A lovely rainy weekend

Can you remember what you did over the weekend of 19 and 20 March? You never know when you might need an alibi. Gattina of Writer Cramps hosts this fun meme. Do pop over to her blog if you can.

On Friday I finally made my home-made muesli. My sister-in-law, Shelley, sent me the recipe and once Grant brought home my natural honey, I was able to make this delicious breakfast cereal. I will post the recipe in a while.

Home-made muesli

When I returned to my desk, I spotted this bird through the window. It's Ross' Turaco and you can only see the red under its wings in flight. Unless it preens and stretches for me!

Later that afternoon, James - who works for Sharda - asked if he could trim my lawn. He still had fuel left in the tank after trimming Sharda's lawn and wanted to help me. Wasn't that sweet of him? Typically in Africa you wear your protective eyewear on top of your head

On Saturday afternoon, Grant took me for a ride to the stream below the office. After this week's rain, the river level is up. We spotted and photographed birds here again

On Sunday morning Grant and I set out on our normal birding trip through the mine. This is typical of  the bushveld where we stop if we see or hear birds. It's greened up incredibly since last Sunday. Isn't it stunning?

Gorrilas in the mist? Wishful thinking...

Another favourite birding place is below one of the mine's dams. The reed beds and swamp area offers a huge variety of water birds, the bush on the left always teems with bee-eaters, shrikes, bulbuls, robin-chats and weavers. Every few minutes an ibis or go-away bird lands in the tree top and surveys the area. Where I was standing, a host of little warblers, bulbuls, doves, fly-catchers and chatterers flitted in and out of the trees above me. I've only posted a few photos for fear of boring my readers with so many birds. We are amazed at the amount of birds we see in one two-hour trip around this beautiful valley and never tire of seeing them

A pair of Egyptian Geese

Back home, of course it was braai-time. Instead of just me and Grant alone, we'd invited Johan, the financial manager to join us. He is here on single status and was thrilled to be part of a family meal for a change

I tried a different dish today: Chickpea and Paneer cheese salad. I downloaded the recipe off the Internet but tweaked it so much it hardly resembles the original! I will post this later as well

For more on what other people did over the weekend, click here