Heatwave

The donkey on the last quarter of Christmas cake looks comfortably cool with his hooves plunged in snowy icing, isolated under the cake dome in another world… the very opposite of the rest of us, sweltering in South Africa’s current heatwave. There’s something not quite right about the conjunction of Christmas cake and forty degrees of sunshine, to me at least with childhood memories of Christmas cake gobbled up beside a roaring fire.

We still eat it, trundling in from the school run, dumping heavy bags and getting out homework (school has started for real now, despite the heat) because it’s delicious and we can’t resist, but a rich, heady fruit cake isn’t the ideal teatime treat, when the only comfortable place after about nine in the morning is in the swimming pool. What we should be eating are luscious, chilled  slices of juicy watermelon, or home-made ice-cream, smoothies thick with frozen berries from the garden... (we do have those too, but we're stubbornly diligent about making our way through the last of the cake.

Our straw bale walls keep the worst of the heat at bay for at least half of the day, but by late afternoon we are desperate to fling open doors and windows, and only the still fierce heat outside makes us wait just a bit longer for the promise of a cooler evening breeze. On days like this the only thing to do is get most of the work done in the morning, so that when the heat overwhelms the brain with sluggishness you feel justified in collapsing with a book beside a fan, or seek relief in car air-conditioning by heading out on the school run.

Everything's dry, dry, dry, the moles looking for moisture by the sprinkler. Can you feel the wall of heat?

We scan the weather forecast several times a day, elated when heavy rain is forecast for Saturday, frustrated and disappointed when the forecast shifts and offers a measly light drizzle as an alternative, then later loses any hope of rain at all. Two degrees lower is cause for celebration, not concerned that 38C is still darn hot… it’s a reprieve from the horror of 40C and upwards and we cling to faint hopes.

On the bright side it’s still cooling down at night most nights. In the small hours before dawn cooler air flows from somewhere magical and trickles in through an open window, so that we pull a thin sheet over ourselves with the luxury of snuggling under something. When we wake properly at 5.30 or 6 the first thing to do is run around the house opening every single window at its widest to fill the house with that coolness before it dissipates over the next two hours.

The best place to lie in the middle of the day

The toughest thing to judge is exactly what point to run around shutting them all again – is that breeze still cool, or is it getting warmer than inside now? Get it wrong, sit at the computer too long and forget to close the windows, and the house fills up with hot dryness again and there is no getting away from it. Then, once the sun has dipped below the hill and I can bear to cook supper, we eat outside lingering at the table until it’s dark, long after the kids have cleared their plates and disappeared off, because finally we’re cool and the house is still too hot inside for the sofa to hold any appeal.

Most summers we have a period like this, but in recent memory it has been only a few days, here and there, perhaps a short spell in November and again in February and March. This is the first year that we’ve been here that the heat has been something to endure over a long period of time.

With the whole country groaning under drought conditions, we are luckier than many. We have water. Though our vegetable garden is drying out and producing very little, we are able to keep our trees alive.

The gleanings of a dried out veggie garden

There are almonds to harvest, tomatoes to pick up off dried out plants and make sauce with, the last few mielies (corn) to pick. The leeks have gone to flower and make weird and wonderful summer flower arrangements. .And when I head to school to fetch the kids and nip into the local town for the bank or shops, it’s right on the beach and the temperature drops to a blessed 28C, pleasant summer hot, beach weather.

All we can do is pray for enough rain to fill depleted dams, for it to fall where farmers need it most, and where firefighters need its help. (Scary fires are raging in the wine farm area of Simonsberg, there was a bad one up near Elgin and another in the Cedarberg, the list goes on, the land is so dry that bush fires start at the merest spark)

Here’s hoping for temperatures to ease off to more bearable levels, so that we can grumble about something else for a change, like the free-falling rand, for instance!

