The day had finally arrived when Jan and kids were moving to cape Town, and I am silently crying, and crying. I would miss them so much, but he promised to come and visit regularly. But the morning when he pulled out of the gate with the trailer loaded to capacity, I felt my heart just breaking as I sat feeding Emil for the last time. I know it was impossible to stay in such a remote place, as it was always a struggle when I was away, and he had to go to Johannesburg or cape Town for his job, as there was now nobody to look after the kids. Andreas was okay, he had little friends whose mums could help by having him stay, but people are not so keen on looking after a very busy toddler. On this foto he took off down the dirt road, following a herd of cows, so he was not easy to watch.
Growing onions was a bally disaster! The growing was okay, but the many elements of distruction roaming around the Haarlem streets were just too much, and now I sit only with the onions that I had planted inside my enclosure that protect the home garden from said elements.
Of course the first disaster was when Mad Larry's pig forced his way in by enlarging a small hole in the fence, originally I think to eat the acorns, but maybe the fellow got bored, and tackled the onion field. I think, as there are millions of earth worms in the soil, that said pig was snuffling them out, with total disregard for my poor onions. Then, luckily after replanting a lot of the onions inside my home fence, Sheila's chickens with their enormous claws got inside my place, and also had a go at feasting on the earthworms, destroying another big portion of onions. After putting the fear of all hells into them by shooting wildly at them with my catapult, and the naughty things scattering over the field cackling and running for dear life, I thought that peace had at last come to me and my onions, the few that was left!
Then, one evening, Kevin, the man working for Sheila, knocked on my door, and asked whether I could open the gate to my onion field for him so that he could chase the cows out! I got quite hysterical, grabbed the keys, and shouting down the wrath of all gods on Sheila and her cows, I ran out to inspect the damage, and yes, the silly cows were inside, trudging all over my few remaining onions!

They had come in by flattening the fence adjoining the the river, but now they can't seem to jump the fence from inside my place. So that was the end of any hope of rescuing some of that lot, but the ones that I replanted inside, are doing fine!

The year is running like a bally rabbit to its end, and there were such a lot of things I still had to do! It was my birthday Yesterday, but it was raining and storming so badly that I just stayed inside the whole day. Running with buckets to catch every new leak in my roof kept me very, very busy. Every time it rains like this, and I get a wee bit wet, and my bed gets a bitty clammy, I vow that I will have to find the money to repair the roof, but when the sun comes out again, and all are dry, I shift that problem to the back of my head. It is just to expensive to repair a thatch roof!
The children are now almost finished with their final yearly exams, and I walk around with my heart in my shoes. As soon as the exams are over, Jan will be moving to Cape Town, and I don't know how to go on without the kids that had become such a part of my life.
I sometimes forget that the little Emil is not my child, as I brought him up since he was five weeks old, when his Mum died. So it is with great trepidation that I watch Jan loading his hired tow-cart with furniture that he decided to take to his new home. Most of his furniture he had taken to the auction rooms, as Erna already has a house full of stuff. The rest was carted off every time he went to Cape town.
His house is also now on the market, and I hope that the new owners would be nice and decent. I have the strangest neighbors, of which Sheila must be the number one for strangeness. Through the years her cows had eaten every little tree I planted, and when one of her cows broke the cover of my sewerage, and almost drowned, and I told her that I will shoot and eat the first cow in my place again, she put up a stronger fence. But that did not keep out the bally goats, and they have torn down and destroyed my poor plum trees in one afternoon! Again I threatened to shoot them, and she then fastened the leader, a very smelly, and very randy billy goat, to a pole, from where the bally cheeky thing wagged his tail every time he saw me! If only he knew how close he was to be shot and eaten.
Of course, then Sheila got a few peacocks, and that bally things drove me to distraction, as they thought that my strawberries was planted especially for their cullinary delight! And of course on top of the fact that they ate all my ripe tomatoes also, they flew onto my roof every night, and on the dot three in the morning, let rip with the most scary jungle calls, making my poor heart beat very fast and irregularly! Small wonder I now have to have a shock to get my heart back into rhytmn!
So at the moment Sheila and self are not talking! At first she kind of turned her head away when she came face to face with me, but lately she had started to give me a kind of a half hearted flick of her hand, but this is not accompanied with any smile, or eye contact! Oh well, I will live it down, but for now, I am sad, as Jan's house is all packed up!