The morning had just started breaking when I was up and ready for planting my shrubs and my vine! If you want to achieve anything outside, it is to get your bum out of bed at about five, as by eight it was too warm, and you have to look for shade!
Jan and Nina have been very nice, and they had put up a pole fence for me in the front, and that was really nice, as the chicken wire of the old fence was full of holes where the village's street dogs crawled through and upturned the rubbish bin, tearing open all the bags, and generally made a heck of a mess!
I had some what to me sounded like good advice, and that is to mark out where you wanted to have a garden patch later, then bury all your food left overs, leaves, peels and fruit cores all over the patch, then leave it till the next planting season to decompose. Have only started now, so will only know a year from now whether it works.
I was working happily, outdoing the birds with my singing, well, I think they all flew away when I started, when I heard a roar like an angry tiger from my children's side, and after I had jumped about a meter from sheer fright, I rushed over to see what on earth had warranted that roar!
Nina was the angry tiger, and Skramunkel the little minx was the cause of all that shouting! This girl was standing just far away from the fence so that the stick Nina was brandishing around could not touch her, and her eyes were closed in ecstacy as she slowly chewed something green of which a piece was hanging from her mouth! Nina on the other hand was redfaced and her eyes spit fireballs as she stood shouting angry abuse at the horse, too scared to go into the camp, and looking fit to kill.
Apparently she had got up and walked out to have her coffee outside, when she noticed Skramunkel busy eating away on their almost ready to use veggies. The horse had neatly manouvered her head in between two two lines of barbed wire, and had a feast on the young veggies, and now stood there as if in a bally trance, quite unaware of poor Nina's ranting and raving!
I had to smother a smile, but the scene was so funny, with Nina looking murderous with her huge stck, and Skramunkel at one with the world, apparently not even aware of any wrong doing. From then on it was war between the two of them, as Skramunkel was a real minx, and just waited till all was quiet, then she would ever so nonchalantly shuffle up to the veggie garden fence, turn her head delicately from side to side until it glided through between the barb wire, and take a clump of leaves between her pouted lips, then chew it slowly and with relish. If she got wind of Nina coming, she would try and quickly get her head out, and the clumps of reddish hair hanging on the barbs was evidence enough of her sins!
That weekend when Jan came home, it was to find a very cross wife, and a loving horse, who looked at him with eyes full of love and innocence. He then decided to put up a fence of chicken wire to see if that would keep their precious veggies safe. I felt for them!
But for this weekend Jan had a project to do, and that was to build a temporary barbeque, as South Africans can just not live without their weekend barbies.