! The mousebirds descended in a flock just a week ago and razed hundreds of succulent rock roses that had survived the coldness and were just passing into flower. The argument now is whether or not to allow the stems to recuperate or just to tear out and toss the rest. Ah, the joys of Springtime. After the first thrill of seeing new progress comes the knowledge that we are about to combat lush growth and the battle to keep our parkland-like Magaliesburg garden from turning into an African jungle! Bring it on!