Jan and the boys came to visit this past week-end, very unexpectantly! it was wonderful, as I miss them so much. I can't say baby Emil now anymore, as he is going on for three, and very, very cheeky. Sometimes when he is so cute I feel really sad that his mum would never see him grow up. Life sometimes take us on some strange paths, and the death of Nina will be felt for a long time yet.
In the meantime I have been on operation moles again, and I think that this time I might have actually gassed most of them. I found this stuff at the Co-op, tablets that is pushed into the tunnels, then watered, and this then makes a gas that is lethal to moles and rats. Well, I hope it works, as I am consumed by an overwhelming hatred for the critters.
Jan and Erna had decided to get married, and I will be going to cape Town for that. I am so glad for him, as he was in a bad state for such a long time after Nina's death, but nowadays he looks much more the thing.
The tomatoes have now stopped getting ripe without stopping, and it gives me a small respite. I must say, I have tomato stew, jam, chutney, and sundried cherry tomatoes to last me a long time. It is wonderful to find something that as yet has no enemies, as I never had to spray the plants, just water and sunshine they needed!
The time is now fast approaching for my new neigbour to move into Jan's house, and this woman is from what I can make out from the estate agent, driving eveybody crazy with demands for all kinds of things not heard of at Haarlem. Now Haarlem is very rural, and city laws do not apply. here you buy for the land, and the houses itself have no value. One can build a million rand home, but will never sell it for more than about four hundred thousand.
This past weekend Jan had to disconnect the bio gas to his old house, as the new owner did not want it! I was absolutely dumbfounded when Jan told me about this, as she would have been almost completely free of Eskom, the electricity company, who are now struggling to supply power. We have black-outs at all hours, although there are lists of when the lights would go off. ha-ha!! The last picture shows the bio gas installation.
Left for this woman to use was all the kitchen implements that ran on the bio gas, but she was adamant to have it all removed! So now I am waiting in suspense for the end of March when she moves in!

It was a wet and dreary week-end, but nobody should complain, as we have a continious water shortage in this country! So I curled up with a book, that is of course after I had positioned all the buckets to catch the water from the leaks in the roof! I have done some clever stuff to combat the leaks, but well, not all of them worked out.
My best effort yet was to hang some boards, neatly painted, from the rafters, making it look strangely nice, and then I stuck some buckets on the boards. I had actually hung two of Irma's paintings like that, and it looked so nice that somebody bought both of them! It works a treat, but in the lower bedroom with the roof on one side about twelve feet high, sloping down to the window on the other side, and that being only about five feet, it was pretty impossible to work my magic there. So I took some very shiny insulation foil that Jan left, and stretched that between the rafters where it was leaking. The lowest sides I folded over, and the water is then caught in there. the only trouble I have with this arrangement, is that every time I tried to let the water out by straightening the parts that was folded over, something went wrong, and I had quite a few very dirty showerings! Will have to work on that. But at least my bed is dry now, as it is not a nice feeling to wake up with cold, wet feet in the middle of the night, with the bedding all brown and dirty from the water.
I had quotes to have the roof re-thatched, but that was too dear, then I bought some thatch, but I had to go back to Scotland before my neighbour, whom I paid very hansomely, fetched that, so the thatcher did a horrible job, and my daughter in law paid him without checking! I cried a lot on seeing my new roof when I got back, as half the thatch lay around the house, having been blown off, and the bits left on the roof looked like a very, very angry Porcupine! The thatcher did not put one new beam in, neither did he use even an inch of the thatching rope, and this wee pest had disappeared into thin air by now!
I feel like a tomatoe. I keep on picking, and drying, and freezing, but every second morning there are another huge load that had ripened. I have decided, to heck with trying to grow onions, tomatoes will be my next venture, to try and make some money. The cherry tomatoes seem to have no enemies here in the Langkloof where I live, and boy oh boy, they are hardy. This plants just came up from the previous year's seeds, and without any real attention, it is now driving me to distraction, there are so many. What is strange is that the seeds that came up outside my yard fence, seem to be doing even better than the ones I watered regularly! Anyhow, my neighbours enjoyed the presents I gave them!
Today I had my first raspberry. It was such a wonderful feeling to pick that one berry, as I thought the plant would never bear any fruit. I walked along the river one day, and spotted this red things hanging from a bush. It was wild raspberries, and I took two plants out, planted them in my garden, and after waiting two years, and on the brink of taking it out, the beautiful blossoms appeared, and then the rasberries. Hope the other don't take too long to also ripen.