Seapoint Research Trip with Chocolate

Serendipity on a plate at My Sugar

There are two sorts of days when you write for a living. The ones where you sit at your computer all day, um, writing...  plus the ones where the entire day goes by at your computer not actually writing anything publishable, (make that three sorts), but sending out endless emails to people that you need information or images from with  frequent lapses onto Facebook just to distract you from the fact that not a single word has been written, apart from all those email words which don’t count towards your word count.

And then there are, very occasionally, days like today. Golden days. Days that start out with one plan and end up serendipitously turning into something else. Today we had a client meeting in town at 10, which I planned on following up with a quick drive around Seapoint in Cape Town, to research background for an article that has a looming deadline. So I dressed for a casual meeting,one step up from my work at home winter uniform of jeans and fleece jacket, and headed out with my husband (we work as a team for our web clients) into a sunny but very windy winter day driving along the N7 to town, long views of Table Mountain all the way.

Then just as we hit the N1 he gets a call to cancel the meeting, one partner called away the other one keeping the business going single handed, can we postpone?

So suddenly the whole morning lies ahead of us and all of Seapoint to research. Our first port of call is a little cafe called My Sugar that opened recently and that I will review for another article later on. I’d originally planned on just a quick look in today, but now with no meeting and Patrick desperate for coffee, we grab a table and I settle in to tasting... chocolates. Yes my best... and if ten o’clock in the morning ought to be too early who cares, chocolate is always chocolate and this is the real deal. I’m not going to review it here yet because I need to save the drum rolls for my print article, but suffice to say that if you love good chocolate and good coffee, you have to go there and taste for yourself.

Two perfect chocolates on a plate at My Sugar

Back to the car and ready to go exploring we find ourselves in the road a friend now lives in. On the off-chance we phone to see if she’s around, to find her kicking her heels at home between the arrival of various electricians and window fitters, with plenty of time to chat. A cup of tea and catch up are followed by a personalized guided tour of the back streets of Seapoint, gathering way more detail and local gossip than will ever fit into my article but so much more interesting with a life-long local to show you around than to go researching on your own.

We headed up to the heights of Fresnaye where huge houses are worth multiple millions (R60 million for some), and where stunning views out over the ocean or up behind at the mountain are enjoyed by security watchmen and builders, while absent foreign owners are off enjoying somewhere else’s sunshine. Then we descended to lower levels where the air is less rarefied and more suitable for mere mortals to breathe, muddled along Main Road, pottered along the promenade and went to gaze at the lone swimmer doing lengths in the Pavilion swimming pool, where the temperature was advertised at 13C today, one degree warmer than the ocean. Everyone I'd previously spoken to about Seapoint had told me that it’s got the best weather and is much less windy than the City Bowl. Well today was the day that proved the exception to the rule. The wind was blowing in earnest, palm trees having a bad hair day, but the sun was shining and those veteran die-hard swimmers aren’t deterred by such considerations as comfort.

Seapoint Pavilion - salt water pools with the ocean behind

By then after so much leisurely and pleasurable dawdling, school pick up time was nagging at our thoughts. Far from our West Coast stomping grounds with dog food to buy, petrol to put in and three kids to collect, we relinquished the urban vibe, calculated that our whole farm with four houses on it would probably not even buy us a two bedroom flat here and pointed the car to Melkbos.

And as this was a day of being a food writer and food trucks are one of the current Cape Town food happenings not to be ignored, we patronised our I love Melkies food truck for the first time for a late lunch (I was slightly jittery on caffeine and chocolate by this time) and had a very enjoyable toasted bagel with scrambled egg and red onion for me and a real proper hot dog for him with red onion, gherkins and sweet chilli sauce. Definitely a good street food experience to be repeated.

I Love Melkies food truck in Melkbosstrand

Now I’ve got enough notes to write my Seapoint article, an almost written review and a whole blog post out of my day, I feel energised and well fed both physically and mentally, and it was great having my husband along for the adventure too, all thanks to the postponed client meeting. Here's to many more research trips with him along as driver and co-ordinator!

