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My Dearest, Grandest Children,

...and your Parents,

It’s been good to talk to each and all of you on the phone over the past couple of weeks, but we still miss you a lot, and I feel like chatting to you about this and that…

It’s a good time for you all, I suppose, exams over, summer’s here, and coasting easily through the last few weeks with your schoolmates, before the term ends, and holidays begin. And we want to say congratulations for doing well in exams, and getting good reports, from what we hear. It’s Natalie who’s had to jump the highest hurdles this year, but several of you have been working your butts off, we know, to keep up your usual standards. So we look forward to hearing the details, and that you are enjoying golden days – in mood, if not always in weather… But we know that all ten of you will be travelling to the sun, somewhere or another, and/or having high social times.

But before you get the idea that exams are completely over, you have to read the following Matumi garden diary, and go through a multiple choice test afterwards… The winners get – guess what? – a bonk on the head! So listen up…

It’s a golden winter’s morning, as ever, though bit of a wind is blowing sausage-tree leaves into the pool, and clogging the barracuda now and then, but not blowing down any of this year’s large and heavy crop of sausages to thud on the lawn. There they hang like long brown squashes, frightening the life out of your old GG as she staggers by on her morning or afternoon walks, and warning all comers not to walk under them – and NEVER to set out the pool loungers there.

The coral blossoms are popping out on the tree (where the mamba was last summer) as I look out from my computer desk. They’ll be in full glory when you get here, John, Carmen and Eve. There’s always some blaze of colour, one following another, the last scattering of a few pink blossoms on the big South American kapok tree, a trace of May’s full show, and a few flowers still on the flame trees, while the aloes are gloriously full, like clusters of fiery stalks, up the cottage steps, behind our bedroom, and down below the outside fireplace, but they’ll have died down in a few weeks. The bougainvilleas come and go all the time.

Meanwhile those glossy black green, red and blue sunbirds are noisily everywhere sticking their long curved beaks to suck into every tubular blossom, all the aloes, including the ones at the top of that cactussy Bainsiae ‘desert’ tree next to the sausage, in the honeysuckle hedges and the red and purple creepers now covering the little courtyard wall, where we sometimes lunch in winter. The other day when we were away, a sunbird hopped on to the table alongside GG’s lunch plate and cocked its head at her, so she says. Mind you, just this morning a fairly large lizard came up and tickled my toes. The wildlife’s getting uppity. Duikers and bushbuck are about, monkeys occasionally, baby mongoose in groups, sticking wet noses out and rushing across for cover, baboons yahooing in the background (but pithens, mambas and cobras are all tucked up for winter).

The breakfast papaw skins are regularly propped in the tree for the bulbuls and the barbets and the smaller yellow white eyes. The LBJs, Little Brown Jobs, are back in large numbers, flocking from the moonflower bush over to the birdseed tree, sliding comically down the strings and on to the tray until it sways and heaves – then whirring off in fright if you so much as twitch an eyebrow. Now the birdseed order at PicknPay has doubled, because GG has a tray as well, outside her little porch.

The most dramatic and quite rare bird sighting was just this morning, before I sat down to the keyboard. One of the bigger eagles, Fish or Martial eagle, we reckon, with a wingspan of about three feet, circled low over the house several times! It may have heard that Eve Julia was coming soon, but doesn’t realise she’s far too tall to make an easy swoop on these days. Bobby’s much too big as well. It may have seen Khaimile crawling about a few weeks ago…

Gran is her usual busy self, between weekly chemo shots, after which she is tired for 24 hours or so, then back on her feet, doing the things I am too old for, like dragging the hoses, snipping and planting – the lettuces, rocket, and even tomatoes this year, will be just right for family consumption in late July. Gran is no longer having to lie on the bed for long periods, as she did, looking out at you all swimming when you were here. We’e out and about quite often, going to movies, going to Johannesburg. I should say, though, that this week’s chemo has hit her harder then usual…

Gran – who used to be a tree-hugger, now sometimes says: off with its head! Decided on the most radical change in the garden in recent weeks. Remember the badminton racket-and-shuttlecock-eating tree? The thorny one on the back lawn? (like the kite-eating tree in Peanuts comic strip)…Well, it’s been cut down, to give us a good view, not to push up against other trees – and not to drop thorns which get into your feet when you play badminton.

Granny is now making the most utterly baveuse cheese omelette, and all three of us need our white wine fix for lunch, so I am going to stop – but not before reminding you that a test is coming, on the above nature essay, like for example:

Q. Where should the pool loungers never be put?

A. In the pool  B. On top of Mount Carmel In GG’s bed

Or

Q. Which wildlife has gone to sleep for the winter?

A. Leopards B. Lizards C. Eagles


Q. Did Granny?

A. Hug a tree B Chop down a tree C. Grow lettuce



And so on…questions coming in the next email.
Lots and lots of love,



Grandpa xxxxxxxx

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