Hannes, Irma's friend and Manda his wife came only week-ends to do some work to their barn, and it was becoming quite weird looking, but in a nice way, as Hannes was an artist also, his real vocation being that of head master to a primary school.
He was now doing a picture of fishes on his wall facing the road using all kinds of pieces of glass and some small tiles, which made for a wonderful feature, but he had to put chicken wire in front to protect it, as the barn was out of sight from the kids's house, and the village kids, with drunken parents over the week-ends, and nothing to do, had almost destroyed it by bombarding it with stones the previous week when Hannes and Manda wern't there, just for fun!
I am really sorry for the Haarlem kids, and when one young girl and her mother one day knocked on my door to ask me whether I would not help the girl by giving her some art lessons, I was only too glad to help. She brought me some of her sketches the following week when her lessons started, and I could see that this was a child with lots of talent. So started an uplifting period in my life that lasted for three years, when this child fell pregnant, married her farm worker lover, and just disappeared amongst all the other youngsters who had babies, with hard drinking husbands, and who then also took to drink, I suppose to drown their sorrows! When I saw this girl's mother one day in the shop, and I asked her what happened to Mohesia, she looked so sad that I wanted to cry, and told me that there was a second baby on the way, and that her daughter was being abused by the husband. I was sad, as I had high hopes for this girl, who I would have helped as far as I possibly could!
My grapes that I had almost killed off thinking that the blossoms were insects, had started to ripen, and as it was Hanepoot, one of the sweetest white grapes, I was overeating a wee bit, and gave away some of it. Every time I wanted to go to the bathroom I had to walk underneath the grapevine that I had led across the path, and I would stop and have my fill! Delicious.
But the rain stayed away, and I stopped worrying about my garden, feeling sad at the dying off of many of my plants, and started getting everything ready for my trip. I was glad that I would be away from Haarlem, as the poor cattle, and the once beautiful horses were looking terrible, and to see them trying to pry out the smallest morsel of grass from underneath the gate poles was unnerving!
I cut the grass around the sewerage that Skramunkel used to get and threw it over the fence for the animals, but as that patch had also deminished to almost nothing, it didn't help much, but at least it could maybe take away the worst hunger pangs.Then the day of departure came, and I went away leaving my house as safe as could be, with two busts that I made years ago positioned in the windows, peeping from behind the blinds, with red dots in their eyes to make them look like demons!
The bottom picture is of my grape when it was just a few months old, and I love my red ladder!