Our Winter Festival Over the Years

Christmas in summer still doesn’t feel quite right for me, even though my kids have grown up with it. Sunshine, salads and a cold lunch are quite normal for them, though they always prefer it when it’s cool enough for roast potatoes to go with the turkey. So when we first got here we came up with the idea of cramming some of those wonderful winter traditions from my English childhood, sparklers and bonfires on Guy Fawkes night, mulled wine and lanterns at Christmas, into one big celebration of winter.

That first festival back in 2002 revolved around making lanterns and carrying them on sticks in a procession to create our circle (the circle that is now the centre of all our festivals). We then came back down the hill to light a huge bonfire and drank mulled wine. I think we had sparklers that time, if not then certainly by the next winter they had been added to the essential ingredients list, along with soups and boerewors rolls and an avenue of lights made from tea light candles in brown paper bags.

When the kids were smaller the most exciting thing about the evening was being able to run around outside in the dark, while the adults stood around the bonfire warming hands on mugs of mulled wine. Now the older ones have graduated to sitting around the fire watching sparks fly, though nobody has quite got too old for a sparkler or two, and licensed pyromania retains its allure.

Our festival a couple of weeks ago heralded the winter holidays and was a really lovely one. We had new friends join us and the kids did most of the preparation work themselves, with teams  decorating the archway,  filling bags with sand for the candlelit pathway and the boys building the bonfire. The Malawian couple who live on the farm joined us for the first time, intrigued by the whole idea, as in the days leading up to the festival Simon had been working on clearing some of the restios that were gradually overgrowing the sandpit.

Lanterns lit and ready for the procession to the circle

 The chilly wind died down while we were busy making lanterns inside and by the time the sun had gone and we were lighting the lanterns it was almost warm and completely still, the moon well up and the Venus Jupiter conjunction bright in the night sky. It really was magical as we sat in the circle, read our blessings and the vision prayer and coaxed the kids into singing.

Then a few of us rushed to the house to bring the soups and mulled wine out, others put a match to the bonfire and the men started braaiing the sausages around a smaller fire. We had a fine array of soups from butternut to lentil, chicken to beef and barley, as well as a bean stew. Two huge plaited loaves disappeared without any trouble and there were still boeri rolls for those with any room left. We were all loath to leave the fire so it was late before we eventually moved indoors for puddings, some of the littlest having already fallen asleep on the sofa inside, though signs of life returned once the scent of pudding was in the air.

Look for the Venus Jupiter conjunction just over our heads.

Licensed pyromania

Altogether a wonderful festival leaving us all feeling re-connected, to the turn of the seasons, to the earth and to each other.

Read more about our winter festival and building the bonfire

A Foreigners’ Guide to Load-shedding

Homework by candlelight

Some things are uniquely South African, like braais, fynbos, vuvuzelas and Table Mountain. Now we have one more thing to bewilder and confuse visitors from abroad and overseas readers of our social media platforms: load-shedding.

Load-shedding has consumed all of our energies and channelled our collective frustration into a froth of social media invective and subversive wit for the last several months now. If you’ve seen the word Eishkom once you’ve seen it a thousand times, but if you’re still in the dark (pun alert) about what we’re talking about, here is a short guide:

Load-shedding is when the power to your whole area gets switched off for a few hours, usually when you have a cake in the oven, an important deadline to meet, or a very exciting rugby game on TV. You may know in advance that it’s going off, or you may have no warning at all.

In theory a schedule is all  worked out and clearly defined. You can look up your area's schedule of 2.5 hour slots online and see what times are allocated to your area.

For each area there are three scenarios: Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3.

Stage 1 is relatively benign – one of your three daily time slots alternates over three days and some days you have none at all.
Stage 2 you have one slot every day, sometimes two.
Stage 3 is the killer, two or three slots every day

But here is the wild card.
You never know if there will be load-shedding at all, if so what time it will start, and which stage will be put in place.

It might start off being announced as Stage 1 and then suddenly change to Stage 2 with less than a minute’s warning. Or they might say all day that there will be no load-shedding, only to put Stage 1 in place a minute before 6pm, which is when our time slot starts, crashing all our computers.... again.