I am so tired of the thieving thugs in the village! Bush, the Zimbawean who lived across the road some way up, came back from a long stay somewhere, and asked me again whether he could leave his bicycle and his  car with me, as he had to now go to Zimbabwe, his wife and kids, and his mother still living there.
I don't know what is wrong with Bush lately, because he had become very sloppy in his ways, and where as before he was always nicely dressed, and very clean, he now looks all done in, and tired. Gone were the days when every Sunday Bush would proudly walk up the steep road leading to the church, dressed in a purple suit, white shirt and green tye, pushing his green bicyle, as the first part of the road was very steep!  I have an idea that he has got into bad company, and maybe using drugs, but I am not sure. I have asked him, but he denied this heavely. He was so excited about the onions, and he cleared all the black wattles, that is an invader plant, and  after the land was ploughed, he was enthusiastically planting and watering. But I could see him getting less and less interested, as I had to at one stage, did all the watering and a lot of weeding.. The idea was that I gave the land and the seeds, and carry all the expenses, while he did the work, and we then share the profits.
So I told him that he could put his bicycle in Jan's store room that is now empty. It is hard for him, because he has to leave all his stuff with me, even his car, as they once stole his shock absorbers from underneath the car. Strange that he would only leave his things in the care of me or Jan, and not with any of his friends!
Anyway, Danny's big kids were playing ball in the street when Bush brought the bicycle over, and they could see where he was taking it. The next morning, as I usually do, I walked around Jan's house to see if all was well, and found the bathroom window broken, and open. I have phoned the police about five times already, as somebody kept on breaking the windows, and climbed into the house. There was still a few odds and ends inside, and I found one of Jan's garden tools lying outside the window, as if someone had dropped it there. On seeing this, a cold shiver ran up and down my spine, as the thought of Bush's bicycle sprang to mind.
I almost ran to the store room, and I must say, I wasn't even surprised to find it gone! The police came, hmm and ha-d, and drove off to catch up on the sleep they lost while out on this call. Must say, I was surprised that they even came, as usually I have to phone to Uniondale, thirty kilometers away if I needed the law. Our station do not even answer their phones most of the time.
I wished fervently for my new neigbour to hurry up and move in, so that she could look after her own house!

