Hannes, who was doing some amazing things to the barn that he was renovating to live in later, got new neighbours, as I mentioned before, in the persons of Ronalee and Gary, who bought the plot with the orchards that I originally wanted to buy, but the houses were just to dilapedated.
Gary started renovating with a vengeance, and as he had a vast knowledge of the building industry, with a huge truck and all the tools of the trade, it wasn't long before he got himself a couple of builders,  and the middle building was finished in a trice, as they were living there for the time being. He was just the best person to renovate that old historical buildings, as the one used to be a post office many years ago.
It wasn't long before their garden started showing off its beautiful colours, and I had the previlege to sit on Irma's veranda, watching the riot of blooms stirred by the Haarlem breeze, to dance and prance like a stage full of ballarinas.
I marvelled at Ronalee who was always in the garden, her hands rough and her face burned to a reddish hue by the strong sun, and could stand bent over for hours, planting or weeding. Then she got Bush! Now Bush was something else! A genial, very friendly man with a pair of sparkling white teeth, that hails from Zimbabwe but now resides in Haarlem, where he buys and sells things that he takes or bring back from his home country. He usually goes off to Zimbabwe three monthly, taking commodities that are hard to find there, and selling it I believe at a huge profit, and bringing back baskets and other artifacts that again he bought at ridiculously low prizes from the people who made it. He was an excellent businessman, as he once talked Sheila, who loved her scarves, into buying the whole lot that he brought back from him. It was lovely scarves, but I am not sure whether Sheila wanted such a lot all at once. As I said, he was a good businessman, but a bitty catious when it came to working with his hands, and he never passed my house, without informing me that he absolutely hate cows, and milking them, and tending them, stating that he was a maize growing farmer in Zimbabwe before all the trouble started there. He was no lover of Mugabe, who flattened their houses when they refused to vote for him. A shame, as people there had it very bad.
He never passed me by without stopping for a chat, but  not without first informing me with wringing hands and a real funeral voice, in case I asked him to do some manual work, that he either was on his way to Uniondale, or to the village shop to get food, or away to collect his money from his debtors! He was never to be caught again and asked to make some holes, that proved to be his pet hate, as I found when I once co-erced him into planting some rambling roses for me, a task he did with very little enthusiasm!
As I had little seating because we couldn't get my couch through the door at the flat, resulting in me leaving it, Hannes and Manda gave me two old and falling apart little couches that I tried, not too succesfully to make loose covers for! But They were quite comfy, if very low, and I decided to keep them for the time being!
The top photo is of Hannes and Manda's barn.