So what is that Eishkom thing all about?
Eskom is South Africa’s national energy provider.  Eish is a very South African word expressing exasperation or disbelief, with a long drawn out vowel sound to funnel all that frustration. A natural match.

Why are Eskom doing this to us?
It’s not just to browbeat us into submission and make those new-age hippies advocating alternative power accept the need for more nuclear power stations built by the Russians (I think... unless you subscribe to conspiracy theories). Our national power demands have gone up and the infrastructure is all suddenly getting older (apparently Eskom didn’t see that one coming) and is in urgent need of maintenance. Some of our shiny new wind power farms are working, others are standing there not turning and waiting for parts that never come. We have lots and lots of free and gorgeous sunshine, but it’s too expensive to harness it (why?).

Because this is a light and fluffy post I won’t mention that pundits tell us this is only going to get worse, or how bad this is for our economy, and can reassure those who are thinking of coming over here to visit our beautiful, hospitable country that all the essential infrastructure is still working – hospitals don’t get load-shed, most hotels and restaurants have generator back-ups and much of the CBD isn’t targeted at all. If you come and stay with us I can promise candlelit dinners cooked over our gas hob, braais and, without the distractions of computers and TV, long chats on the sofa in the dim candlelight.

We’ll survive. Our computers might not and our cakes may all collapse but, to look on the bright side, (call me Pollyanna if you want) this might be just what is needed to get the solar industry to go mainstream and to motivate a whole lot of us to get off the grid, so that Eishkom won’t need to build any more nuclear power stations after all. Here’s hoping!

Fellow South Africans - if you haven't yet got a reliable load-shedding alert system, try Gridwatch, a Smartphone app from News24, that works pretty well... as long as Eskom give anyone advance notice that is!

A Happy Christmas

Christmas approached in an accelerating rush of presents not yet, bought, not yet made, not yet wrapped; it caught the whole family wrong footed this year, even Middle Daughter, who usually starts making presents in October, was caught short by the reality of high school with exams and projects, and only started making her presents once school holidays kicked in – despite this she was ahead of the rest of us.

Youngest came to me the day before Christmas Eve and stated decisively that she needed go to the crystal shop in a tone that allowed for no negotiation ... so we created a window among the mad rush of Christmas Eve cooking and sped down the road to our nearby village of Philadelphia, where present salvation is to be found in the form of a glittering treasure chest of semi-precious stones, crystals, pretty jewellery, clothes, enough to solve any gift dilemma, as long as you don’t have teenage boys on your list (she had made fudge for her brother so that was OK).

Getting our tree is a whole family affair. We usually bring it in on the Sunday before Christmas Day – the Saturday is taken up with our summer festival and my SIL works in the week and is an enthusiastic tree-chooser and cutter so it would be unthinkable to do it without her.

This year she was on leave so we suggested getting the tree the week before to have it in time for the festival, but with one thing and other it didn’t happen, so the tradition of the Sunday before Christmas held true (to Middle Daughter’s secret relief – a traditionalist at heart).

This year’s tree was the one SIL had picked out already, tall and elegant it only just passed the raised stick test for height (any taller than that and even our ceiling is challenged). Carried home in triumph and set up in a tub full of bricks, roped to the wall and adjusted for uprightness, then it is over to me for the putting on of lights. This brings out the most irritable side of me, so don’t get in my way when I’m unwinding strings of lights from their coat-hangers, clambering up ladders and teetering there with broom outstretched to get them perfectly wound around the topmost branches.

Middle daughter is looking poised to take over these duties any time I bow out and did a fine job with getting the tinsel up high, she and Youngest doing most of the putting up of decorations. Son put up those ornaments nominally his, and disappeared back to a gaming conversation with friends on his computer.