It is now high summer, and it is hot, hot, hot! And dry! Two months ago when I drove to cape Town, all the dams were full, and the dry Karroo fields actually had a bit of fresh green here and there, but a week ago, driving on the same road for about one hundred kilometers, I saw that a lot of the dams were quite empty, with only a few holding some water.
And with this drought comes the hungry animals. In Haarlem, the locals do not feed their cattle or horses, and this animals are left to fend for themselves, and only get attention when they are needed for ploughing, and of course the cows provide milk. Although, being so thin, and I suppose hungry, the cows's udders look quite empty, and the small calves are really thin.
I have a fence covered with all kinds of climbing plants, like Jasmine and honeysuckle, and as a rule the cattle and horses do not touch it, but now, with the grass on the verges all dried up and eaten to the ground, the cattle plucks down all the leaves, leaving my poor fence looking very moth eaten indeed.
The worst of course is the fact that the big peach tree, on which the peaches have just began to ripen, were right next to the fence, and they love to have a meal of that. On hearing branches breaking, and seeing the fence shaking madly, I ran out, to find this animal standing defiantly next to the fence, with a branch loaded with the almost yellow peaches hanging from her mouth. I shooed and shaaed, and flapped my arms, but madam was not gonna let go of such a nice lunch. She just stood looking at me, while chewing and chewing for ages on whatever, peach or branch, she had in her mouth!
The problem also now, is that this hungry animals are not stupid at all, and will have a bit of trying out the gate by pushing against it with all their might every day and I knew from previous experience, that they will get a gap one day, and then it will be havock in our gardens.
As a rule the wandering animals are quite a godsend, as they keep the verges from overgrowing, the kikuju grass being a pest, overgrowing just everything if not curbed!
Of course this animals get to the main road now and then, and have caused some horrible accidents, as it is the tourist road from Port Elizabeth to cape Town, with quite some heavy traffic during the summer months. I myself had been very lucky to escape driving into three horses that just walked into the road, right in front of me. I was going at about a hundred kilometers, when I came over a little rize in the road, and there was this three horses, stepping out right in front of me. Had a bally great fright!
I am getting a new neigbour. Apparently it is a woman from Durban, and it seems that she is a doctor in Zoology, and a lecturer at the University of natal. Jacque, the guy who tried to buy Jan's place had to pull out, as he could not get the money together. So now I wait and see what kind of a neigbour I am getting.

The sun is shining, I am feeling strong and healthy, but oh boy, I have murder in my heart!The moles are driving me nuts, as thids morning as I inspected all my veggies, as I do every morning, I found my beautiful patti pans lying halfdead and shriveled up, looking a sorry sight indeed. I am really now at the end of my wits, as the peacocks, the chickens, the birds, and all the other wildlife I can control to a certain extent, but the moles are like ghosts, you just never see one. Although with the insecticide granules that I have stuck into their tunnels, One came out, and drowned in my frog pond! It is the first time in all this time that I have actually seen this ghostly little critter, who reeks havock under just about anything with roots! So I got another bottle of this granules, and not wanting to harm the insects and things, I made little sachets with calico, filled it with the horrible smelling granules, then stuck it into the tunnels as far as it would go. This granules smell awful, and it is so potent, that a person just can't breathe it in, and after I had finished, my lungs were actually sore. I had a little mask over my nose, but the smell and the fumes still penetrated! So now, two days later, there is a horrid stench around the house, and just where I had stuck in the poison. They would not have eaten it, but I hoped that the fumes this granules gave off, had killed them dead! Never knew I had such a murderous streak in me!

My computer was off for a few days, Our Government had promised electricity to all, but did not realize that to do that, they had to actually build new power plants! I grew up on a remote farm, where we did not have electricity, and a lot of the outlaying farmers still use generators. But, of course for the votes they would score, the new Government had to promise something, and they promised power to even the most remote places! Now we have a lot of load sharing, and the eletricity goes off at all hours, leaving us in the dark for ages on end. What this will do to our already challenged economy, heavens alone knows, as millions of oil instead of coal is now burned to provide some power! Something somewhere went wrong with the coal! Anyway, I was working on my computer when the power went off, and I did not put it off at the plug, with the result that when the power came back on, it blew something, as the sudden surge was too strong. And I had to pay for all this!

My sun dried tomatoes are stacking up beautifully. Every morning I harvest the ripe ones, cut them in half, and put in the sun. I had put some of the dried ones into a bottle with oil, and some in the freezer to see what worked best, and I must say, they freeze really well.So for this winter I will have plenty of lovely dried tomatoes! I think the freezing works best!

My sun dried tomatoes are so nice that I keep on pinching some as soon as they are almost dry, but I just can't help it! Once they are out of the sun and cooled off, they are still nice, but not as nice as still baked warm.
In the meantime I am drowning in pumpkins! I must have done something very right this time, as the previous year I was not successful at all. Maybe it is the stolen manure that Bush had taken from Jacques's plot, and then being threatened by Sheila, whose cows pooped there, that she would have him arrested that did the trick! I have tried to dry some pumpkin pieces, just as the village women discussed, and it dried well, but then I tried to revive some pieces, with no success! I put it in hot water as I was told to do, for an hour before starting to boil it, but it stayed just the same, looking limp and grey, and very unappetizing indeed.

