Container gardening with John

You’d think with my huge garden, I’d not bother with container or indoor gardening. The thing is, I have a large patio/courtyard. The entrance to the house is on the side (access is across the courtyard, where everyone parks) and I like to keep the whole area pretty and welcoming!

A few weeks ago, while visiting the nursery in a nearby town, I bought a dozen trays of Begonia plants. (Begonia semperflorens) These replaced the pansies (Viola tricolour) and primulas (Primula spp)which beautified my winter patio.

Later I wandered to my small front patio, which is never used, to check on the state of my container plants there. Woe is me! All that remained of my winter plantings were a few bedraggled vygies, (Portuluca spp) wilting in a dusty planter. (See photo below)



I called John, my one gardener, and he loaded this sorry example of a container garden onto the wheelbarrow and took it to the back of the house to implement some serious renovations. First we pulled out all the existing plants and tipped the soil into a garden bed. John washed the container and after placing a few sturdy rocks over the drainage holes, we added a couple of handfuls of stone chips followed by fresh potting soil. Then we walked around the garden together and collected suitable succulents for the container.



This is the part John really enjoys. I always have a hardcopy picture of what I want to create (this time I copied a container garden featured in a gardening magazine) or I’ll draw a picture using coloured pencil crayons (as a grandmother I always have crayons and felt-tipped pens in my house!) and black marker pens to illustrate my idea. John LOVES this. When we stop at bed with a plant which he sees in the picture, he gets very excited and says: “Hona, Mme?” (This one ma’am?) And I say, “Yes, let’s take that one out.” Often he spots something I would have missed and I tell him this; you can see he enoys being one up on Mme!

Here John poses proudly with the completed project. Later he added a few more plants; he'd asked the gardener next door for succulants he'd seen on my neighbour's pavement/sidewalk (see close-up photo above this one)

While planting the container up, John referred often to the magazine and reproduced the featured garden almost to the letter! Afterwards he posed for a photograph alongside his creation which has pride of place at the door to the house.

Overload!

The photo above is just to show what the roads in Guinea, West Africa are like in wet season

While travelling to Johannesburg on business last month, we passed the weigh bridge just outside a neighbouring town. My husband and I began to discuss the fact that many trucks we see on the roads are grossly overloaded. Not only is this detrimental to the road surfaces, (South Africa’s regional roads have fallen badly into disrepair over the past decade) it is also highly dangerous. It is dangerous for the truck driver and dangerous for other road users.

And then we look at each other and burst out laughing as we both thought of the roads in West Africa.

As they say in the classics: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet until you’ve travelled on third world roads.

In 2006 my husband moved an entire fleet of heavy earthmoving machines (13 in total) from the gold mine site in Guinea (the project had ended) to an existing gold mine operation in Mali. The trip which took 53 days was 1800km / 1100 miles long. He started off during the wet season (which means horrific conditions in Guinea where there are mostly dirt roads) and skirted the Sahara desert passed through Mauretania and down to Sadiola (a town 400km south of Timbuktu) This is a complete post on its own so I won’t go into any more detail. I will do a post on his Safari later on this month.

However, while going through his photos, I came across dozens of overloaded vehicles that he’d snapped. Some of them are on the dirt road. The real traffic started once he entered Mali and the roads (which are in very good condition,) are tarred. Taxis, passenger cars, busses, trucks, lorries, donkeys and bicycles were loaded to the hilt.

Here are a few...

Yes, that is a human hand waving from the top of the pile! Apparently he's called the conductor


Everything including the kitchen sink is loaded here!

You hold your breath when you watch
a vehicle like this travelling in front of you.
Will it toppled over onto its side?



This guy meant business!

My heart always bled for the poor donkies of Mali...

Have bicycle, will load!

My Dog is on Diet!

Body language says it all. You can keep your fancy

low fat, high fibre pellets. I want real food!

The challenge is on, the word is out! My ten-year-old Maltese poodle x Scottish Terrier, Megan is on diet. Recently I took her to be clipped because the heat seemed to be affecting her more than usual. I spoke to my vet, Dr Anne about my concern that Megan could be overweight. (Megan gets clipped at the vet) Dr Anne said if I need my dog to lose weight, I had to get the full commitment of the whole family.


Then she recommended specially formulated pellets which help overweight dogs lose weight. On the reverse of the packet I noted that it is a low fat, high fibre food with high levels of L-carnitine and lysine to reduce body fat while maintaining muscle mass. I also realise that it's no use showing my dog a picture of a slim dog on the packet and encouraging her to go for that image! The food has to satisfy her hunger, that is the bottom line and apparently this particular brand of pellets does exactly that.

Megan tried one or two pellets and turned her nose up!

The vet was so convincing that I bought a packet, loaded Megan and the food into the car and came home. Now all I have to do is convince Megan. She cannot understand why she cannot lick the cats' left-overs, why she isn’t getting cheese off cuts and slices of biltong? (biltong = spicy, air dried meat – similar to jerky) “and whatever happened to the delicious bread, milk and meat breakfast I used to get?”

Ooh-ee, just a little further and I'll reach that yummy beef!

Today has been a real battle of wills between me and Megan. I left her bowl of pellets on the patio where she always eats her food. She ate a couple of pellets and then turned her back on it! Later on I saw Pudding, my elderly cat nibbling at the pellets. Then looking out into the garden, I spied Megan leaning over the pond and it looked as if she was gulping up water. When I went closer, I saw she was trying to lap up the pieces of ground beef I’d dropped in there earlier for the barbel (fish) to eat! Am I living with crazy animals or WHAT!

I've noted the date that I started Megan on this diet and will keep you posted as to her progress!