Then Monday and Tuesday were both shopping days – husband having hurt his back carrying in the tree, so I did his share of driving around looking for wish list items as well as my own. I felt like a cave dweller out foraging all day for rare and desirable pieces of rock or berries, as I shuttled from specialist computer shop in the back streets to mega-store and shopping mall, eventually staggering home with a few hard-won prizes to go under the tree.

Apart from the brief foray to the crystal shop, Christmas Eve was spent in the kitchen, steaming up as the gammon simmered for slow hours, red onion marmalade for gifts cooked down, and building up the stripes of different colours in the jam-jar jellies, to the sound-track of Christmas carols and the despairing cries of kids trying to finish off and wrap their presents. By 4.30 when I had to ferry the girls down to take part in the Christmas play at Camphill, I hadn’t wrapped a single present, but other than that everything was ready.

Almost time to relax.

The play over, girls exchanged their gifts with their friends, and then had to be torn away from them and back to a quick supper and family Christmas carols, when we always have to sing our way through the entire book of carols. This left all the wrapping to be done from 9pm onwards, including Father Christmas’ wrapping (he needs so much help these days), so it was after 11 before the kids were quiet enough for us to at least pretend they were asleep and stuff their stockings, which they still insist on hanging at the end of their beds. And then collapse on the sofa in a daze of tinsel and sellotape.

The view from the sofa at almost midnight

Then the day dawns early, and stockings are opened, attended by Bracken and including a flurry of messaging with friends... now we know we have teenagers.

It turns out to be one of those precious cool Christmas Days, overcast with occasional showers of fine rain, this is a good thing in the middle of a hot dry South African summer, meaning we don’t have to do any watering, and that we can have the children’s favourite roast potatoes and veggies to accompany the turkey and gammon, instead of boring old salads.

My mother and the girls on Christmas morning, and George smiling too!

 And this year our lunch went smoothly, without last year’s drama of fire fighting, only enlivened by the sighting of a large cobra beside the bunny cage, which sent the snake catchers out in force just before the food was on the table. The snake went off and hid, was sighted again on Boxing Day and we’re still checking the  bunnies regularly to make sure there are two of them.

Crackers, too much pudding, a rustle of wrapping paper, movies and finding room for Christmas cake at supper time, family Christmasses at home are a treasured part of our family recipe book.

Happy Christmas, Everyone!  (especially Marcheline, who I know is reading, because she comments even if I haven't posted anything, just to keep me on my blogging toes :) )

Wishing you all a wonderful year ahead full of much joy, love and laughter.

Jam in the Morning

The kids leave for school in a flurry of lunch bags and ten-ton rucksacks, piling into my sister-in-law’s little red car at seven in the morning. There’s a momentary lull. I finish my cup of tea, sometimes I haven’t had my own breakfast yet, but then there is another tug of demand. George is patiently waiting for his walk, lying out on the brick path. His eyes are focused on my movements through the doorway. If I don’t seem to be coming soon enough, he’ll be at my side with a plaintive whine, then bound to the door again if I move half an inch in that direction.

At this time of year I take my basket with me every day. Our walk around the circular dirt road takes us past the veggie garden and the orchard, and there is always something  in urgent need of picking.We had so many carrots last month that I picked 20 kilos and took them down to sell at Camphill market. We were giving them away to friends, juicing them like crazy and eating them at every meal. Now we're down to just a few baby carrots, but have gallons of green beans, sacks of spinach, loads of leeks, and the courgettes have just started producing, so I have to  pick them every morning otherwise they seem to turn into marrows overnight.

The veggie garden is currently full of spinach, leeks, carrots, green beans and a ton of onions - such a blessing!

We had tearing winds just when the plums came ripe, so I was picking up wind-falls every morning and evening.

George keeps busy while I pick, chasing off the guinea fowl and peacocks.

The plums ripen within a day to dark purple and dripping with juice

This last two weeks we’ve had an entire tree of plums all coming ripe in one week. At the same time as the apricots, which all had to be stripped from the tree and jammed with great urgency, as they’d been ‘stung’ by fruit flies. So every morning I’ve been making jam, great pots of it, sometimes two, and every evening I’ve been preparing the next lot of fruit for the next lot of jam.

