Home Sweet Home

The summer rains have arrived in earnest

We’re home safe and sound, praise God. We’ve had a wonderful time away on our motorbike. (More about the whole trip later.)

The best thing about coming home this time, was the weather. While we had clement weather on holiday, there’s been some concern about the dry conditions back home. I posted about the beautiful albeit first-of-season-rains which arrived a week before our holiday. Well, we came home on Wednesday and a huge storm was building up again as we unloaded the bike.

My container garden was well and truly drenched on the patio

During the night, the first of a series of thunderstorms arrived and raged around our house.

Then the rain came down, and down and down.

In the morning, I dashed outside with my camera to... well, record the rain.

All day the darkened skies and rumbling thunder promised huge rains. Don't you just love it when it storms early in the morning? The sky goes black and everything becomes still and almost eerie. Ooh, I love it!

Arriving home, I noticed that the Sweet Thorn (Acacia karoo) was in full flower (as was everything else in the garden- too beautiful!)

A close up of the Sweet Thorn flower -

I wish I could send the fragrance across cyber space into this post!

It may sound crazy that rainy weather excites us, but it does. We’ve experienced many dry and dusty years in the Free State and while we had our own [motor repair garage] business, we experienced hardships along with the farmers. If it didn’t rain at the right time, the farmer cannot plant; if the farmer cannot plant, he cannot reap; if he cannot reap, well, he ain’t got any extra money for vehicle repairs, so he ain’t able to support us.

However, we don’t have a business in town any longer, so it’s just in sympathy, or in this case, sharing the farmers’ joy when the weather does what it’s supposed to do.

For me the added bonus is a beautifully lush garden.

A few of the delicious peaches from the tree in my garden

Oh yes, it's also the fruit season here now. Soft fruit: peaches, pears, apricots, mulberries. Plums, greengage plums and grapes are ready a little later. Due to a heavy and late frost in September, the peach, apricot and mulberry fruit buds were damaged severely so I expected no fruit this year. Yet, much to my delight, when I arrived home, I noticed a few peaches on the tree. Nothing like other years, not even half enough to make jam as Emily and I do every December. Yet the fruit is huge, sweet and absolutely delicious.

In the afternoon it rained, no, it poured for an hour. Afterwards I popped into the garden to pick mint and revelled in the fresh smell of wet earth and dripping foliage.

By the time this post is aired, I'll be back in the garden working alongside my gardeners...