Birdies build their Nests

Outside a friend’s house stands a large acacia tree, its branches loaded down with baubles of weaver bird’s nests. Each Spring it is filled with manic chattering and a flurry of activity as new nests are woven next to the old. Intricate confections of long grass, twisted and turned to make a hanging nest, its entrance at the bottom, yet with a secure inner chamber that safely holds the eggs. The chatter grows more intense as the nestlings hatch and must be fed, quieting only at night.

Below is a treasure trove of discarded nests (last years outmoded fashions), bright sky-blue eggshells that seem too small to have held a baby bird, and the occasional tragedy of an ugly bald chick with bulbous eyes and tiny wing buds, fallen from the nest or pushed by competitive siblings.
For an hour the girls collected egg shells, feathers, held a funeral and absorbed the essence of spring.

The nests came home and provided an opportunity for the toy twitterers to hatch a family.

Youngest's toy bird finds a new home and raises a family

My son's drawings from his school book. They've been studying local animals and birds.

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After the Festival

All the left-overs have been duly dispatched. The last batch of chicken stock made into soup or frozen. We found our praying mantis lying on his side on the stoep today. The girls thought he might be sleeping. He feebly waved a leg at us and when we attempted to put him upright, he fell back over. This evening the girls held a funeral for him, burying him with flowers and ceremony in the circle. For me it symbolised the end of our spring celebrations and it felt rather sad, until I noticed a large, equally handsome one clinging to the wire wastepaper basket in the bathroom. The herald of a new cycle? Or maybe it is just praying mantis season, warm spring weather bringing them out in droves? They do seem to resonate strongly with spiritual life though, the Bushmen had it right. I also have strong memories of reading Gerald Durrell's My Family and other Animals - his memories of life as a child on Corfu with his eccentric family. I still remember his accounts of a praying mantis battling it out with a gecko on his bedroom ceiling, even though from my place in the English countryside I had never seen one. Now they are part of our daily life too, but still seem as mystical as ever.

I was tagged for this meme by Jenny and have been struggling with imagining answers to the ancestor questions but had no trouble thinking of weird things about me! So here it is as far as I've got and as for tagging five more people..just consider yourself tagged if you haven't already done this one..sorry for breaking the rules by not doing it properly!

RULES: List 5 weird things about yourself or your pets.
Tag 5 friends and list them.
Then these people need to write on their blogs about 5 weird things, state the rules, and tag 5 more people.
Don't forget to let the people you tag know by commenting on their blog!

5 weird things about me:

1. I have an irrational hatred of dishwashers. I would rather wash up 40 of everything by hand than give in and get one. My husband differs on this, so it is only a matter of time before I relent in favour of convenience.

2. My long term investment strategy is limited to a belief that it is a good idea to buy a house on a hill, in case of sea levels rising in the future.

3. I save half used birthday cake candles in a tin just in case they are needed for a science experiment one day.

4. I often start reading magazines at the back and work forwards (Meredith’s answer to this meme reminded me of this)

5. I’ve only recently begun to allow dishcloths to re-enter my life. A pathological avoidance of them began after a biology experiment in my teens revealed the amount of germs they harboured. Ever since I have advocated drip drying. It might also have been a convenient ploy to escape drying-up duty as a teenager. Only the enormous quantities of washing up provided by our feasts and the point mentioned in 1. has made a supply of clean cloths seem like a good idea.

Next part of tag: Can’t think of any intelligent answers to these right now, but I’ll leave them in in case any one else wants to have a go.

1. Which famous person would you most like to learn that you're descended from?

2. Which famous person would you hate to learn you're descended from?

3. If you could be an ancestor to any famous living person who would it be and why?

4. If you could go back in time and meet any known ancestors of yours, who would it be and why?

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Spring Festival

The praying mantis is a powerful symbol of spirituality in Bushman tradition. My sister in law told me that today, as we were looking over the pictures from our Spring Festival on Saturday. It seems appropriate for it to be hanging out on our stoep that morning as we prepared for our gathering of friends. Our seasonal festivals have taken on a life of their own now, almost happening independantly of any conscious decision on our part. Friends arrive, ideas flow and the celebration evolves each year, to become bigger, better, more elaborate until I am projecting into the future and seeing it turning in to a Glastonbury Festival in a few years time!