Part of today's strawberry harvest

We’ve got enough plum and apricot jam now for the year, but our strawberry crop has been woefully late and sparse. Only three pots of strawberry jam sit on the shelf, swamped by an ocean of plum and apricot. But finally the berries are getting going and I picked four ice cream containers of berries first thing this morning. Enough for several pots of jam, for my sister-in-law to make strawberry ice-cream, and to have some left over to eat. Phew – our jam self-sufficiency is safe for another year!

Apricots on the way to jammy deliciousness

The jam isn’t the only reason I’ve been neglecting my blog. I had a long succession of writing deadlines through September and October. Great for my work, not so great for me wanting to sit at the computer and write some more in my free time. So there were a whole load of things I was going to write about here, now just a distant memory and a handful of photos on Facebook: our spring festival, a visit to the Oranjezicht City farm market, the Make It New exhibition of Western Cape design and craft, project managed by my sister-in-law that I helped behind the scenes with, and then there was the Camphill Music festival with Freshly Ground playing live just down the road from us. All these things deserved a post all to themselves.

Maybe they’ll get one, after I’ve finished making jam, baking Christmas cakes and have survived the end of term whirlwind of end of exam parties, prize-givings, concerts and all that malarkey. Real life is taking over here and not leaving me enough time for my virtual reality! Anyway,  Marcheline, I’m still alive and well, if slightly sticky and enveloped in a veil of jam fumes!

George's Big Adventure - River Holiday

All our other dogs have been farm dogs. We go places, they stay at home and look after the house. They were happier that way, we were happier that way; who wants to share a car with a whimpering, shivering wreck more often than they have to? Right from the start with George however, he was going to be the family dog, the one who comes with us to the beach and ultimately on holiday to the Breede River. The first trip to the beach was a resounding success and from then on we knew he’d love the river. We just weren’t quite sure how we were going to fit him, no longer a puppy but a large, lanky dog, and our luggage, including food for ten days, in the car for the four hour journey.

In the end it was fine. The food and bags went on the roof, George and his cushion squashed in the back and drooled over Middle Daughter, who drew the short straw and got the very back seat. As a variation he panted down the neck of our son and tried to see out of the window clearly enough to count cars, sheep and telegraph poles, in between whining “Are we nearly there yet?” He was duly hushed by the teenagers, who with the diversion of iPods and earpieces tune out for the duration of the journey and no longer ask that dreaded question.

Exploring the sand bar in the afternoon at low tide

The reward for such patience, a steep grass hill leading down to  a wide stretch of water, a shallow sandy beach and, joy of joy, a sand bar that had shifted into perfect place since we’d last visited, allowing us to walk out into the middle of the river at low tide and creating a huge, relatively safe water play zone for dogs and kids.

As soon as we’d done all the regrettably essential grown-up things, like getting all the cool boxes off the roof, checking that the cool blocks had successfully countered the bright sunshine and stowing food into freezer and fridge, it was time to cool off from the hot journey in the river. George plunged in with joyous abandon, swimming and swimming between each and every member of the family, trying to keep tabs on us all. To start with we worried about him getting over-tired and sinking, but he just kept going.

"Hurry up, there the whole river to swim in!"

George heading out for an early morning swim at high tide

"It's hard work herding kayaks."

George's first voyage in the canoe with Youngest and me.

It soon became clear that he wasn’t going to be left behind when we took the canoe out either, as he leapt in after us next morning and started followed us up river. In the end we paddled back to shore and let him climb in with us, but made a shorter trip than usual, as he kept dipping a paw over the side, trying to drink the river and seemed likely to dive back in any minute. Over the next few days he got more used to being a canoe passenger and it became a slightly less hazardous under-taking.