So now I will have to get someone to tell me again how to boil it, or just boil the fresh ones, then freeze it. I will just have to get a deep freeze, as my poor freezer from my fridge is filled up to full capacity!
Yesterday I had the most wonderful experience. I have talked about the garage owner who have done work I didn't ask for, and did not at this moment had the money to really pay for it. On the way to the bank I met Berty, who used to be Emil's nanny, and she asked me why I was looking so worried. I told her the story, and that I still had to pay a lot of money for the flat's garage roof to be fixed. We went out different ways, and then yesterday Berty, who only gets a very small wage where she now works, came to my house, took my hand, and folded it closed over something. She then said that what was in my hand was given with all her love, and I must please not refuse it! In my hand was a R100 note, and taking into account her circumstances, it was a huge sum! I said no, I refuse to take it, but she would not have it, said I was hurting her feelings, as she did it to help me a bit! I cried! But I just could not take it, so I gave her a bag, and a cusion that I made for the market! She was very pleased, and I was feeling so humble! That to me is what love for your fellow beings are all about!

Had huge fight with Uniondale garage owner where I took my car to be fixed after some thieving blikskottel tried to first open the door and ruining it, then in the end broke the window! If there was something in the car that looked remotely like something worth taking, I could understand it, but as there was nothing, they must have felt that they had to at least take something, so they took my log book where all the services are recorded!

So I took the car for a quote to this people, and they gave me a reasonable price. But then I asked them, disregarding hints from friends not to have anything to do with this clan, to to a light service, meaning changing the oil and maybe look at the plugs and so on. I usually have this done in George, where they charge me R490, so I made provision for this, as I was going to sell my car, and buy a small truck from my friend Louise, who was moving to Cape Town.

When after a full twelve days and countless phone calls, I was informed that my car was ready, I was absolutely flattened by the invoice the mechanic gave me on getting there, telling me that the owners were not in yet! They have done a full service, and the amount that glared at me was so much that I almost had a bally seizure. I told the man that I had not asked for the big service, so he phoned the owner's house. I first spoke with the wife, who lied roundly, and told me that I had told her that I wanted a full service! I told her that she was a bally lier, so she gave the phone to her husband, who shouted at me to pay up, or leave his premises without my car! So in the end I had to pay, but that was the last time I do not listen to people in the know!

In the meantime Jacques, the guy wanting to buy Jan's house, was struggling to get the deposit together, as a lot of their Silo building projects in Germany had been postponed as the weather was just too inclement. jan had given him some respite, but as he wanted to buy a house in Cape Town, he was a bitty in a hurry to get the sale through. 

Jan and the two young boys came for the week-end, and I was amazed at how fast the little one is growing. He is now almost a little boy, and not a toddler. We have to be vigilant all the time, as he can manage to squash through the gate, and once out, he just takes off! Sheila's cows are  a source of constant wonder to him, and when he gets the chance, he is out of the gate, and down the road after them.

Grietjie, the woman managing the farmyard with an iron hand while Sheila works at the clinic, is such a good person, and will always allow the child to walk with her for a while, then send him back. He is never happy with that, and screamed his head off when we bring him back. But he loves my safety glasses, and got very upset if they were mislaid!

My cherry tomatoes are now getting to the stage where they ripen at the speed of light, well almost, and I gave some away to Berty, Emil's previous nanny, who comes for a cuppa from time to time, and to inquire after the child. I have put some of the tomatoes that I dried in the sun in a bottle with oil, and some I froze, to see what work best! I must say, The dried tomatoes, ate straight from the drying rack, and still warm from the sun, is above delish!!!