The themes for Spring are water and flowers. The last two years we have each made a flower crown with crepe paper and raffia to wear, then carried jugs of water into our circle, ceremoniously taking turns to pour into a bowl then sprinkle flowers on it. We give thanks for the rain and ask for blessings on the new season. This year I thought it would be nice to decorate the sand around the outside of the circle with a carpet of flowers and envisaged the children picking flowers and making patterns with them, as they often do when playing by our braai. Some of that did happen too.

A new initiative spontaneously happened though, that involved the boys to the exclusion of all else. I’d asked my husband to wet the sand around the circle in preparation for the decoration, a simple request that involved much re-plumbing of hosepipes to reach and provided the boys with an endless supply of water. When I went out to start decorating, a major earthworks construction was in progress, with the hose buried in a huge mountain of sand to produce waterfalls and a massive dam. Their creativity carried on the next day to produce a sand seal spouting water into a pool of water.


So next year the idea has been mooted we should create a two tier water feature, lining it with clay and pebbles, that cascades down the slope towards the circle. My flower carpet is still included in the plans. I can see that we’ll need everyone to come and spend the whole day preparing.

The main essence of the day is in the preparation time anyway. The actual celebration is just the finale. People arrive here stressed from their daily lives and take a while to unwind. Getting involved in making paper flowers, digging in the sand, filling paper bags with sand to take candles, picking flowers and decorating with them relaxes everyone, builds an atmosphere and forms disparate groups of friends into a clan.


By the time we are ready to process into our circle, conventional men are relaxed enough to wear their flower crowns without embarrassment and we are all comfortable with a simple thanksgiving and asking for blessings.

This year we had a written blessing open on the computer for anybody to add what they wanted to during the afternoon. We printed off copies and then each person took turns to read their words. This is about as organised as we’ve ever been but it worked really well and there was an amazingly spiritual vibe there.

Then as dusk fell we meandered back up the river of light formed by candles glowing in brown paper bags, towards the house and supper, forty of us in our elastic house, hardly making a dent in the lavish array of quiches and salads that everyone contributed to. My pavlovas were teeth gluingly sticky, so that I could hardly even slice them ( I put the cream on at the last minute, so it had no time to soften the chewiness) but no-one minded and the children ran about till way past bedtime, revelling in the unusual liberty of playing outside in the dark.

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Baking Bonanza

Baking not blogging!
Preparations for our Spring Festival and three birthdays today, took up all yesterday afternoon, so I collapsed on the sofa in front of a DVD instead of checking out blogdom. I'll be back tomorrow evening when the festivities drift to a close.
Above: two chocolate Smartie birthday cakes that are standard birthday fare here, with variations in Smartie motifs; one lemon drizzle cake; two pavlovas to be bedecked in whipped cream and strawberries; and two loaves of Nicolle's poolish bread recipe.

The children summoned me to photograph this enormous praying mantis on our stoep. I hope he's praying for fine spring weather today, as well as peace, joy, love and happy eating!

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Strawberry Season

Spring is now in full flow. Luscious red strawberries gleam temptingly in the sun, attracting the tiny new tortoises who have a quick nibble of each, just to check for ripeness. Next week we’ll have to get commercial and pick for selling, but now the first week of the fruit is for the family to gorge ourselves silly, make strawberry smoothies, scatter them over our cereal at breakfast and lavish them on our guests.

Strawberries will feature heavily on the menu for our Spring Festival on Saturday. I’ll make some pavlovas to receive them, piled generously atop a layer of whipped cream.

Flowers and water are the themes for this festival. We’ll make flower crowns with flowers of tissue paper, pick daisies for the children to make flower gardens in the sand and bring pitchers of water to our circle to give thanks for the life-giving rain. This winter we’ve had plenty. The dams are full for the first time in years, so there is much to be thankful for. Three of our invited friends will be having birthdays on that day too, so we’ll have a birthday tea with a cake each. Two of them are children, so I think they should each have their own cake to blow out candles on and then how could I leave out the thirty-one year-old, just because she’s grown-up? So much baking planned for Friday.