We had four days of perfect summer holiday: swimming before breakfast, canoeing and the kids making their first attempts at water-skiing behind our friends’ boat. George regarded this activity with deep suspicion and it took just a few splashy failed attempts by the girls getting up on the skis, for him to become convinced that they needed rescuing from the persecuting noisy monster circling around them. He kept jumping in to swim out to them and in the end he was becoming so distressed that my mum had to put him on the lead and take him off for a walk to distract him.

In between times there was much baking of bread and rock buns (essential fodder in the river family tradition), and generous meals conjured up by each of the two families in turn. And croquet, can you believe that with such limited space we still found space for the croquet set on the roof?! Middle Daughter devised a complex course worthy of golf that kept the game going for hours.

A rainy day was forecast and we looked forward to huddling in bed late with books and cups of tea,  long games of Catan or cards, perhaps just a bit more baking. That was Monday, duly wet with storms and rain showers. Tuesday dawned with rain reduced to drizzle and looked set to clear up, but at breakfast I noticed that the water level was just creeping over the high tide mark onto the grass. Ten minutes later we were sure of it. The river was rising.

Suddenly we were at action stations, dragging the canoes higher up the lawn and taking the motor boat out of the water, just in case. We swam in the rising water as we did so and within an hour were able to paddle the canoes over what had been the bottom lawn. A slight check came when my glasses, carefully removed to avoid losing them in the river, were no longer when I’d left them with shoes and hats on the kayak, well above  the waterline. Our son had taken the things off the kayak to paddle it into the flood waters and hadn’t noticed my glasses. After much crawling around the ex-lawn in the rising water, we gave them up as lost and retired up the hill to tea, rock buns and to watch the still rising waters creep alarmingly quickly up the hill.

That clump of green mid-stream is the willow tree from previous pictures.

Luckily the house we stay at is high up the hill, so unlike the family several plots down, we weren’t having to move furniture and pack our bags. There were several meters of hillside in reserve. My husband had planned to go into Swellendam, but got as far as the dip in the access road, where water was already lapping at the edges, and changed his mind. Lucky that he did as the water kept on coming and halfway through the afternoon the road was at least a meter under water.

Watching trees float by on the flood

George was used to high and low tide by now, recognising that sometimes he could walk out onto the sand bar and others it was swimming all the way. But he knew that here was something wrong about the water this time and wasn’t nearly as happy letting us swim in it. There were some rather painful rescue attempts, as his idea is simply to grab hold of an arm in his mouth and drag you to shore.
That night there was more thunder, more rain and next morning we watched as the river rose even further until we could paddle the canoes right around the milkwood tree halfway up the hill between the house and the river. The main flow of the river was fast and deep brown, all memories of tidal cycle forgotten, carrying branches, logs and whole trees rapidly past. Our lawn became our own private lagoon just enough removed from the strong current, where we could swim, hold canoe races and explore the jungle of trees on the adjoining plot by canoe, an adventure in itself.

P restraining George from leaping in to the rescue

Heading off to explore uncharted jungle waters

Middle Daughter practising fishing casts, and the water now round the milkwood tree

Kayak vs canoe, racing across the lawn. That wisp of green is the willow again!

We had four days of being officially marooned, luckily without any real hardship, as we’d all brought enough food with us for the whole holiday. At last on Friday the waters began to recede, leaving a stinking carpet of mud behind them. George needed a hose down after each river foray, as did our feet after we finally braved the main river in our canoe to explore the aftermath. Even then the current was strong and violent eddies every now and again would knock us off course, so it was a perilous adventure!

By our last day the river was almost back to normal levels, but the tide hadn’t quite resumed normal play, and the sand bank we’d so enjoyed at the beginning of the holiday seemed to have been shifted bodily into the reeds. The kids never did get to work any further on their water-skiing, which was disappointing, but we had had an adventure that we’ll not forget and plenty of relaxation and down time to set us up for the new school year. George enjoyed his holiday and was just as happy to get home again and back to chasing hares every morning.

A promise. The waters at their highest.

Happy 2014 to you all! I hope your holidays were relaxing and free of floods and other natural disasters!