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.