It is also the end of term on Friday, bringing two weeks of holiday before the last term of the school year. This year seems to be accelerating past at an alarming rate!

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Spring Fair Photo Report

Showers and outbreaks of sun for our Spring Fair, but the mood was sunny throughout. Class 3 & 4's choir sang.

Faces were painted with a myriad of wondrous creatures: dragons and butterflies, dolphins and cheetahs, snakes and mermaids.


The braai and lunch stall served great burgers, sausages, chicken, salads, curry bunnies all through the day to children and parents, hungry from their exertions on the bouncy castle and in the races.

The sack races had everyone tumbling in the sand and winning lollipops.

The craft stall provided a quiet retreat in a classroom, where children's work was also on view.

And my family? The older two children had a whale of a time. Armed with loads of R1 tickets they had a go on every game offered by the older children, winning masses of lollipops and bubble gum, to be consumed then and there. They bounced, both chose dragons on their faces, and I hardly saw them till the end of the day. Youngest however was a little overwhelmed by the whole thing and was glued to my side throughout, which got a little hard when it was my turn to be serving lunches. My official photographer role (due to lack of competition, as my husband could only stay a short while) was slightly hampered by the cling-on creature, but we managed fine!

Here's our school's website if you're interested in it. I'm going to put more photos up there in the next few days.

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Trees, leaves and blossoms

Today we were trees, my youngest and I.

It started when I was trying to get her dressed. As usual the two older ones were already dressed and outside waiting to go to school. Youngest saw no urgency in divesting herself of pyjamas and was having a nice time playing. I whisked into the bedroom to magic her into clothes in two seconds flat. I wish!

I sat on her bed with a selection of clothes and tried to get her attention. At this stage we regularly have a falling out and get in the car ten minutes later, all hot and bothered, with little black clouds over our heads. Today though I managed to take a breath before losing patience and, as she fell towards me saying “I’m a tree”, I managed to unearth a remnant of sense of humour, which had long been buried under piles of dirty laundry, acres of scattered toys and heaps of unfiled papers. I dusted it off and came up with a suitable response: “Well let's get some new leaves on you then”.

A miracle! Suddenly this recalcitrant pyjama lover was immersed in the game and within a twinkling we’d kitted her out with pink leaves, pale blue bark for her trunk and some blue roots. It only needed another layer of warmer leaves and we were ready to go. Lots of talk followed about saplings and mummy trees and we even bore fruit, which we ate at snack time (I hope that’s not too cannibalistic!). I wish this were a magic formula for every day. I fear though that tomorrow it’ll be something different, keeping me on my toes, making me exercise that errant sense of humour anew.

There is much excitement about tomorrow. It is my son’s school Spring Fair. We have been busy making felt flower badges to sell, bright, smiley, cheap and cheerful. I hope you can tell the difference between my sewing and my children's, but the sad fact is that they are pretty much on a level with my impressive needlework skills already. They are certainly better at threading needles than me - the proverbial camel gets through the eye about as easily as my thread, even with my glasses on, so I generally pass them to my six year old to do.

My son thinks the badges are cool and that we’ll be sold out in no time, my daughter is wondering which connoisseur will come and select her butterfly design as the very thing for them...and youngest was slightly annoyed that she didn’t get to sew any herself for the sale. As this is another area where we can easily fall out, and as I’d spent part of the morning sewing a spring butterfly to her stringent specifications, I felt justified in declining her help.

It’s tough being not quite four – you just can’t keep up. I think this is part of the reason why she has suddenly decided not to go to kindergarten for a while. As well as the newly developed seperation anxiety, there is the constant challenge of keeping up with the older ones, wanting to do everything that they do, as well as them. Exhausting. She is now having a gentle time bossing me around at home and telling her toys what to do. She and her big sister were playing school this afternoon and I overheard youngest saying “..and I’m going to go in a race and I’m going to win cos I’m the biggest and oldest...”.

We’re bringing the craft things home to do, so she doesn’t miss out on her treasure bag and butterfly. She says she is going to go to school again when she is four, which is less than a month away, so we’ll see. Watch out world when she is the biggest and oldest!

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