Fynbos Summer Sale and a bad bad blogger.

The time has come for our Summer Sale. Our Fynbos Summer Sale on Dec 16 – 10am – 4pm!

It has been so so busy here at the nursery. So busy I forgot to blog in months! In the space between my last blog entry and now, we adopted 10 baby chickens (Township lovelies, i swear they say “Hy wena” or worse every time I walk past without feeding them) and two goats who had a cute cute little baby kid we named Girl Goaty (Kingoftheplayground named it) but actually a few days later it turned out to be a boy. Billy the kid? Naaaythan? help us out here…

We also have Samson and Max, our two rescue dogs – but have had them for a while now. If you come to visit us and are bowled over by a thin snake on legs with fur and a brown frown face with ear-splitting woofs – that’s them. We love them even after eating three chickens (the baby Redhill ones – no funeral, Kingoftheplayground was asleep) and chicken eggs (Samson bites holes in the sides and sucks out the insides…WhipetXeggeater?) They are the best watchdogs and will bark at anything even the sprinklers and the wind.

Not sure if I mentioned before, we also adopted Henry the Rooster from the Cape Farmhouse a while ago. He has a rocky history and was even in the local papers…small people stay away from him? But he has his 3 chicks (our 3 chickens) who are completely henpecked. Oh. Except for chicken #2 who got slicked by a genet cat. Rude.

So life has been farmy to say the least. Its fun, but hard too sometimes when you upstairs trying to catch up on admin and you hear shouts from the garden. Make sure Kingoftheplayground is fast asleep still and go downstairs. Find that Billy goat has escaped and is eating the veggie garden. Everyone drops tools and the  chase begins. Let me just stop here and mention that goats can run ridiculously fast. So catch goat. Goat scrapes hand with horn. Bite tounge. Put goat back in pen. Feed Goat. Walk past chickens who start swearing at me in Xhosa. Fetch chicken food. Henry the Rooster sees chicken food and struts fast towards me. I stumble backwards (I’m very scared of Henry) and bang head on recently pruned tree branch. Swear loudly and have to go and slam garden gate a couple of times to feel better. Feel better. Think pure thoughts. Feed chickens. Go back upstairs. Turn computer back on just before Kingoftheplayground wakes up and shouts for cereal with the runny honey.

Taskmaster is completely landscaped out what with everyone who is anyone wanting their garden finished before Christmas. A few roof garden in the mix and even time to build more goat pens. Ownerlady is full steam ahead in organizations for the Summer Sale…big tree clearances, getting all the flowering plants ready and filling up the retail. All staff working hard:

We will have succulents for sale in decoupaged recycled tins – a Thank You Kitty range, as most of the tins are from our cats food cute hey.

The Tea Garden is going well too, with fab new staff and a home cooked meal on the menu every day.  Fresh organic produce continues to feed us and the Tea Garden from the veggie gardens, we even had the most amazing artichokes the other night.

The figs are out and homemade fig preserve will be on sale at the Summer Sale – best eaten at once with red wine and a selection of cheeses…mmmmmm.

I’ll leave you with this pretty pic of an Agapanthus almost in bloom….and hope to see you next week at the Sale!!!

 

Back at work/in the garden

So we have returned from an amazing time-out. Annual holidays are the greatest, but it’s also kind of great to be back at the nursery….

On day one of return Taskmaster discovered the porcupine had been visiting. A lot. Set the trap and hey presto a porky was caught! Even have a photo this time:

Beautiful Porky

He was a small one but oh so defensive. If the dogs or we came near, he would ruffle his quills (really loud…imagine a shaker in a mexican band) and stamp his little foot!

In celebration of no bites-in-veg any more, we went to see how much the dam had filled. It’s really been a rain shy winter this year.

The dam.

The dogs and Kingoftheplayground had a blast. Kingoftheplayground decided it would be best to have a dip.

Dip in the dam!

So the landscaping teams are full steam back into work. The nursery is propagating away and getting ready for the next sale. The event is called’ Spring into Fynbos’ and will include all kinds of lovely fun and fynbos on Saturday the 18th of September.. Walks, talks, kids entertainment and Auntie # 1 is coming down especially to do a Wild Flower display with flowers collected off our very own mountain! Cant wait.

beautiful fluff!!!

The tea garden re-opens this weekend…due to staff and menu changes we reopen much later than advertised. Great apologies to those who came for tea last week.  But the good news is that the plan is to now have more of a farmstall food option and I’ve been baking bread (so good) and perfecting the Best Pie Ever. Feeling hungry? Come visit this weekend!

Porcupine, traps, world cup and roof gardens.

The reason for such a gap in blog updates? Er…dog ate my homework? Well,  close enough…they stole my camera and ran off with it. They have annoying habits of capturing odd shoe/recycling/the other sock you were looking for and gifting a random bush with said object. So old camera that I must hold lense open when shooting with will have to do for now.

So the world cup is upon us. Vuvuzelas humming, everyone wearing yellow tops, many tourists stopping in middle of road near Cape Point to feed baboons – letting them jump in their cars while they get it on film….etc. The flags are flying high at the nursery…we even have football Fridays with a lucky draw and a Good Hope Nursery soccer match on the last friday! Sad about Bafana Bafanas tragic game last night. Although I don’t actually know what happens in soccer   ( fit sweaty men running around…whats not to like? ) I try to join in shouting encouraging things at the screen like “Noooo!” and “Yessssss!” and other soccer type words.

Above shows some of the damage a porcupine did to our veggie garden. It interestingly loves parsley roots. And every other root we had he decided to have a little taste. Except the carrots – he had a rather large taste….like half the carrot patch for supper.

So we set a trap that night. A porcupine trap with tasty things they love in it like beetroot, pear, carrots, sweet potato and a veggie sausage for fun.

The next morning we went to go see.

We had caught a wild cat. The veggie sausage was gone. Kingoftheplaygroung named him “The Fierce Bad Kitty”.

Sooo we let it go (it was quite cross) and set the trap again last night. This morning there was a young porcupine in it!!!Porqupines are amazingly beautifull…like an installation artwork of quills. They will run backwards to defend themselves, the strongest quills are on their tails. And he had a tiny almost human like ear. Taskmaster set him free on a faraway mountain.

The Landscapers current job is rehabilitation at the Smitswinkle Bay Hoerikwagga campsite….

Taskmaster was on the Kikuyu grasses case in the sublime surroundings…

And stopped to see how well these roof gardens are doing…created by the Landscaping team here of course:

So enjoy the world cup, don’t forget our 15% sale off ALL PLANTS !!!! and keep warm..theres snow on Table Mountain!

***Vuvuzeelaaahooonk!***